How Many Use RO/DI

RO and RO/DI water get mentioned fairly frequently here. I'd like to know how many people actually use it in their brewing and how many who don't intend to.

If you use RO/DI water infrequently please tick first option which would better have been worded 'I do not use RO/DI water or only use it sometimes and do not intend to use it or use it more frequently in the future"

Thanks, A.J.

I use it, but honestly, without an actual water report, it may be a waste of time/money/effort.
I use it because I have a system already in-place for other hobbies, so why not. I know for a fact my house water has chlorine in it, and without a water report, I really didn't know where I was with minerals, so I thought it best to make my own.

I am actually trying to figure out if I should use RO for my German Pils this Monday or work with my water...sooo many questions

I'd like to know how many people actually use it in their brewing and how many who don't intend to.

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OK you just blew my mind. Your stated goal is to divide everyone into two groups, people that do, and people that don’t want to. Oddly you’ve left out people that don’t, but want to.

The poll sorta fixes that, but constrains the ones that do, to the ones that do it a lot.

So why would Mr. Probability design a poll that fails to consider all the possibilities?

People like myself are excluded from the poll. I would use RO for a Pils or a Helles, but not for a Porter. Others I might use a mixture.

Seems like a lot of people you’re leaving out.

I use RO from a grocery store in all of my brews to cut the alkalinity of my city supply. We have plenty of calcium and magnesium in the remaining tap water.

I use ~ 85-90% RO for pilsners/Kolsch beers down to 25% RO for stouts. I also add 88% lactic acid to obtain the proper mash and sparge pH (usally around 2 mL).

Wynne-R said:

Oddly you’ve left out people that don’t, but want to.

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Did you see option 3: "I do not use RO/DI water but intend to soon."

Wynne-R said:

So why would Mr. Probability design a poll that fails to consider all the possibilities?

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Because he put it together to fast and you can't edit it?

Wynne-R said:

People like myself are excluded from the poll. I would use RO for a Pils or a Helles, but not for a Porter. Others I might use a mixture.

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I've changed the OP to make it clear that people that don't use RO/DI very often should indicate that they are not RO/DI brewers.

Thanks for straightening that out, you had me worried.

What about the people that can’t spell RO?

Kidding

You left out, as needed. Now that I have a water report (albeit a yearly average) I'll use as needed to get my water to where I want it for specific brews. I had been using the primer until my last two brews though.

My water is to hard for pale ales but I brew with it anyway.

I mix my city water with RO water from a vending machine....usually 1:2. If I am brewing a light lager I will go with all RO water, save one gallon of tap, for a 11 gallon batch. Hardly scientific but my water profile changes through the seasons.

I only use RO water for my czech pilsner, and then it's about 80% RO water.

Always use RO water.

I use 100% RO water 100% of the time. Make my additions as necessary for the style/region for each beer. Bru'n Water did not like my water report and I am sure the composition changes with the season. Since my goals are to make the best beer I can make I omit any variables with water.

I use *some* RO, like 50% in some beers. Where do I fit in!

Depends on where I am. Our house near the city uses Paso city water which is terrible on a good day, so we use RO there. Our place in the mountains near the coast has great well water which makes great beer. Got into saltwater aquariums before getting into brewing so already had RO system in place...

I'd count you as a user unless your use of RO water is rare. I know that doesn't quite match 'all or most' but I can't edit the choices at this point. Certainly if you use it 51% of the time that's "most" but if you use it 40% of the time or even 30 I'd say you are a user.

I use it for every beer now, but in various proportions to my tap water. I usually use 80% RO to 20% filtered tap plus minerals for pale ales and IPAs which are mostly what I brew.

PAC NW tap water all the way baby

RO water every time. 4.5g CaCl2 and 3 ml Lactic Acid to mash. 2.5g CaSO4 to kettle.

I checked use it since I just bought an RO/DI and will be using it for all future brews.

I've used some RO in my last two batches - half tap and half RO in a kolsch, then all tap in the mash and all RO in the sparge for a pale ale. Both batches are still in primary so its too early to judge the results.

My tap water is hard but the specifics on it vary quite a bit depending on where my town is drawing water from at any given time. RO water lets me get it sorta in the ballpark of where I need to be, then I adjust a few things up a bit. It's not an exact science like it was at my old place, but I've had good luck with this method.

My tap water is very hard, and after quite a few batches with mineral/spring water I realized they too were very hard. I had a lot of problems with too dark color, no clearing at all and most importantly not a very good taste. I recently switched to store-bought RO water (which I treat with gypsum), and the results are way better: light beers are actually light colored, the beers clear (though I don't much like clarity in beer to be honest) and the taste is significantly better. Not just better, but very good. Oh, aroma improved too.

As of this post nearly 2/3 either do or intend to use RO water. Is this as surprising to anyone else as it is to me? I thought it would be more like 20%.

I don't currently use ro water. Adding ro is one of my plans for when I get around yo redoing my kitchen.

I use filtered tap water currently. I have an under sink charcoal filter. Nothing fancy, but I also only have 4 brews under my belt.

ajdelange said:

As of this post nearly 2/3 either do or intend to use RO water. Is this as surprising to anyone else as it is to me? I thought it would be more like 20%.

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Well I think this sample is a bit skewed... the people interested in viewing the Brew Science subforum are probably way more likely to be treating their water properly than the average homebrewer.

Well that's the sort of bias I worried about so that's why I put a request in the all grain brewing topic for people to come over here and vote. Of course there is the possibility that anyone who reads this forum has a more than nominal interest in home brewing and is therefore more likely to treat his water right or use the current techniques or however you want to look at it. But even so, 2/3?

The conclusion I get from this poll is that a Poll about RO use tends to attract RO users.

If I polled “anybody drive a Ford?” I’d get a lot of Ford owners. People who drive Chevys don’t care much about who drives a Ford.

I know about a hundred homebrewers, none of them use RO on a regular basis. Some of them drive Fords.

AJ, I’d like to point out that it’s quite possible to treat your water right without using RO. I used to sparge with RO. Lately I’ve found that 10 drops of lactic acid and 50 milligrams of Campden per gallon work just as well.

Yeah of course, if your water is good to begin with you don't need it. In my case, I had one of the highest concentrations of Cl- in the country previously, and now I have super hard water. I'd love to skip the RO water if I could.

Wynne-R said:

The conclusion I get from this poll is that a Poll about RO use tends to attract RO users.

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That's why the tickler on the all grain page is titled 'Your Water' rather than mentioning RO (and that would be the case here if I could edit the title of the post but I can't).

Wynne-R said:

AJ, I’d like to point out that it’s quite possible to treat your water right without using RO. I used to sparge with RO. Lately I’ve found that 10 drops of lactic acid and 50 milligrams of Campden per gallon work just as well.

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I'm sure we all recognize that. While it's interesting to see the comments from people as to why they do or why they do not use RO water what I am trying to find out at this point how many do and don't. I'm not selling anything here. Even though my water is pretty nominal I have come to appreciate the benefits of RO and often suggest that people consider it but if I'm guilty of anything it is unintentional proselytisation - not attempted sales.

I use 100% RO with CaCl but have found a few of my beers to taste "flat". I experimented with adding a bit of NaCl added to the finished beer and it seemed to help brighten it up so I may need to add in a bit of that. It also seems to make the hop flavor and grain flavors stand out, like adding salt to a soup heightens the existing flavors.

The stouts are also coming in really low in pH, but the RO does give it a really nice smooth chocolate/roast character. Even using the British profile with Gypsum and CaCl the pH is really low, under 5 post boil. My tap water gives a decent pH for the dark grain bills but I don't like the flavor profile (harsh and more astringent) from it so I would like to get a decent built water to use for stouts.

As of this writing voting seems to have slowed. 98 people have responded and 67.34% have indicated that they use RO or plan to. Unsurprisingly enough the most likely fraction of brewers using RO water or planning to, based on this sample, is 67.34%. Here are some confidence levels

Most likely Probability: 67.35 percent
90.0020 percent confidence interval: 59.64 to 75.05
95.0016 percent confidence interval: 58.17 to 76.53
99.0000 percent confidence interval: 55.25 to 79.44
99.9000 percent confidence interval: 51.72 to 82.97


Consider this interim. Keep voting if you haven't already.

ajdelange said:

As of this writing voting seems to have slowed. 98 people have responded and 67.34% have indicated that they use RO or plan to. Unsurprisingly enough the most likely fraction of brewers using RO water or planning to, based on this sample, is 67.34% and we can be 99% confident that the actual number is within 11% of that and 90% confident that the actual fraction is within 7.4% of that.

Consider this interim. Keep voting if you haven't already.

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Idk man, our confidence intervals don't mean much if we're using a biased sample. I think the best way to gather data like this would be to ask homebrew clubs to do poll, I think we'd get a more representative sample of the average homebrewer.

My tap water tastes fine if it's filtered to remove organics, but I also have to remove chloramine (which I forgot to do once and ruined a batch). Rather than doing those two steps, I decided to just start using RO and following the water primer. My first two batches with RO were an English mild and a Kolsch, and they both turned out much better than any other lighter beers I've done in the past.

bovineblitz said:

Idk man, our confidence intervals don't mean much if we're using a biased sample. I think the best way to gather data like this would be to ask homebrew clubs to do poll, I think we'd get a more representative sample of the average homebrewer.

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Your assuming I'm interested in the average homebrewer. Actually, I'm not (well I am but not for the present purpose). I'm doing it to help John and Colin with their book. The kinds of people who are likely to buy their book are the sort who are likely to participate in a forum like this. IOW I'm interested in a population that has more intense interest in home brewing than the average homebrewer.

I accept that this population is biased (in, as it turns out, exactly the direction I want it to be) and am trying to estimate a statistic based on a sample. I want to know not only what the most probable value for that statistic is but how it is distributed.

This is not to say that data on the universe of homebrewers wouldn't be interesting but obviously I'm not going to get that. And, of course, we'd need to recognize that data from a home brew club in Texas would be sharply biased relative to data from a homebrew club in the Pacific North West.

Overnight another 9 people voted and that reduces the confidence bounds somewhat. What is interesting is that the average use or plan to use fraction has hovered right around 2/3 from the beginning. Here are the latest numbers:

Most likely Probability: 67.29 percent
90.0023 percent confidence interval: 59.91 to 74.67%
95.0026 percent confidence interval: 58.49 to 76.09%
99.0002 percent confidence interval: 55.70 to 78.88%
99.9000 percent confidence interval: 52.34 to 82.24%

Ah I gotcha. Very cool.

I use RO 100% of the time. I realy don't want to drink the city water even if they say its ok. :cross:

ajdelange said:

This is not to say that data on the universe of homebrewers wouldn't be interesting but obviously I'm not going to get that. And, of course, we'd need to recognize that data from a home brew club in Texas would be sharply biased relative to data from a homebrew club in the Pacific North West.

Overnight another 9 people voted and that reduces the confidence bounds somewhat. What is interesting is that the average use or plan to use fraction has hovered right around 2/3 from the beginning. Here are the latest numbers:

Most likely Probability: 67.29 percent
90.0023 percent confidence interval: 59.91 to 74.67%
95.0026 percent confidence interval: 58.49 to 76.09%
99.0002 percent confidence interval: 55.70 to 78.88%
99.9000 percent confidence interval: 52.34 to 82.24%

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And I think AJ is right about the locations of the brewers, and their use of RO/Distilled water.

From what marbrungard has said about Indiana, I think midwest homebrewers would be more likely to "need" RO water as well while the brewers in Portland, OR would not.

Yooper said:

From what marbrungard has said about Indiana, I think midwest homebrewers would be more likely to "need" RO water as well while the brewers in Portland, OR would not.

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With the exception of those of us who get water from the great lakes (i.e., Chicago)...much softer water than midwest well water