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To neutralize 150 ppm alkalinity, lactic acid use should not be anywhere near most people's taste threshold. However, there are some that are super-tasters or are sensitive to its flavor. I see that the chloride is very high and I can also infer that the sodium is high too. This may not be ideal...

The need to acidify your sparging water is entirely contingent on the alkalinity of the raw water. If your water source has little alkalinity (like distilled or RO water), then you may not need to acidify at all. Water with little alkalinity (less than 25 ppm), generally doesn't have to be...

What? Its included in both places. What version are you using?

Citric acid is far from ideal for brewing use, but it can have a place in brewing. The big problem with citric is that its flavor threshold is much lower than that of many other acids. Citric acid can be used in brewing if the water supply has low alkalinity. I'm not sure how the OP determined...

OpenOffice is no longer supported by its developer and it doesn't seem to operate Bru'n Water very well. LibreOffice does operate the program pretty well.

I use that Auber DSPR1 unit to control my boil kettle and can report that it is superb. The digital power percentage readout is very helpful in setting and duplicating your boil control. After a few brews, you will find the range of percentage setting that produces the appropriate boil vigor for...

That is a good catch. That 1.7mg/l ascorbic addition was taken from a reference by Davis, Barrett, and McGuire (1985) which was published in the American Water Works Association. It referred to a dialysis solution, but stated that the dose would remove up to 3 mg/l chloramines. As pointed out...

Because it is typically the largest component of your grist, the acidity of the base malt usually has the greatest effect on the resulting mashing pH. Some base malts can have a lower than typical distilled water pH. A typical 2L to 3L base malt often has a distilled water pH in the 5.7 to 5.8...

Sure it does. However, most brewers aren't aware of any limitation to applying the ratio. In my opinion, the ratio is most useful when the chloride content is between 25 and 100 ppm. Outside of that range, the ratio can deceive you.

No, the ratio is of only modest utility and it tends to point brewers in the wrong direction...as witnessed here. I can have 3 ppm Cl and 1 ppm SO4 and I'm pretty sure any of you would guess that it would have far less effect in beer than if I had 300 ppm Cl and 100 ppm SO4. Another mention...

Residual Alkalinity helps you understand how the calcium and magnesium content of a water affects the pH of a mash conducted with that water. However, RA is not really the way to assess if a water is good for brewing or not. The suitability of water for brewing is dependent upon its...

Um? That is not that great a consolation. The negative effects of sulfate would never be realized since the negative effects of the metallic zinc flavor would destroy the beer long before the sulfate would. That statement is a Red Herring, in my opinion. Considering that the mega-breweries are...

The concerns with phosphate stripping out calcium from brewing water are overblown. For this precipitation reaction to occur, the calcium concentration in the water needs to be pretty high to start with. Under that condition, losing some calcium is not a concern. In fact, the malt provides all...

I researched the effect of calcium and magnesium on yeast a couple of years ago after having a Boh Pils lager fermentation do some really strange things. It turns out that there is plenty of existing research and journal articles on the effects of calcium and magnesium on yeast. Its just that we...

With as little Mg as we need or want in our wort, I suggest that the typical Epsom Salts from the druggist is fine for our use. As already mentioned, you don't want to overdo it with Mg. The beer flavor will suffer. I recommend keeping Mg below 40 ppm, but while we were writing the Water book...

Unfortunately, Gordon's advice is quite misleading and relatively useless. As noted above, he uses RO water for all of his brewing. For water such as that, it only takes a drop or two of acid to drop its pH to 5.5, but that has done nothing substantial to the brewing suitability of the water...

The need for RO is dependent upon your tap water quality. If the tap water has very mineralization, then getting a RO unit is bordering on needless. But if the water is full of mineralization, then RO is perfect. The RO unit includes the 3 stages of the other filter unit you are looking at. The...

90% efficiency? When I started getting into that range, I also had a harshness in my beers. It turned out that I was leaching tannins and silicates from the grainbed at the end of the runoff. Even though I was stopping runoff at 1.008, I was still getting the tannins and silicates which are...

The articles on calcium and magnesium in brewing water were published in The New Brewer (the Journal of the Brewers Association) in the Jul/Aug 2014 issue. It was a little more technically focused. A less technical version was published in Zymurgy in the Mar/Apr 2015 issue. I'm not sure that you...

The advice for 50 ppm Ca in your brewing water is OK for ale brewing. However, lager brewing can actually benefit from less Ca in the brewing water. I've published articles in Zymurgy and The New Brewer in which I present multiple findings from peer-reviewed scientific journals that prove with...