Best way to treat/filter water?

[jamnich314]

I'm three batches in and am tired of buying gallons upon gallons of water from the store for each brew. My tap water is constantly treated with chlorine and has who knows what else in it.

What is your preferred method of getting clean water to use for brewing? Some sort of filter? Water treatment tablets? Something else?

 

[chickypad]

My tap water is great for brewing except for chloramine, so I just treat with campden.

 

[BobBailey]

If you haven't already, try a batch using tap water. Just run it through a Brita or similar filter to remove the chlorine. Your water may be fine for brewing. An alternative would be to run a sample through the filter and send it to Ward Labs for analysis. https://producers.wardlab.com/default.aspx?ReturnUrl=/

If there is some reason that your water isn't suitable for brewing and beyond adjusting with salts you would need to either dilute it or just buy water. If your local supermarket has an RO water machine it usually costs about 35 cents per gallon. Not a bad price to make your beer much better. The brewing salts you'll need to add are cheap too.

I need to use RO water and have more than made up for the extra cost by buying most of my hops and base malt in bulk as well as re-using yeast. It's not the end of the world.

 

[Black Island Brewer]

You really have to know what's IN your water, and what you need FROM your water to be making any adjustments. Ward Labs will do a water analysis inexpensively, and the Water Chemistry Sticky in the Brew Science forum here on HBT can guide you in some simple adjustments. If you want to do the minimum, find out if your water has chlorine or chloramine. If it has chlorine, you can let it offgas overnight before you brew, if it has chloramines, you can use AJ's article to determine how much Campden you need, or wing it and throw in a half of a crushed tablet for a 5 gallon batch.

 

[dkevinb]

My tap water is great except for chloramines. I just crush up Campden tablets into it.

 

[dobes]

I don't have one near me but I hear a lot of people getting RO water from a dispenser at their grocery store. They talk about it costing I think around 30 cents or so a gallon. If you had that option I would go that route. I buy RO in gallon jugs and sometimes split it with my tap water that I run through a carbon filter. My water out of the tap has a nice chlorine smell to the point we wont drink or cook with it unless it is run through the carbon filter. I think I picked it up at one of the big box stores for less than $20.
If you get your water report you may be able to use your tap water for certain beers and not for some. And some you may be able to use the RO and split it with tap at some amount.

 

[mightynintendo]

The best way to treat water: with mineral salts and acid malt, according to what you want.

The best way to filter water: just get a reverse osmosis filter and forget about it. Expended thought is expended energy and that depletes your energy to do other things.

You COULD distill your tap water yourself, but that stuff never turns out well, even with careful mineral adjustments. Something, I don't know what, is lost from the water when it's distilled.

I don't like the taste (or lack thereof) of water that's gone through an activated carbon filter. It is almost as bland as distilled water.

RO water is your friend. DO IT.

 

[chickypad]

Black Island is right, you really need to find out what you have before you do anything. The water coming out of my tap is pretty much the profile of RO water except for the chloramines. Maybe you'll get lucky and not have to do much at all.

 

[jamnich314]

I know a water engineer for my county so she can get a water analysis done for me on the cheap. I know there's either chloramines or chlorine in it but not sure what else if anything. My local grocery store has a water machine but I'm not sure if it's RO or not. I'm also looking at the possibility of an RV water filter for $20-$30.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I live in a hard water area and I use 2 of these for water filtration

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000246SMS/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[LoudPipes]

I have a RO/DI for my saltwater aquaruim habit, so filtered water is on hand at any time for me. Is filtered water really the way to go?

 

[z-bob]

You can remove chlorine or chloramine with either a Campden tablet, or a vitamin C tablet.

Excess iron, alkalinity, and other faults are a little harder to deal with. Boiling and then letting it settle will remove a lot of the problems, but is energy intensive.

I'm looking into treating my awful water with slaked lime: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Alkalinity_reduction_with_slaked_lime

 

[bu_gee]

I'm three batches in and am tired of buying gallons upon gallons of water from the store for each brew. My tap water is constantly treated with chlorine and has who knows what else in it.

What is your preferred method of getting clean water to use for brewing? Some sort of filter? Water treatment tablets? Something else?

Chlorine in your water will off-gas when you do your boil.

Here is my easy (and cheap) test: Make the other brew, tea, with your water. If it tastes good, try a batch of beer with that water. If the tea is less than pleasant, get a carbon filter and try again. If it still tastes bad, try different mixes with distilled water until you get something good. If you don't like tea, call a friend for a caffeination session.

My tea tastes metallic when I don't filter my water. With filtered water, both my tea and my beer taste good.

 

[BobBailey]

I have a RO/DI for my saltwater aquaruim habit, so filtered water is on hand at any time for me. Is filtered water really the way to go?

That would depend on what your normal water source is like. It may be great for brewing. As others have said here, you need to know the composition of your water to determine what's best. RO water can be a good alternative, but it has been stripped of almost all minerals, some of which are beneficial in brewing water. My personal preference, if my tap water was decent, would be to use it.

 

[Black Island Brewer]

Chlorine in your water will off-gas when you do your boil.

If you are boiling your wort with water that has not been dechlorinated, you might drive of any remaining chlorine, but you will have created chlorophenols that will flavor your finished beer. The damage will be done and not repairable.

 

[bu_gee]

If you are boiling your wort with water that has not been dechlorinated, you might drive of any remaining chlorine, but you will have created chlorophenols that will flavor your finished beer. The damage will be done and not repairable.

I had thought the chlorophenols were produced when chlorine reacted with phenols produced by yeast. Is there another source of phenols during the boil?

 

[Black Island Brewer]

Most of the phenols come from grain husks and hops. The chlorine needs to be removed before the mash, or before the boil if using extract.