Use RO water or Carbon Filter?

[undergroundbrewer]

I'm in a pickle here, deciding to use RO water as I have been for all of my extract batches (now moving to BIAB), or to put a carbon filter on my tap water and go from there.

I like the idea of the carbon filter, knowing that my area (San Diego) is very capable of producing excellent beers (mainly IPAs and ales). The downside is that the water is sourced from 3 different areas, and the water report I just received for the most recent measured year (2013) has wild swings and therefore little predictability. I want control, but don't want to be going crazy with additions.

I did read the primer on water, which I felt was very informative, although I can't say I'm 100% comfortable. I have a all grain cream ale kit from NB planned to be brewed this Sunday, and my gut is saying go with the RO water and apply 2% saurmaulz along with some Calcium Chloride (need to check how much).

I should mention that I also have yeast nutrient available (I do yeast starters as well) that should help with any magnesium that might be missing in the RO water....I will also mention that ever since I started reading about water's importance with all-grain / BIAB, that I've been losing sleep reading for hours about what I should do here. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Hermit]

If you want control and your source has wide swings then you only have one real choice. RO Not sure why you think you will have to go crazy with additions. The primer is KISS.

 

[Black Island Brewer]

In my area the water is so soft it is nearly RO - it falls well below the thresholds AJ Delange spells out in the water chemistry primer. I have been very satisfied with using the sticky info along with yeast nutrient - way better control.

However, in my area, they occasionally switch sources, so I call the water desk when I'm getting ready to draw water and find out the source. When they're drawing on our wells, I go with RO. When it's from the reservoir, I use the sticky info. Do you have an on-the-fly resource you can call to see where your water is coming from?

The carbon filter is mostly helpful in removing chlorine and chloramine, so if your water is just treated with chlorine, you can skip the carbon filter if you want - degass chlorine by leaving out overnight, or add campden to remove the chloramine.

 

[undergroundbrewer]

Hey Black Island thanks for the tips, sounds reasonable enough. I don't believe I have a source like that to call on the fly as you say, San Diego is pretty stretched on public resources like that, but I'll look into it.

For a cream ale, what profile would you say is ideal? I saw on the sticky there's a few listed, although I'm not sure as to which it would fall under. Thanks again and cheers!

 

[Black Island Brewer]

I used the guideline for soft water beers, so I cut the calcium chloride in half, and increased the acid malt to 3%. In my case that meant treating 20 gallons of water with 2 tsp of calcium chloride.

 

[mabrungard]

Calcium and magnesium are provided by the malt when producing a mostly malt wort. There is no need to add either calcium or magnesium to the brewing water in the interest of yeast health or performance. There are other reasons to add calcium or magnesium, but they are not truly critical to fermentation performance. There are other micro-nutrients that are important for fermentation performance and that is where the yeast nutrient can be helpful.

Wide swings in tap water quality can be monitored and accounted for in your brewing via test kits, but there are other advantages to including a RO into your system to eliminate those swings and provide you with a lower mineralized water to start with that can be helpful to some styles.

 

[ajdelange]

Calcium is a benefit in many ways but the main reason to add calcium chloride to RO water is to get the benefit of the chloride which improves beer flavor and body.

 

[SDCraftBeer]

Hey undergroundbrewer.

I am in San Diego as well and have been brewing for a couple years now. I initially started with bottled water and moved to RO water. I recently found a water store in PB that has an excellent filtration setup and have been getting my water from there most recently. I have spoke with a few guys at BP and Stone and they told me they use a mixture of carbon filtered and RO and add some gypsum...or at least they told me that would be my best chance in adjusting my setup to theirs.

 

[undergroundbrewer]

Hey SDCraftBeer

That sounds plausible, knowing the character of the beer is quite hoppy so the gypsum comes as no surprise. The mixture level is what I'm curious to find out, although for the sake of controls I think pure RO may not be too bad. I found a great water shop in OB off of sports arena blvd, they change their filters every 90 days and actually have choices between alkaline, purified, or what they call "life water"...apparently it's a fancy distilled water, but people go crazy over it. Price is good and it's near my house, so I'll keep using that versus chancing it with a glacier water machine

 

[SDCraftBeer]

Yea I have used the Glacier machine for 2 brews awhile back and yikes it didn't turn out well. Do you know the PH of the shop in OB? The lady at the store I go to said its around 6.2.

 

[undergroundbrewer]

I'm not sure, I suppose it would be good to find out!