RO Water VS Distilled

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

thdewitt

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2008
Messages
75
Reaction score
0
Location
Encinitas, CA
All,

Does anyone know what the difference is between RO water and distilled. I don't mean the process either, but the finished product. The bottom line to my question is I have a place to get RO water cheap and I wanted to know if you can brew with 100% RO water as an AG brewer. or is it like distilled where it doesn't have the necessary chemical composition. I have been using Palmers spreadsheet to modify my tap water, but it turns out that there are 3 different sources for the tap in my area and it changes almost daily so you really don't know what you are getting. I want to get a consistant source to begin with so I work from there. I want to make Pilsners. Not perfect but nice drinkable pilsners.
 
Thanks, I actually use Palmers RA spreadsheet. Are you saying then that I can use RO and distilled water interchangeably. So in Palmers spreadsheet I could put 100% distilled when actually using RO water and then add minerals from there.

Tom
 
I have worked professionally with Carbon Filtered, RO & Distilled and Deionized.

Carbon Filtered removes mostly chlorine and other dissolved solids. ppm levels vary on incoming city water.

RO - Reverse Osmosis - Is a membrane filtering process that creates very clean water, close to pure water. ~ 25ppms of disolved solids. Its creates as much waste water as it does filtered water. The filtration process also drops your pH by one full point.

DI - Deionized Water - Is a series of two chemical charged tanks filled with a beaded resin. There is cation and anion tank that essentially molecularly strips out ions. ~10ppm. The pH is low but virtually impossible to determine pH due to the missing ions.

Distilled water is water reclaimed from vapor or steam. I'm not sure on purity but I think it execedes that of DI water.

The main question is what type of brewing do you perform? EDIT: (OP is an AGr) If its extract you can use any of these 4 types. The extract contains all the minerals that you need per the style. John Bull - Maris Otter will have different mineral content than a Alexander or Laagerlander.

If you are a PMr or AG than you should use Carbon Filtered water or use the treated water (last 3) and add brewing salts and what not to tune in your minerals. I didn't look at Conpewters spreadsheet but you would need to figure out how to adjust your water.

I am an AG guy and I use carbon filtered water for everything I make.
 
It is good to have someone give some more details on RO systems. I would think if you want to replicate pilsner water you will need to start out with RO or distilled. Sounds like distilled will be even less ppm of dissolved solids, but I tend to use RO and distilled interchangeability, it has seemed to work just fine for me. YMMV
 
It is good to have someone give some more details on RO systems. I would think if you want to replicate pilsner water you will need to start out with RO or distilled. Sounds like distilled will be even less ppm of dissolved solids, but I tend to use RO and distilled interchangeability, it has seemed to work just fine for me. YMMV

Pilsner is made of water that historically very soft, so its low in minerals. Soft water in the US has lots of salts in it traditionally so its unlike Czech water. I haven't looked at JP tables for pilsners with Na lately. (At a glance from his sight)
Calcium: 10
(Ca+2)
Magnesium: 3
(Mg+2)
Bicarbonate: 3
(HCO3-1)
SO4-2: 4
Na+1: 3
Cl-1: 4
Yes start with RO or DI water to make a pils. (Exactly as Conpewter said)


To me its more science than I care to fuss with right now. Not mention I don't have the means to measure ppm. I get the water reports and my water is like the city of London. I'm happy with knowing that.

FYI
 
After re-reading the OP. I would NO DOUBT start with Distilled water.

Sorry, less typing and more reading on my part is needed. :eek:

oh maybe less attention to filling my glass....
 
Soft water in the US has lots of salts in it traditionally so its unlike Czech water.

Not sure what you mean by 'salts'. Do you mean water softened with water-softening salts? They typically exchange sodium ions for calcium and magnesium ions. So that would add plenty of sodium to the water.

Hardness is generally measured/calculated from CaCO3 and the harder it is, the more minerals it will have, particularly calcium and magnesium. My well water is soft and has less minerals than Pilsen.
 
Not sure what you mean by 'salts'. Do you mean water softened with water-softening salts? They typically exchange sodium ions for calcium and magnesium ions. So that would add plenty of sodium to the water.

Hardness is generally measured/calculated from CaCO3 and the harder it is, the more minerals it will have, particularly calcium and magnesium. My well water is soft and has less minerals than Pilsen.

Just what you said removing calcium for sodium. I was thinking the sodium is higher, more than naturally occurring in the Czech water. I'm not much of any expert on soft water. I think Na for pilsen is 3 ppm. I was thinking that soft water had much more than 3 ppm as result of water softening salts.
 
Thanks everyone for the help. So in working with Palmers Spreadsheet and distilled water I come up with the following additions for 10 gallons of water. Epsom Salt .7 gm, Calcium Chloride .4 gm, Baking Soda .3 gm, Chalk .4 gm. With that the water would be:
CA 7.1, MG 2, Na 2.2, S04 7.2, Cl 5.1, and HC03 12. This is very close to Pilsen water. My problem now. Those are pretty small amounts. I need a much better scale. Does that small of an amount really make a difference. It seems like RO water would have at least this much without additions.

Yes, I am an all grain brewer. Now with the 10 gallons I can use some for the mash and some for the sparge. Do you need to treat the sparge water. I think you would as it will ultimately be in the boil and the sulfate/chloride ratio seems to affect the malty/bitter taste perception.
 
Just stumbled on this post and thought I would toss in what I know. I am a nuc machinist's mate on a sub and I can definitely attest that DI water is the purest you can get. RO is good but as stated earlier you end up with some dissolved solids as the membranes are not 100% efficient. Distilled is from flash evaporators or low vacuum systems. The inherent drawback to these systems is that with low vacuum, you get high velocity steam up into the upper distillate cooler. Invariably you end up with some "carryover". Where I work at, we take our distillate from our evaporators (distilled water) and run them through cation/anion exchangers (de-ionized water). Once through those we end up with <0.1 ppm of anything (we look for Chlorides).

So in a nutshell from not so pure to pure:
Reverse Osmosis/Distilling
De-ionized water

Sorry for the techno-babble.

Rob
 
This makes sense to me, I used to work in a lab and we used to deionize our water after it was distilled, which implies that you can get some ions carried over when distilling. However, on a theoretical level at least, I would think you could very carefully distill and have no carryover.
 
Just stumbled on this post and thought I would toss in what I know. I am a nuc machinist's mate on a sub and I can definitely attest that DI water is the purest you can get. RO is good but as stated earlier you end up with some dissolved solids as the membranes are not 100% efficient. Distilled is from flash evaporators or low vacuum systems. The inherent drawback to these systems is that with low vacuum, you get high velocity steam up into the upper distillate cooler. Invariably you end up with some "carryover". Where I work at, we take our distillate from our evaporators (distilled water) and run them through cation/anion exchangers (de-ionized water). Once through those we end up with <0.1 ppm of anything (we look for Chlorides).

So in a nutshell from not so pure to pure:
Reverse Osmosis/Distilling
De-ionized water

Sorry for the techno-babble.

Rob


As a former bubble-head I raise my glass to you! Cheers! :mug:
 
Just what you said removing calcium for sodium. I was thinking the sodium is higher, more than naturally occurring in the Czech water.

That's pretty accurate for where I am. I have soft tap water and brew Pilsners often. They tend to turn out very well for me. This is my water profile, with the numbers for Pilsen in parenthesis:

Ca: 4 (7)
Mg: 0.8 (2)
Na: 31.8 (2)
SO4: 6.4 (8)
Cl: 23.9 (6)
BiCarb: 38.9 (16)
 
Back
Top