Canceled brew day grr

[Sparkncode]

Just had a 3 day weekend here in nz because of waitangi day and was planning to do a AG brew but friday the notice came through that the council had tested +ve for ecoli in one of their resovars and had began clorinating to be on the safe side. Also they took a tank out of action and introduced water restrictions as the hot weather wasnt helping and warned of possible water shortages at peak times.
Apparently they will only clorinate for the required time of 3 negative tests so hopefully back to normal soon.

I do have 4 X 10L containers of distilled water for emergencies but given the water supply risks i chose not to brew with it.
Not a fan of drinking clorinated water either. Its been years since i drunk clorinated water.

Also probably not good form to run my plate chiller when there is a shortage of water.

Being visually impared so not having a car it is not easy for me to shoot down to the clorine free taps the council setup and pickup the required water.

Oh well instead of brewing I made use of the time to upgrade my 3d printer controller.

 

[madscientist451]

All the water supplies here are considered contaminated so all the municipal water is chlorinated. I guess they do that to be on the safe side. I have well water at my house but its very high in minerals so I have to bring my brewing water in from other sources.

 

[jeagle1957]

Has nobody thought of Distilling their water?

 

[Sparkncode]

Distilling would work i guess but would use quite a bit of electricity. Not sure the cost vs ro water setup. I guess it depends on how much water. Distilation would be cheap to setup but have high running costs and i guess ro setup would be high startup cost.

Our water is pumped out the hawkes bay aquefer by the council in multiple places so usually it doesn't need clorine. I believe they will have an investigation into where the contamination came from.

I do find the tap water cloulds starsan fairly quickly. I need to look at some of the bore test data they have online but so far before clorination its made good beer.

 

[bucketnative]

How about campden tablets to do away with the chlorine. We have 0.2 - 2 ppm typically in our water, and 1 tablet will treat 20 gallons effectively to remove the chloramine (of chlorine). It is readily noticeable in the smell of the water.

 

[IslandLizard]

Dissolve (stir) a 1/4 Campden tablet to dechlorinate 5 gallons of your tap water. Works instantly. Or use a pinch of K-Meta or Na-Meta.

Now minerals are a different story, but not all are bad if present in moderation.

Distilling water is a huge waste of resources. The amount of energy and chilling water it takes is nearly astronomical compared to the return.

Home RO is very doable. A ~$200 investment in the filters gets you all the drinking and cooking water you'll need.

 

[bobeer]

some good ideas here to help you get some decent water to brew with but have you thought of no chill brewing? You said due to the water shortages you may not want to run your chiller. I do no chill brewing just because the water in my town is very expensive and I've never run into any issues. If you're doing a hop stand just wait until the wort is down to 190 or so before you dump your hops in. By the next night your wort should be ready to transfer into a fermentor and pitch your yeast.

 

[mongoose33]

Dissolve (stir) a 1/4 Campden tablet to dechlorinate 5 gallons of your tap water. Works instantly. Or use a pinch of K-Meta or Na-Meta.

Now minerals are a different story, but not all are bad if present in moderation.

Distilling water is a huge waste of resources. The amount of energy and chilling water it takes is nearly astronomical compared to the return.

Home RO is very doable. A ~$200 investment in the filters gets you all the drinking and cooking water you'll need.

I had even less than that in mine--about $170 or so if I recall correctly, and that included a TDS meter.

The only downside to RO is that there's a lot more wastewater than RO water, so if water is dear you need to take that into consideration. Perhaps save for emergency drinking water, or whatever.

BTW, my RO system has a carbon filter to get rid of the chlorine.

Of course, no idea how easy or difficult it is to obtain the same type of system in New Zealand. Or the price.

 

[IslandLizard]

I had even less than that in mine--about $170 or so if I recall correctly, and that included a TDS meter.

The only downside to RO is that there's a lot more wastewater than RO water, so if water is dear you need to take that into consideration. Perhaps save for emergency drinking water, or whatever.

BTW, my RO system has a carbon filter to get rid of the chlorine.

Of course, no idea how easy or difficult it is to obtain the same type of system in New Zealand. Or the price.

The RO waste water (from backwashing the membrane) can be recaptured and used for plants etc. I don't know how much water it takes to backwash/regenerate though. It also depends on the mineral load.

I've been thinking about ways to recapture, reuse, and recycle chilling water, not only for environmental concerns, but especially in areas where water is scarce or at a premium price:

Use 2 plastic or stainless barrels, one (partially) empty the other (partially) full. Pump from the full one through the chiller into the empty one. The next day the now full one will be cold again, ready for reuse in whatever form.

A healthy dose of sanitizer, chlorine or something should keep algae growth and other scum forming at bay if it needs to be kept for longer times.

 

[canehdianman]

I thought the entire first world chlorinated/chloramined their water?

We just add a campden tablet to our water, poof! no more chloramine!

 

[eric19312]

I live in New York and we have very drinkable tap water. Low mineral content, great for brewing. The local brewery told me that from time to time during warmer weather the water authority does add some chlorine. So I always treat my brewing water with Campden whether or not I can taste/smell chlorine. I use the tablets and crush them up. For 11 gallon batch brewing half the crushed up tablet goes in my strike water and half in my sparge water. I got 100 tablets for $3 so I'm set for quite a while.

 

[Sadu]

You can also fill the kettle the day before and leave it overnight. The chlorine will dissipate naturally, though this doesn't work with chloramine. Bummer about missing your waitangi brewday.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

You can also fill the kettle the day before and leave it overnight. The chlorine will dissipate naturally, though this doesn't work with chloramine. Bummer about missing your waitangi brewday.

Even quicker if you boil. Pre-boil the water for ~15 minutes the day before, leave it uncovered overnight, and your chlorine will be gone.

Chloramine is harder to remove. This article by AJ Delange suggests that boiling for >1 hour will remove the chloramine.

As for whether they're using chlorine or chloramine? You'll probably have to call them to ask.

 

[canehdianman]

Even quicker if you boil. Pre-boil the water for ~15 minutes the day before, leave it uncovered overnight, and your chlorine will be gone.

Chloramine is harder to remove. This article by AJ Delange suggests that boiling for >1 hour will remove the chloramine.

As for whether they're using chlorine or chloramine? You'll probably have to call them to ask.

..... Or add a $0.10 campden tablet.

 

[Thorsbrew]

Another vote for RO setup. Doesnt even have to be $200. Purewaterclub.com has kits for around $100, even RODI kits. Not sure how quality these kits are compared to other $200-300 ones but that brewshop owner guy that posts on here (Bobbyfromnj i think) uses one in a video of his.

Not sure if you can get that in nz though.

 

[Sadu]

I looked around at RO systems in NZ and it's not really a thing here, so they seemed pricey. Luckily my water doesn't crawl with ecoli so I use campden to remove the chlorine then brunwater to calculate the salts.

 

[Sparkncode]

Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the suggestions, Sorry about the delay in reply
I've been rather busy with house renovations and not near beer stuff for a bit.
A broken 5th metatarsal bone in my right foot didn't help, especially considering my left knee is becoming arthritic from an accident a couple of years ago where I broke my tibial platau.

Since they are still chlorinating the water although I believe they are saying it could stop in a few months (They are improving the bore heads to prevent contamination by ground water).
I brought a 3 stage filter system.
1mincron particulate then a GAC and compressed carbon filter set with 1/2" fittings.
That has got me brewing again .
I have brought an RO membrane and parts to set that up but this foot thing slowed me down a bit. I do like the idea of the RO to control everything about the brew. Our water is on the hard side since it comes out of the hawks bay aquifer but works well for what I have brewed so far.
All my water for drinking and cooking goes through the filter

Just did a couple of all grain batches, a Motueka SMASH beer and a Red Smoke Ale. The Red smoke was the first time I have used Gladfields (local nz malt) manuka smoked ale malt and you really get the manuka smoke comming through without being excessive or over powering..

I took these along to a fair my parents are part of that travels around in house buses and trucks selling various items in a couple or kegs along with an extract kit pear and strawberry cider to share with them and their friends at the end of their setup day.

They all went down well. I my dad who normally drinks darker commercial beers liked the quite light coloured yet hoppy Motueka SMASH.

This is the most people I have had sample my beer (probably 20+).
Good comments including "it doesn't have that homebrew taste".
There were several home brewers in the group.

I did have some foaming issues as I just got me kegging setup the month before so was still figuring it out but that was more of an inconvenience.

The country has some water quality standards and they are requiring the council to upgrade the system to get secure bore status before they can stop chlorinating. Apparently some of the old bore heads were built to early standards that means they need to be modified to prevent surface water contamination.
The level of ecoli was barely detectable but because a near by town had an event where people got sick they went overboard then realised upgrades were needed.