The Jan 2007 issue of BYO had an article on page 58 about building a water filter.
I built one of these yesterday, and it rocks.
So far, I have been using the Brita pitcher in our fridge to refill my water jugs each time I brew. A single Brita filter is good for 2 months or 40 gallons, so if I brewed once a week, I would go through a filter about every two months, assuming that I was the only one using that filter. They do a great job, but they are slow and kind of expensive.
It takes 9 minutes for the pitcher to filter 6 cups of water, so 1.5 minutes per cup. I have 6 one gallon jugs that I am refilling, so, not including the refill time to actually put water into the Brita, it will take at least 144 minutes to refill the six gallons. Two and a half to three hours is about normal, from the time I start, to the time I am done, assuming that I set the timer to go off every nine minutes to remind me to do dump the next batch. This is a pain in the a$$.
As to the expense, a 6 pack of filters is $28.43 at Sams Club. That would be enough to get me through a year, brewing about once a week. I am brewing extract with grains, so I only need about 6 gallons per batch. If you are brewing AG, you would go through more, of course. That is no TOO bad, but it could be better.
Following the example of the filter built in BYO, I went to my local hardware store and picked up all of the parts that I needed. I had to make a few minor modifications, based upon what they had in stock, but the total project still came out to be $42. That is for a system that will get me 10,000 gallons of filtered water.
Brewing five gallon AG batches, 50 times a year, that filter will last you for 20 years. Now we are talking two dollars a year for filtered water. Also, filling all six gallons took me about five minutes.
This thing is well worth making, unless you have really good water to begin with.
I built one of these yesterday, and it rocks.
So far, I have been using the Brita pitcher in our fridge to refill my water jugs each time I brew. A single Brita filter is good for 2 months or 40 gallons, so if I brewed once a week, I would go through a filter about every two months, assuming that I was the only one using that filter. They do a great job, but they are slow and kind of expensive.
It takes 9 minutes for the pitcher to filter 6 cups of water, so 1.5 minutes per cup. I have 6 one gallon jugs that I am refilling, so, not including the refill time to actually put water into the Brita, it will take at least 144 minutes to refill the six gallons. Two and a half to three hours is about normal, from the time I start, to the time I am done, assuming that I set the timer to go off every nine minutes to remind me to do dump the next batch. This is a pain in the a$$.
As to the expense, a 6 pack of filters is $28.43 at Sams Club. That would be enough to get me through a year, brewing about once a week. I am brewing extract with grains, so I only need about 6 gallons per batch. If you are brewing AG, you would go through more, of course. That is no TOO bad, but it could be better.
Following the example of the filter built in BYO, I went to my local hardware store and picked up all of the parts that I needed. I had to make a few minor modifications, based upon what they had in stock, but the total project still came out to be $42. That is for a system that will get me 10,000 gallons of filtered water.
Brewing five gallon AG batches, 50 times a year, that filter will last you for 20 years. Now we are talking two dollars a year for filtered water. Also, filling all six gallons took me about five minutes.
This thing is well worth making, unless you have really good water to begin with.
