Brewing with distilled water

[withanx]

I've been brewing for a while and am getting to the point where I'm wanting to look seriously at my water situation and how to improve my beer.

First some background. I have well water in my house that has about 3000-4000 PPM of salt in it. I have a water softener and a reverse osmosis system. All of the water that we drink comes from the RO system, but it only removes about 90% of the salt (water coming out of the RO usually has around 300-350 TDS). It's ok for drinking, cooking, etc (has very slight sodium taste), but I haven't trusted it for brewing. I assume I should probably stick with buying water as there's not really much else I can do to remove more salt?

I usually buy a bunch of gallon bottles of "drinking water" from the supermarket. I've been considering going to distilled water, since they also sell that for the same price, and I'd know what is in my water (nothing), and would add any "salts" I needed to make the water suitable for brewing. I've done a lot of searching, and found a lot of mention of people brewing with distilled water, but I can't find any charts or actual concrete "this is what you add to make it good for brewing" kinds of documentation. Can anyone provide some more insight into the kinds of things I should be adding to make good brewing water?

 

[chickypad]

For very basic water treatments have you seen the water primer in the brew science forum? It has simple instructions for starting with RO or distilled water.

 

[The_Bishop]

How come your RO system is only 90% effective? They're usually in the 96-98% range, when working correctly.

 

[TheMadKing]

Can you bypass your water softener and RO filter the well water directly?

 

[mabrungard]

90% is typical for monovalent ions such as sodium. That does leave the OP with fairly poor quality brewing water. Given the apparent mineralization of the raw, unsoftened water, I'm betting that the RO membrane wouldn't last long if fed the unsoftened water. Another option is to run the RO product water through a second RO system to further reduce that content to a more workable level.

 

[budbo]

I use a 5 stage under sink filter, I get about 5ppm in that water (It is softened before going in) Most store bought water will be 65-90ppm unless distilled. The water is actually an important factor in the taste of your beer considering it is 95% water. If your tap water is going through an RO and Carbon filter leave it be, all the crap you don't want is gone.

 

[Roundhouse]

I buy all of my brewing water. I use only distilled or RO water. My logic is that I can easily add things to the water to get what I want out of it. It's much harder to add things to water to offset something that's already there that I don't want. At the end of the day, it's all still there. Water and temperature control were the two biggest improvements I ever made to brewing.

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

run the RO product water through a second RO system to further reduce that content to a more workable level.

This is the same place my mind went.

Russ

 

[depper]

I buy all of my brewing water. I use only distilled or RO water. My logic is that I can easily add things to the water to get what I want out of it. It's much harder to add things to water to offset something that's already there that I don't want. At the end of the day, it's all still there. Water and temperature control were the two biggest improvements I ever made to brewing.

Completely agree with this post! I too use only RO water and add gypsum and CaCl to give it the minerals I need. Once I started doing this I noticed a difference immediately!

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

Depper, let me compliment you on your Avatar!

 

[depper]

depper, let me compliment you on your avatar!

o-h