Reading a Water Report

I finally found all the water information for Orlando and well, I had always heard that the water here was hard but if I'm reading this right it's nowhere near what I thought it was. First off some of these amounts are in mg/l (miligrams per liter) and most brewing measurements that I've seen are in ppm (Parts Per Million). Now someone check me if I'm wrong here, Hey Wheebz, didn't I see you just had the water class, but in amounts less than 1000 mg/l aren't they equal? 16 mg/l = 16 ppm? So, here's the Orlando water breakdown:

Calcium 16 mg/l
Magnesium 2.2 mg/l
Bicarbonate 26.8 mg/l
Sulfate 6.1 ppm
Sodium 14 mg/l
Chloride 28 mg/l
Calcium Carbonate 22 mg/l

Now if I'm reading right the water for a Porter/Stout should be about:


Calcium 118 ppm
Magnesium 4.0 ppm
Bicarbonate 319 ppm
Sulfate 54 ppm
Sodium 12 ppm
Chloride 19 ppm

at least that's what Palmer says. So here's my quesion which of these are the ones I really need to adjust for mashing so that it comes out right and which ones are well if they adjust out fine but if not no biggie? After all the hype about hard water in Florida I was pretty surprised that these numbers were as low as they are, but... Still can make good beer.

Thanks

i cant comment on how to adjust your water for brewing purposes, i just use ro water to brew.

but mg/l is almost always interchangeable with ppm. i think you will find that any reading from an ec pen will differ drastically from your total ml/l from that report however, maby thats why you think its harder than it is?

you should have gotten an iron number as well

But let me put it this way

the last thing you should be worried about homebrewing is your waters mineral and nutrient content

do not forget you will get certain minerals after your mash depending on what type of malts and adjuncts are being used as well

depending on what characteristics you want to see out of your porter really depend on what you want your mineral contents to be, 54ppms for sulfur seem a little high to me, but of course I do not like that super assertive hop bitterness in my porters

unless you understand how every mineral effects the brewing process, there is no need to mess with your water

If you really want to mess with your water, when I get home from class today ill crunch some numbers and give you an idea of how much of what additives to toss into your water

Iron, didn't include it as I hadn't seen any mention of it. Iron here averages at 0.043 mg/l. Yeah, I'd really be interested in what you come up with. I know that for most appllication's I really just need to run it through a good filter to get some of the smell/taste out. I really started messing with because of all the hype I'd been hearing about how hard Florida water is. The numbers that i got though really don't look that hard here but I figured I'd better get to know it then if I decided I wanted to make something that was going to require modifying my water profile to do I would have a better understanding of what I needed to do.

Really loving your class forum man, I know your having a blast and after being stationed in Germany for 3 years in the Army, I know your going to love it there. Just don't try to drink the country dry. I tried it once and uhh, yep it was bad.

Cheers,