Does anyone have a water distiller they use for their brew water...

[jayrobyo]

...and just adjust the water with salts for whatever style they're brewing?

I have a small counter top distiller and have tossed around the idea of getting a bigger one just for brewing water.

 

[mongoose33]

I and a lot of people have Reverse Osmosis systems to produce their brewing water. I then adjust. I usually start with a gallon of tap water (unsoftened) and add RO water to it.

Mine isn't very elegant, but it works fine. I feed the system w/ a line off the faucet, and store the water in a 7-gallon Aquatainer, plus some other 1-gallon jugs:

 

[schematix]

Reverse Osmosis (RO) can be had super cheap if you know what to get. Just remember that its standard technology and everyone is selling the exact same stuff. Yah some put their own brand stickers on it, but it's still the same!

If you need to go cheap, get 2 pre-filters and the membrane. Skip the tank and misc GAC filters. You'll be in the game for less than $100 easily.

Starting with RO water will give you an improvement in your beer similar to fermentation temperature control.

 

[RevKev]

I just took the dive into RO. Great for coffee, tea and drinking water too, Tim Hortons exclusively using DI cough cough beats Dunkin

Bought a system off of Amazon for 150 bucks it comes with another set of filters also, it is a 5 tier design but you can do with 3 or 4 as to what I've read.

Will report back on Thursday when I install.

 

[IPAndy]

When I finally run plumbing into my garage and install a sink, I plan to go RO. For now, it's just a standard water filter from my local homebrew store.

 

[Paulaner]

Reverse Osmosis (RO) can be had super cheap if you know what to get. Just remember that its standard technology and everyone is selling the exact same stuff. Yah some put their own brand stickers on it, but it's still the same!

If you need to go cheap, get 2 pre-filters and the membrane. Skip the tank and misc GAC filters. You'll be in the game for less than $100 easily.

Starting with RO water will give you an improvement in your beer similar to fermentation temperature control.

One thing to add to this is make sure the system has standard size filters so you're not locked into purchasing your filters from one company.

 

[mongoose33]

When I finally run plumbing into my garage and install a sink, I plan to go RO. For now, it's just a standard water filter from my local homebrew store.

You can run it in your kitchen w/o a permanent installation if you can connect the feed line to the spout of the kitchen faucet. I bought an adapter that allows me to hook up a hose; the feed line the connects to that.

Mine was done the way it is so that if it should get below freezing in the garage, I could take my RO filter into the house. It's just hanging on the wall in the pic above.

I'm adding a separate line under the sink to feed the RO filter so that I can use the faucet while making RO water. Mine is a 50 gallon-per-day system; when I start my brew day I xfer water from the aquatainer to my boil kettle, then start refilling the aquatainer. 3-4 hours later, it's full again.

 

[sfish]

will RO system remove nitrates?

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

will RO system remove nitrates?

http://extension.psu.edu/natural-resources/water/drinking-water/water-testing/pollutants/nitrates-in-drinking-water

It looks like it will remove or SERIOUSLY reduce nitrates, about 83-92% of incoming nitrate.

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

Reverse Osmosis (RO) can be had super cheap if you know what to get. Just remember that its standard technology and everyone is selling the exact same stuff. Yah some put their own brand stickers on it, but it's still the same!

We'll respectfully disagree with you here, based on 20+ years in this market. There are many differentiators that might not be immediately recognized, especially by new users of RO. For example:

• pressure gauge
• tds meter
• off brand RO membranes
• Quality of bracket
• quality of housings
• quality of fittings
• quality of prefilters
• available accessories
• support before, during, and after your purchase
• vendor's ability to customize system to your situation

Russ

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

will RO system remove nitrates?

Yes. Remember that RO removes 100% of very few things. It removes a high percentage of many things.

Russ

 

[schematix]

We'll respectfully disagree with you here, based on 20+ years in this market. There are many differentiators that might not be immediately recognized, especially by new users of RO.

I don't disagree with you on any of these points... but if it comes down to not buying an RO system because its $200 vs buying a lower quality system for $100, i think the $100 system is the better choice, at least in this application. There are also places to save money... if you're just using this for brewing there's no need for a tank or a final GAC filter, or a resin filter. A simple set-up is sufficient.

From my own perspective i'm glad i bought the $100 system when i did, but 3 years later I wish i had bought something of better quality up front. In the end it'll cost me more but i probably wouldn't have pulled the trigger on it when i did if it was twice the price.

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

Agreed. A pressure tank is not always needed. If there's no pressure tank, then there's no purpose of the taste and odor filter. I'd say only about 5% of our sales into the brewing world go for RODI. Nearly all go for RO.

Fun fact to know and tell - if you DON'T have a pressure tank,

• you'll produce RO water quicker
• you'll produce less "waste water" per volume of RO water
• you'll produce RO water that is more pure.

Russ

 

[Etnewbrew]

I'm a total noob so forgive my ignorance. But what's wrong with buying already distilled water from the convenience store? Is it not as good? I can get a gallon for 50 cents. Honest question....that where I get my wort water

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

Nothing "wrong" with that. More expensive than you can make it at home, and an RO system can be hooked up so you never have to buy bottled drinking water too.

 

[mongoose33]

I'm a total noob so forgive my ignorance. But what's wrong with buying already distilled water from the convenience store? Is it not as good? I can get a gallon for 50 cents. Honest question....that where I get my wort water

As Russ says, nothing's wrong with that. It's what I started out doing once I figured out my municipal water was not appropriate for the vast majority of brewing I planned to do.

I couldn't get my RO water as cheaply as yours; it was costing something on the order of $5-6/batch and even then I had to schlep that water home every time.

I paid, IIRC, somewhere in the $130-range for my system. That meant it would take 26 batches of using my own RO water for it to pay for itself. I just did batch 30 on that system yesterday.

I also have a TDS (total dissolved solids) meter to check the water to be sure the filter is still doing what it's supposed to do. I'm still at 6ppm TDS on it.

If i have any regrets, and it's not really one at one level, I wish I'd gotten a 100 gallon per day filter instead of the 50 gpd filter. I brewed yesterday, dumped my water in the kettle and started refilling the aquatainer for next time. It took just about 4 hours to fill 7 gallons, which is about right. The theoretical max for the filter is 50 gallons per day, or just over 2 gallons per hour, but that's under ideal circumstances yada yada yada. I'm getting about 1.75 gallons per hour which is well in line with what I expected. I kind of wish I'd bought the higher capacity filter but this one does what I wanted it to do.

BTW, I bought mine from Buckeye Hydro. I could have perhaps saved a little money getting an RO system elsewhere, but Russ helped me spec it out, and I considered that support to be the real value.

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

Mongoose - don't forget that a 100 gpd RO membrane will fit perfectly into your existing RO membrane housing - you can interchange RO membranes from ~24 gpd on up to 150 or 200 gpd. If you change capacity, you'll also need to change your $4 flow restrictor.

Russ