You can get everything you need from the standard water report and the water quality and water hardness report
This actually high-lights how I'm
failing in my quest to make water chemistry simpler for
all homebrewers!
I've originally come on to this thread as a breather away from the East/SE England water threads. They've got some pretty nasty hard waters down there, and I wanted to test my methods against it. I'm in N. Wales; soft water, but I've always lived in soft water areas (including Scotland!). My methods are to only being concerned with the six common ions: Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Chloride, Sulphate ... and Bicarbonate. NO water hardness at all, NO related "as CaCO
3" "pretend" ("equivalence") cobblers ... those subjects are riddled in traps that have people getting all the wrong ideas and making ludicrous mistakes. And no "Alkalinity" either: an important subject (its used to predict the mash pH), but one we can easily delegate to brewing water calculators ... thus, we are saved from learning loads of detail we will never need and avoid getting embroiled in details the eggheads can't agree on, let alone us!
But my holiday from southern England water problems pretty quickly turned into the same mire as down south, though the impact was mitigated by the water having naff all in it. I was having to get a "bicarbonate" value using the same incomprehensible "Hardness" claptrap I'm suggesting no-one uses! Looking back at the earlier posts I'm sure I can find examples of how the tripe can catch you out ... hang on, this is where
@Theoriginalrich got that mysterious "22ppm HCO
3" from! I'll be back shortly; I just need to sort this out ...
(@Galena! ... What's this " Bicarbonate is 17.9 x 1.22 = 21.88 ??" about? Hold out your hand, I'm going to whack it with this ruler!). Actually, that all been sorted out, but an excellent example of this "Hardness/"as CaCO
3" bull**** creating confusion (
@Galena doesn't like making mistakes!).
I did work out a bicarbonate figure by-the-way .... 16.2 ppm, or 13.3 ppm "as CaCO3" if anything (like "Alkalinity") must be presented in that gawd awful way. Most of this "bicarbonate" (if not all) will probably be added by the water company in an effort to protect their pipes from corrosion.
So, the problem I've got in simplifying this damn subject is mainly due to the awful way the basic information is provided to us. I think I'll have to create yet another flippin' spread sheet to easily extract these basic values. The authors of the water calculators should do this, I'm currently looking at the "Brewer's Friend" offering, and it certainly makes an attempt, but it seems to me the authors of this "clever stuff" often forget they are talking to the General Public. I have a small advantage in this regard: I need to package up what I'm learning so it remains accessible to me in a couple of months ... after I've forgotten all this! I'll never make it to being a "clever dick", I just get these fleeting previews of what it might be like. Google and Excel are my real memory!
