Brewing with Seawater

[Owly055]

Has anybody simply added a small percentage of seawater to RO water to improve it's character for brewing? There are many minerals in seawater, not just "salt". When voyaging and relying on a water maker which is an RO system designed for seawater, it's common practice to add a tiny amount of seawater back to make it palatable. To make it taste like "real water".
Obviously you don't want it to taste salty, but the very same minerals as are in seawater are also in our drinking water in far lower concentrations. I suspect that starting with RO or distilled water and adding a suitable amount of seawater, one could achieve a fairly decent brewing water, but I have yet to read anything to this effect........


H.W.

 

[BigEd]

While there are many salts in sea water the vast majority is Sodium chloride. Sodium isn't necessary in brewing and a little chloride can be good but there are far better and more accurate ways to add it rather than by seawater. Please consult the many brewing water threads in HBT's Brew Science section for much better ways to modify brewing water.

 

[behindthetimes]

I like doing stuff like this that has local interest or sentimental value but at the same time isn't gimmicky and doesn't ruin great beer. I've made beer with green coffee that I brought back from Hawaii and roasted myself, made beer with 100% of the water being fresh snow from a winter storm, wild hops that I found (and tested first), stuff like this. I'm gonna try this one next. Maybe a literal "west coast" IPA.

 

[C-Rider]

go off shore to collect better chance of cleaner water....Just look at the Mexican pollution in southern Calf reported in the past few days.

 

[Owly055]

go off shore to collect better chance of cleaner water....Just look at the Mexican pollution in southern Calf reported in the past few days.

That pretty much goes without saying............ I'm not a coastal sailor that trundles from one marina to the next anyway. I'm more interested in being able to brew during the long passages across the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans that typically take as long as a month.
I already have parts coming to build my pedal powered watermaker, which will both provide and abundance of good water and exercise which tends to be sorely lacking on passage. After weeks at sea, it is typical to find that one's physical fitness and stamina are significantly reduced. Pedaling up a good fresh water shower each day, as well as brewing water would offer multiple benefits.

I plan to do one or more "leisurely" circumnavigations, spending long periods of time exploring various parts of the world until health or other circumstances (death?) put a stop to my travels. Cities, Harbors, and marinas do not interest me at all and never have. You will find me anchored in quiet bays or small fishing towns when I'm near shore, except when I need to stock up on supplies. There are far too many interesting and remote places to visit for me to want to spend time in those huge floating trailer parks where you see most of the world's yachts, their owners drinking expensive "umbrella drinks", and eating expensive meals served by scantily clad babes. I'm not in that class of yachtsmen. With less than 3' of draft (small trimaran), I can go into places many yachts cannot, and even beach the boat. It means I can visit places like the tuamotus, many of which are not accessible at all to deeper draft boats.


H.W.

 

[behindthetimes]

You know what might be really cool? A gose with seawater.

 

[NSMikeD]

ocean water ph is about 8.1 - 8.3 and alkalinity of 2.5 Meq/l (higher at reef zones) That's pretty strong alkalinity meant to keep the PH from dropping. Plug those numbers into your water software to see if you can get the PH down to mash range.

Also, saltwater aquarists who use ocean water for their tanks tend to go out in boats as the stuff near the beach is pretty dirty with nitrogens and other run off. For most, it's just easier and safer to use commercial salts and mix them into RODI water

 

[Owly055]

ocean water ph is about 8.1 - 8.3 and alkalinity of 2.5 Meq/l (higher at reef zones) That's pretty strong alkalinity meant to keep the PH from dropping. Plug those numbers into your water software to see if you can get the PH down to mash range.

Also, saltwater aquarists who use ocean water for their tanks tend to go out in boats as the stuff near the beach is pretty dirty with nitrogens and other run off. For most, it's just easier and safer to use commercial salts and mix them into RODI water

As I said before, I would not be taking water from near the shore..........no reason to. The question I have at this point is what is the PH of the water from a watermaker, basically RO water? The PH of the small amount used to mineralize the RO water would have minimal effect on PH I suspect.
I consider a watermaker an vital component for voyaging, if only because local water is always going to be questionable at best.

H.W.

 

[C-Rider]

That pretty much goes without saying............ I'm not a coastal sailor that trundles from one marina to the next anyway. I'm more interested in being able to brew during the long passages across the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans that typically take as long as a month.
I already have parts coming to build my pedal powered watermaker, which will both provide and abundance of good water and exercise which tends to be sorely lacking on passage. After weeks at sea, it is typical to find that one's physical fitness and stamina are significantly reduced. Pedaling up a good fresh water shower each day, as well as brewing water would offer multiple benefits.

I plan to do one or more "leisurely" circumnavigations, spending long periods of time exploring various parts of the world until health or other circumstances (death?) put a stop to my travels. Cities, Harbors, and marinas do not interest me at all and never have. You will find me anchored in quiet bays or small fishing towns when I'm near shore, except when I need to stock up on supplies. There are far too many interesting and remote places to visit for me to want to spend time in those huge floating trailer parks where you see most of the world's yachts, their owners drinking expensive "umbrella drinks", and eating expensive meals served by scantily clad babes. I'm not in that class of yachtsmen. With less than 3' of draft (small trimaran), I can go into places many yachts cannot, and even beach the boat. It means I can visit places like the tuamotus, many of which are not accessible at all to deeper draft boats.


H.W.

You'd get along w/the two Scotsmen that had that TV show about brewing bier in strange places. Good Luck.

 

[svt412]

You know what might be really cool? A gose with seawater.

A couple years ago one of the local breweries near me made a gose with seawater they pulled with a 5 gallon bucket from the pier. A few of people I've talked to liked it, but I thought it was terrible.

 

[Owly055]

A couple years ago one of the local breweries near me made a gose with seawater they pulled with a 5 gallon bucket from the pier. A few of people I've talked to liked it, but I thought it was terrible.

What was that? 5 gallons in a 15 barrel fermenter? That's 5 out of 465 gallons working capacity. That works out to 1.075%

Seawater is about 35000 PPM total dissolved solids. The WHO set the limit for potable water at 1000 PPM down from their previous figure of 1500 PPM. Los Angles uses a range of from 200 to 600 PPM as the acceptable range for city water.

Assuming 0% dissolved solids in the watermaker product. Let's say 350 PPM is an acceptable brewing water.......... because it's an easy figure to work with, seawater being an estimated 35000. That would work out to one tenth of one percent seawater, and the rest RO water from the watermaker. 5 gallons of water is 640 ounces. That would make the appropriate addition about 2/3 of an ounce One ounce is 6 teaspoons, thus one would add 4 teaspoons of seawater to a 5 gallon brew. That seems an entirely reasonable figure, in fact I would think one could go considerably higher than that. The WHO standard would allow for about 1/4 cup per 5 gallons.


While these numbers are pretty loose calculations based on figures gathered in various places, they seem entirely realistic. Of course as has been repeatedly mentioned offshore seawater.......... I wouldn't want water from Long Island Sound, or Chesapeake Bay, or for that matter any highly populated portion of the Right Coast, or the Gulf of Mexico (America's largest Cesspool), Puget Sound, Gray's Harbor, Willipa Bay, off the mouth of the Columbia, Tillamook Bay, Coos Bay, Humbolt Bay, San Francisco Bay, Long Beach, or anywhere of the Southern California Coast, The Sea of Cortez, etc. Of course one doesn't have to go many miles offshore for the dilution factor to become pretty significant.

The ability of humans to foul and pollute our environment is amazing, as is the ability of the ocean and atmosphere to absorb it, but we are managing to overwhelm these systems as our population increases to levels that threaten to bring us to destruction. The population of the US has DOUBLED just in my lifetime. The world population has far more than doubled in that same period........ An apocalyptic scale reduction in the not too distant future is inevitable.


H.W.