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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
  Vienna water profile provenance (Calvin Perilloux)
  Re: Vienna water ("Kai Troester")
  Dropping Carbonates ("A. J. deLange")


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Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:11:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Calvin Perilloux <calvinperilloux at yahoo.com>
Subject: Vienna water profile provenance

AJ,

You stated that you have in hand several water profile
descriptions for Vienna but no provenance on any of them.
There is data officially available from the Vienna government
site, so now you have a proper data source:

http://www.wien.gv.at/wienwasser/index.html 

Much of Vienna city center and the eastern part of the city
(Donaustadt, Florisdorf, Leopoldsstadt, Brigittenau) have
the hardest water, almost surely pulling much of their usage
from Lobau and Moosbrunn (see below).  Based on the hardness
values per 'Bezirk', the rest of Vienna gets water from the
alpine sources between Vienna and the mountains in Steiermark
(via aqueducts 1 and 2).

My guess is that historical Vienna brewery water probably is
similar to the Lobau and Moosbrunn sources, since the style
predates the modern aqueducts, but as you so appropriately
pointed out, it is highly likely that the brewing water
underwent (substantial) treatment.  In any case, data:

HQL1 - I. Wiener Hochquellenleitung (from Steiermark)
HQL2 - II. Wiener Hochquellenleitung (from Steiermark and other areas)
LOB  - Wasserwerk Lobau (east side of city)
MOOS - Wasserwerk Moosbrunn (south of city)

HQL1 supplies about 40% of total city consumption.

Parameter (down)- Source (right)    HQL1   HQL2   LOB   MOOS
pH-Wert                             7,62   7,66   7,52   7,40
Gesamtha:rte (Grad deutsche Ha:rte) 8,6    6,8   13,7   18,7
Karbonatha:rte (Grad d'sche Ha:rte) 7,6    6,4   12,9   12,8
Nitrat (Milligramm NO3 pro Liter)   4,4    2,7    3,8   15
Chlorid (Milligramm pro Liter)      1,6   <1,0   13     17
Sulfat (Milligramm pro Liter)      13      2,4   30     84

*1,5 Millimol Calciumcarbonat je Liter entsprechen 8,4 dH
(Grad deutscher Ha:rte)

I include nitrate simply as a demonstration showing how the
EPA here goes well above and beyond the cause of safety with
their overzealous standards; you would note that the Moosbrunn
supply, coming from what appears to be a flat, agricultural
area, is (unsurprisingly) well over the EPA limit for nitrates.
This would entail potentially very costly remediation methods
in the USA (e.g. restricting usage from Moosbrunn to what can
be mixed/diluted from other sources) but is well within the
European safety limits of 50 mg/L.  I shall refrain from further
political comment on other related off-topics, for now anyway.

Calvin Perilloux
Middletown, Maryland, USA


Return to table of contents


Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:16:18 -0500
From: "Kai Troester" <kai at braukaiser.com>
Subject: Re: Vienna water

Interesting discussion about the Vienna water. I have wondered about
this 
myself since the classic Vienna water profile doesn't seem to be well
suited for what is a Vienna style beer

A.J. made this statement:

> I think that leads us to the conclusion that Vienna water is very hard
> with a good amount of that hardness being permanent and low chloride. 
> To synthesize that water we could take the approach of building a
hard, 
> gypseous water in full knowledge that at soon as that water hits the 
> HLT the carbonate which we will have to take considerable trouble to 
> put in will fall right out and so skip that step. 

I disagree that you can make the argument that the alkalinity
precipitate in the HLT since the strike temp is too low for this to
happen. I.e. brewing with classic Vienna water means that you have very
high alkalinity which can be represented as either suspended or
dissolved chalk.

I do however agree that a good Vienna beer is most likely brewed by
using Vienna water that has been softened. If there is high temporary
hardness in the water a brewery is likely to precipitate it using
slacked lime.

When it comes to today's Vienna water it seems that that water is fairly
different from the classic Vienna water. In 1873 a water pipeline from
the alps (Hochquellleitung I or HQL-I)  was opened which started to
supply Vienna with water that is considerably softer than its ground
water [1]. In 1910 a second such pipe (HQL-II) was opened and today
about 80% of Vienna water come from the Alps [2][3]. Here is water
analysis data I found on the web[4]:

                              sources
            HQL-I      HQL-II    Lobau (local)    Moosbrunn (local)


pH          7.62        7.66        7.52            7.40
GH (dH)      8.6         6.9         13.7           18.7
KH (dH)      7.6         6.4         13             13
Cl (mg/l)    1.6         1           13             17
SO4 (mg/l)   13          2.4         30             84

to get from dH to ppm CaCO3 multiply the dH value with 17.8

It seems that the classic Vienna profile is a mix of the local Vienna
water sources. 

Modern Vienna water however is mostly a mix of the HQL-I and -II sources
and has an estimated residual alkalinity of about 5 dH or 90 ppm as
CaCO3 which is decent water for brewing Vienna beer. I found that my
current batch of Vienna malt has a distilled water pH of about 5.5 -
5.6. This means that a 90 ppm CaCO3 RA water and a mash thickness of 4
l/kg should give a mash pH of about 5.6-5.7 which is acceptable.

This shows how little some of the classic water profiles reflect the
current situation in those cities. Munich water on the other hand,
didn't change much the classic profile is still very much in line with
the current water analysis [5].

Kai

[1] - http://www.wien.gv.at/wienwasser/versorgung/1hochquell.html
[2] - http://www.wien.gv.at/wienwasser/versorgung/2hochquell.html
[3] - http://www.wien.gv.at/wienwasser/statistik.html
[4] - http://www.wien.gv.at/wienwasser/qualitaet/ergebnis.html
[5] - http://www.swm.de/dokumente/swm/pdf/wasser/trinkwasserwerte.pdf




Return to table of contents


Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:24:08 -0500
From: "A. J. deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Dropping Carbonates

I put the comment about dropping carbonates in the HLT in my first post 
on Vienna water because that's what happens whenever I synthesize hard, 
carbonaceous water which is why I seldom do that and why I put softening 
calculation capability into my spreadsheet. When one synthesizes 
carbonaceous water the best, and really the only, way to do it is in 
emulation of nature which is by using carbonic acid to dissolve chalk. 
Amounts of chalk for a given level of alkalinity and pH are calculated 
on the basis of thermodynamic equilibrium conditions but ignore the 
kinematics which is a fancy way of saying that if you suspend chalk in 
water and bubble CO3 through it the reaction takes a long time to 
complete.  The water becomes clearer and clearer the longer you wait but 
at brew time it may well not be crystal clear. This means that there are 
still tiny particles of CaCO3 is suspension and these, of course, make 
excellent nucleation sites so that when the synthesized water is heated, 
even though not to boiling, CO2 is driven out, HCO3- converts to CO3-- 
and chalk drops out. I see it on the bottom of the vessel. I agree that 
this might not happen with a water that really is at thermodynamic 
equilibrium. And I should note that my HLT isn't heated only to strike 
temperature but to sparge temperature and eventually to near boiling 
(for makeup). Maybe all the precip is happening in these later phases.

Add to this the supposition that the water used to brew Vienna was 
probably softened (or that even if it wasn't that you would probably 
want to) and it just doesn't seem to make sense to add the extra steps 
required to get the high  HCO3- levels into the water you are going to 
brew with. So that's why I wanted to put softening capabilty into NUBWS 
(Nearly Universal Brewing Water Spreadsheeet).


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