BeerBorg

How important/or not important is sodium in brewing water?

Here's the background on the question. The last time I sent my water off to Ward Labs for testing was August of 2016. The results for sodium in my water was 215 ppm. WOW, that's high. With this number, I have been forced to use 100% distilled water in almost all of my recipes and adding back in the minerals that I need to get to the desired water profile. The high sodium level is the only mineral that is forcing me to use almost all distilled water. If it wasn't for the high sodium level, my tap water would be pretty good to use across the board, except for Pilsners of course, which I always start from 100% distilled.

So I'm wondering just how important/or not important the high level of sodium is. If I use my tap water, what will that sodium do to my recipes? Will it effect taste or is it something that I probable won't even be able to detect? Will it effect mash efficiency? Will it effect hop utilization? As you can see, I'm full of bewilderment on this one. Any help, insights or opinions are appreciated.

Is that your natural tap water or is that ran through a water softener? Water from a softener is usually undesirable for brewing because the process strips Calcium and hardness for sodium and makes the water even worse for brewing.

High levels of sodium in that range is bad for yeast and you will taste sodium at those concentrations. It will round out the beer and make the flavor full and bring out the malts. But it's so excessive the beers just won't taste right or very good for that matter. Kind of like salt on your food, a little goes a long way to improve the flavor but dump the salt shaker on your plate of food and it's ruined.

You can try cutting your water with distilled if you can keep the sodium under 100ppm but other than that you are doing the best thing by using RO or Distilled. Some Brewers have me tioned they use their softened water and maybe it suites their taste or they don't know any better or have gotten used to the flavor but I think you are better off.

That's straight from the tap, nothing done to it.
My water profiles look like this:

In April 2015, it was:
Na - 185
Ca - 49
Mg - 17
SO4 - 177
Cl - 46
HCO3 - 445

In August of 2016, it looked like this:
Na- 215
Ca - 38
Mg - 12
SO4 - 198
Cl - 43
HCO3 - 441

So in just a little over one year, the sodium level increased from a rather high level, to a higher level.

High levels of sodium in that range is bad for yeast and you will taste sodium at those concentrations. It will round out the beer and make the flavor full and bring out the malts. But it's so excessive the beers just won't taste right or very good for that matter.

This is exactly the info I was looking for. THANKS!!!

I don't mind diluting my total volume with a few gallons of distilled water at all. But lately, it seems like I have to start with all distilled water and build it up. I dilute whenever possible and start at 100% distilled only when diluting doesn't get the job done. Using all distilled is not really a problem either as it add less than $10 to the total cost of a recipe. But if I could avoid adding that cost, I will.

Would a filter help?

John Sand wrote:Would a filter help?

Has to be RO or dual stage filter to get sodium out. Regular carbon type filters won't do it.