# EZ Water spreadsheet - Alkalinity entry issue (on Mac)



## technobabble66 (21/1/15)

Howdy,
I've discovered a little problem i seem to be having with the (free!!!) EZ Water Calculator which may be specific to being on an Apple Mac.

The problem is i can not check the "Alkalinity as CaCO3" checkbox. I can only check or uncheck the Bicarb option (and the resulting calc's for RA/pH etc don't change if i do). I suspect it's because Excel on my Mac seems to have "issues" with macros or something.

Anyhow, it's a leeeeettle bit annoying to discover this after i've been carefully adjusting mineral additions over the last year to hopefully optimise my beers. It basically means my mashes have been more alkaline than i thought (i think). Luckily i've been doing some basic additions that should've helped, just not as much as i'd hoped (i think).

Sooooooo ... any ideas as to how to sort this out?

The solution i've worked out is basically to check the Bicarb box & convert my water report Alkalinity as ppm of CaCO3 to Bicarb via:
[Alkalinity as ppm of CaCO3] / 0.83 = Alkalinity as Bicarb

this should be roughly valid for the pH of my water. (..?)

I tested it against an example someone posted a while back on another help question/thread and it seemed to provide the correct pH, RA & Effective Alkalinity (as ppm of CaCO3).
So this seems to be a solution, however it'd be nice to get the spreadsheet to work as it's intended.


EDIT: the minor problem with my solution is if i remove all grains and salt additions, and just have the YVW Water Report figures in the spreadsheet, the pH is reading ~8.84. The report suggests it should be more like 7.0-7.3. So something doesn't look right with my brilliant idea!! :unsure:

EDIT 2: Just finished playing with Martin's Bru'n Water spreadsheet - v good for sorting out the missing ion concentrations. It seems to confirm i was on the right track (technically, Bicarb = CaCO3 x 1.22), and i think the EZ Water Calculator just falls down a bit if there's no grain added into it.


----------



## Dunkelbrau (22/1/15)

Libreoffice is better than office on Mac.

Try that, I use it and find it good.


----------

