Water quality testing

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CCRacer

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Would anyone be interested in having their brewing water tested?

I normally obtain my water report from my water supplier but have long suspected it was obviously for the general area where I live and every time I used it to do the water calculations for different brews I would get off tastes or strange comments from friends and family when they drunk the beer it went into. Quite possibly my dosing was too much or too little for the report results, who knows.

Anyway, I got a bit bugged off with the variations and being a bit technical I bought a water test kit a few months ago and used the readings I obtained from it for use in my water calculator and the results are far better and more predictable probably because its the exact water coming from my tap.

If anyone is interested inbox me and we'll sort something out. I'll need to charge something for doing it though as the testing media and reagents are not reusable at all and cost quite a bit of money.
 
Would anyone be interested in having their brewing water tested?

I normally obtain my water report from my water supplier but have long suspected it was obviously for the general area where I live and every time I used it to do the water calculations for different brews I would get off tastes or strange comments from friends and family when they drunk the beer it went into. Quite possibly my dosing was too much or too little for the report results, who knows.

Anyway, I got a bit bugged off with the variations and being a bit technical I bought a water test kit a few months ago and used the readings I obtained from it for use in my water calculator and the results are far better and more predictable probably because its the exact water coming from my tap.

If anyone is interested inbox me and we'll sort something out. I'll need to charge something for doing it though as the testing media and reagents are not reusable at all and cost quite a bit of money.

What kind of test kit did you invest in?
 
I bought a LaMotte Brewlab Pro kit. I can test for the following:-

(1) Total and (2) Residual Alkalinity both as ppm CaCO3
(3) Calcium Hardness as ppm CaCO3
(4) Chloride as ppm
(5) Magnesium Hardness as ppm CaCO3
(6) pH from 0 to 14pH
(7) Sodium as ppm CaCO3
(8) Sulphate as ppm
(9) Total Hardness as CaCO3

9 separate test/results of the elements that have the biggest effect on beer quality. I also do mash pH and wort pH for my own use and to check various things as I go along.

Quite a bit I suppose and more than most want to do but as I've had some time in a craft brewery previously I like to know what's going on.

Not sure how much I'd charge at the moment as I need to check how much the consumables/reagents cost to replace. I know a well known Home Brew store uses Murphy and Son via their website at £29.99 per test!! Too expensive in my eyes but I suppose you have someones wages on top of the consumables/reagents to consider.

I'm intending to do a few free tests for forum users at some point but I'll need to pick these carefully as I need to be able to get a water quality report from their local water supplier as comparison. What would be a fair price to pay? You wouldn't need to do it every brew but it would be advantageous to do it a couple of times a year at least as water quality and its constituents change throughout specific seasons.
 
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