Relatively New (2 years) AG Brewer Considering Using Tap vs RO Water

[Jiffster]

I’ve been brewing all grain using RO water and following AJ delange’s “A Brewing Water Chemistry Primer” guidelines with good success.

I have been attempting to up my game by dabbling into measuring mash pH and adjusting accordingly. I say dabbling because shortly after starting to learn this, my brewing activities stopped for 1 year due to my son being involved in a car accident. (He’s OK now – was a long road to recovery).

The art/science of measuring pH and adjusting my mash accordingly is something I’m still not comfortable with – the process that is. I know I will get there with practice, just like I did with becoming comfortable with brewing “all grain”.

The beer I’ve been brewing is good. I would even say as good as some breweries I’ve visited. However, there is a charachteristic I’m tasting in many of my beers that I cannot pinpoint and I want to get rid of it.

I would best describe it as a slight “sour” taste.

In discussing this with other brewers, they suggest it very well may be my water profile. During these recent conversations they have told me they brew with tap water (some filtered with charcoal, some straight out of the tap). One brewery in my area (which has very good beer) brews with water straight from the tap. Perhaps many other breweries in my area do as well, I’m not sure.

I have been told that Detroit water is very good for brewing.

This leads me to my point…… I’m considering trying to brew using my local water supply instead of RO water. This is a total game changer for me as far as what I’ve been doing up to now – using the “Primer”.

Any advice regarding what I should look for, etc would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Beer-lord]

18 months ago I got an RO filter and my beers immediately improved. Our water is pretty good for darker beers but for IPA's and pales, something was missing.
I think you might try adjusting your water salts since you are starting at a baseline and it took me 5 or 6 brews to dial in the beers the way I like them.
Finally, do others taste the same 'sour' that you do?

 

[Jiffster]

I haven’t solicited the opinion of people that would “know” aside from my wife, who describes it as a soapy taste.

I don’t use dish soap to clean so it’s not actually soap.

It’s very noticeable (to me) - the difference between mine and the breweries I visit.

 

[flars]

Municipal supplied water is always treated with chlorine or chloramine. It can't be used for brewing without filtering or treating. The sour may be coming from your water additions. A full recipe and RO water treatment would be helpful.

Soapy can also come from old hops.

 

[Jiffster]

This was a 5.5 gal batch.

I treated 9 gallons of RO water with 6.12g Calcium Chloride.

Hops were purchased fresh before brew. I’m assuming they were not old at the brew supply.

 

[Jayjay1976]

I'm doing the exact opposite...been brewing for almost a year with straight tap (treated with campden!) and just bought an under-sink RO filter so I can get rid of that "tang" all my beers seem to have. The guys at my LHBS don't taste it but I can detect it in every batch and have convinced myself that water chemistry is to blame. Meanwhile, over the past several brews I've forced myself to give them 4-5 weeks in primary and the problem seems to have cleared up for the most part, both literally in clearer beer but also they no longer have that "green" homebrew taste.

Nonetheless I've invested in a filter so I just brewed my first batch yesterday with my new RO water using 3/4 teaspoon calcium chloride to simulate soft brewing water for my patersbier. We'll see how it turns out. If this doesn't improve my beers I'll break down and buy a pH meter and start messing with that...

Sometimes it doesn't pay to write yourself a prescription, rather let the doctors here help you figure out what to do next.

 

[day_trippr]

Before switching to your municipal water supply you should get a decent water test for it. It may be the municipal water isn't actually so well suited for brewing (without treatment, anyway) and a blind switch may introduce other, different problems.

A decent RO system will leave so little of anything in the water it just doesn't seem likely to be the root cause of "off" notes. I've been using 100% RO from my machine with a TDS of 6 or lower (from a well that runs around 300 TDS) and there's zero "flavor" there.

"Sour" suggests the OP might be overly sensitive to lactic acid from the sauermalz and might do better using phosphoric acid instead...

Cheers!

 

[kh54s10]

Doesn't RO strip almost all minerals from the water? Your reply says you only added calcium chloride. Shouldn't other things also be added?

I had great water where I used to live and only filtered it with a charcoal filter. I wonder how much chlorine it removed since I have read that to remove chlorine you have to filter very slowly. I never have.

My current water probably contains a lot more chlorine or chloramine so I have been using Campden tablets. If I were to make a change it would be TO RO water.

 

[homebrewer_99]

I don't take ph readings. Beer's are good.

Our drinking water tastes pretty good already, but Ive been filtering it with a PUR faucet-mounted filter for over 10 years.

We also have a water softener.

 

[SEndorf]

To the OP, with all due respect, I suspect your chasing the dogs tail.

<<<<I would best describe it as a slight “sour” taste.
In discussing this with other brewers, they suggest it very well may be my water profile.>>>

The "sour" taste may or may not be attributed to your water profile, but I would question why you would want to add additional variables to correct this problem by switching to tap.

I'd recommend going beyond AJ's primer into something a bit more substantive, with a good water calculator such as bru'n water. AJ admittedly refers to the primer as something quick and easy to get you started, but you need something else to dial it in. Invest in a good Ph meter.

 

[StrongArmBrewing]

I'm sure reading about the guys that have experienced with R.O water do it for very specific reasons, horrible additions to the local water supply having the water from a well. I currently work for a local water company for a town and years in the water quality field and I rarely come across anyone that uses an R.O. system.

Do know, water chemistry on R.O. and Distilled water will be different because of the lack of "impurities" in the water, which will change how water is transferred across a gradient (Grain). It will be a hypotonic solution which will cause the solvents in the grains (Sugars, tannins ect..) to move across the gradient into the solution (water) at a different rate than let's say, Tap water which can have a higher concentration of solute in solution depending on what local water plant, the age of pipes, type of pipes ect.

Try the scientific approach, brew 4 batches with different water parameters. It's what we do in our lab when we need to narrow down a "problem". Make sure everything else is the same, Hops additions, amount of water...You get the point. hope this is somewhat helpful and help you determine if it's your water that is the problem and not the process or equipment you're using.

Brew 4 batches:

• R.O Water
• Distilled water
• Tap water
• Duplicate one of these for quality testing, which is knowing as "Duplicating / Replicating samples" which SHOULD result in the same quality.

Another method is splitting the batches and fermenting it at different temps and in different containers to determine if theirs a problem is in that direction.
This can honestly go on FOREVER for methods of testing! Good luck and keep us informed.

Also, a lot of local water municipalities will test your tap water for certain parameters for you if you ask. At the end of the day, this IS biochemistry that brewers are conducting in which every step of the way can create a different result.

Good luck!

 

[ajdelange]

I'm sure reading about the guys that have experienced with R.O water do it for very specific reasons, horrible additions to the local water supply having the water from a well.

The main reasons are (listed in what I'd guess is the order of the popularity of the reason)
1)Gives ultimate control over the water ion content
2)Ameliorates concern about secular variations in source water.
3)Horrible (very hard, extremely alkaline) water

Do know, water chemistry on R.O. and Distilled water will be different because of the lack of "impurities" in the water, which will change how water is transferred across a gradient (Grain). It will be a hypotonic solution which will cause the solvents in the grains (Sugars, tannins ect..) to move across the gradient into the solution (water) at a different rate than let's say, Tap water which can have a higher concentration of solute in solution

So the grain is loaded with starch which is at some chemical potential µ = µ0 +R*T*ln(a) in which a is the activity of starch in the grain. In distilled water the activity of starch is 0 so the chemical potential there is -∞ and the potential gradient between grain and water is ∞. OTOH in tap water the activity of starch is 0 and so the chemical potential of starch is -∞. Thus the potential difference is again ∞. For calcium and magnesium etc the potential difference will be ∞ for RO and less for tap but do we really care about that to the extent that we prefer RO/DI? Note that 4)Gets the malt minerals into the water faster isn't on the list. But maybe it should be.

 

[beerkench]

Hello Jiffster,
A few thoughts here:
RO water has a pH of 5-6. To this you’re adding calcium and acid malt both of which will reduce the pH even further. Could it be that you’re mash/wort pH is too low?

Adding only calcium chloride isn’t optimal. It’s usually best to balance out the mineral profile with some calcium sulfate as well and/or a little magnesium sulfate if you don’t want to push up the calcium levels.
A beer with only calcium chloride in can be perceived as flat/flabby.

As someone suggested learn how to use bru n water.
It’s a great tool.

If you’re drinking water is good brewing water then use it. You should however obtain a profile for it and punch in the values to bru n water.

 

[Jayjay1976]

Does bru'n water have an option to simply build profiles on top of RO water? It seems I wouldn't really need a calculator to do that, just some basic water recipes and the required ingredients. So far all I have is calcium chloride and gypsum. I also have a tub of 5.2 buffer, if that has any value. What else do I need?

 

[beerkench]

Does bru'n water have an option to simply build profiles on top of RO water? It seems I wouldn't really need a calculator to do that, just some basic water recipes and the required ingredients. So far all I have is calcium chloride and gypsum. I also have a tub of 5.2 buffer, if that has any value. What else do I need?

Bru’n water helps with pH estimation too. You enter values such as current water profile plus the malt bill of the beer you will brew and it gives you a approximate mash pH. If you for example want to brew a dark beer with RO water, there’s a risk of the mash pH dropping to low. Especially with added calcium additions. Bru’ n water will help to estimate the right pH by letting you add bicarbonate values to stop the buffering of the acids.

Throw the 5.2 stuff away.

 

[ajdelange]

RO water has a pH of 5-6. To this you’re adding calcium and acid malt both of which will reduce the pH even further. Could it be that you’re mash/wort pH is too low?

While one might reasonably think that the fact that RO water has a lower pH might give it the ability to pull mash pH down that isn't, in fact, the case because RO water's low pH has no punch behind it. A stack of hearing aid batteries in series may read 12 V on a voltmeter (and many think the p in pH stands for potential) but it wont start your car. It's much the same here but the CCA here is the alkalinity and RO water has very low alkalinity. Going to the limiting case of DI water which has been exposed to atmospheric CO2 to the extent that its pH is 5 (even a tree hugger will admit that it won't actually be that low but let's use that to bound the pH shift that atmospheric CO2 could potentially cause) has an alkalinity of 1.6 ppm as CaCO3 corresponding to a carbonic acid content of but 1.7 mg/L. Were we to be able to find a brewery whose air contained no CO2 whatsoever and prepare 10 gallons of DI water to which we add 4.362586103 mL of 88.00000% lactic aid and 12.5 lbs of Weyermann's pilsner malt the mash pH would be 5.40000. Were we to repeat the same experiment using water exposed to CO2 such that the pH was 5 we would find the mash pH to have plummeted all the way down to 5.39966.

The absurd number of decimal places I've used here were carried only so that you could see that, theoretically, there will be a pH shift from the carbonic acid found in RO water but that it will be so small as to be undetectable.

This may be incomprehensible to a new visitor to this forum but it is the Brewing Science Forum and that's what the science says (and what you will experience in your mashes too).

Adding only calcium chloride isn’t optimal. It’s usually best to balance out the mineral profile with some calcium sulfate as well and/or a little magnesium sulfate if you don’t want to push up the calcium levels.
A beer with only calcium chloride in can be perceived as flat/flabby.

???? Beers with more chloride are perceives as rounder, fuller and sweeter than beers with less. Sulfate tends to render the perception of hops bitterness 'rough' to the point of harshness for many. I have used no sulfate whatsoever in any of my beers (except the occasional ale) for years and that improved them greatly. The sulfate and chloride are the 'seasonings' in beer. A brewer needs to be guided not by some published profile telling him what his beer should contain but rather by his taste buds, I usually recommend starting with just calcium chloride and then inching in a little (at first) sulfate to see if you think it improves or detriments the beer. The whole idea of 'balanced' sulfate and chloride is sort of a hoax but one you will see widely propagated. There's a whole Sticky on the subject at the top of this forum. But if you like the effects of sulfate (and many do) have at it.

As someone suggested learn how to use bru n water.
It’s a great tool.

There are dozens of spreadsheets and calculators out there. Anyone with Excel can publish one and many of them are based on less than complete understanding of and sometimes startling misconceptions about the subset of chemistry that applies here. I don't want to be in the position of 'spreadsheet reviewer' and so usually encourage people to try several because often they will get fairly widely disparate answers to the same inputs. They then have to appreciate that maybe one of them is right and the others are wrong or they are all wrong. In fact one of them has been right every time I've checked on it. I leave it to the readers to figure out which one it is.

If you’re drinking water is good brewing water then use it. You should however obtain a profile for it and punch in the values to bru n water.

Amen to that.

 

[z-bob]

I am using straight tapwater for most of my beers now, even tho' the water here is highly alkaline. I'm still working on my process, but I'm brewing good beers (maybe not great beers, I dunno, but I like them.) I have to acidify the mash and I only shoot for about 5.6 pH; definitely not 5.2 Then I sparge with cool water that has been dechlorinated but not acidified. At least that's what I'm doing now, it will change when I decide to try something else, like decarbonating the water with lime, or using some phosphoric acid to drive the mash pH a little lower instead of all lactic acid.

Perhaps the sour taste your talking about isn't really sour, you are just describing it poorly? (no offense) Are you treating the water to remove chlorine? Do you have any idea what the iron and magnesium levels are?

 

[SEndorf]

Does bru'n water have an option to simply build profiles on top of RO water? It seems I wouldn't really need a calculator to do that, just some basic water recipes and the required ingredients. So far all I have is calcium chloride and gypsum. I also have a tub of 5.2 buffer, if that has any value. What else do I need?

You do indeed need a calculator. Using RO and Bru'n water, you can ignore tabs 1 and 2 (Water Report Input and Sparge Acidification). Enter your grain bill input on tab 3. On tab 4 (water adjustment) select RO as your dilution at 100%, then build your profile. Very easy.

Oh.. and throw your tub of 5.2 buffer away. Someone here once said it works perfectly.... if you don't own a Ph meter.

 

[Yooper]

Doesn't RO strip almost all minerals from the water? Your reply says you only added calcium chloride. Shouldn't other things also be added?

In short, no. Malt has plenty of magnesium and things, and there is no reason to add anything except for flavor, just like "seasonings" in food".

Adding only calcium chloride isn’t optimal. It’s usually best to balance out the mineral profile with some calcium sulfate as well and/or a little magnesium sulfate if you don’t want to push up the calcium levels.
A beer with only calcium chloride in can be perceived as flat/flabby.

Not so- and magnesium itself is often responsible for a "sour" taste.

Does bru'n water have an option to simply build profiles on top of RO water? It seems I wouldn't really need a calculator to do that, just some basic water recipes and the required ingredients. So far all I have is calcium chloride and gypsum. I also have a tub of 5.2 buffer, if that has any value. What else do I need?

Throw out the 5.2 buffer, and you'll be fine with calcium chloride, gypsum, and then some phosphoric acid. You really don't need anything else, at least not routinely, depending on what you're brewing. You may need some baking soda for a dark stout, for alkalinity, when using straight RO water but that's about all.

 

[ajdelange]

When brewers can't explain an off flavor's origins it is common to blame the water. It is seldom the water especially for flavors like soapy or sour. Barley does contain some fat (but very little) which can saponify and give a soapy taste but were I to be forced to guess at something here I'd go with infection. And the same for sour. Most think sourness is explained by low pH but that's only part of the story. The acid anion has a major role to play. A lactic acid solution at pH 4 will taste quite sour but a phosphoric acid at the same pH won't (or at least not as much so). I suspect some undesirable microbe or wild yeast strain is behind the release of some organic acid but I could be dead wrong on this. But in any case RO water does not contain fats nor does it contain acid (other than an insignificant amount of CO2 as discussed in an earlier post). So I don't think you can blame the RO water for these off flavors. The use of RO water gives a brewer ultimate control over his water and it is hard to imagine that going to municipal water will improve things but there are those that firmly believe that RO water is bad because it has none of the trace Ytterbium your yeast need. Then there are those that believe in homeopathic medicine.

 

[ajdelange]

Not so- and magnesium itself is often responsible for a "sour" taste.

An excellent point worth repeating. Has the OP been tossing a lot of Epsom salts into his RO water?

 

[teesherv]

Went thrust a similar journey a few years ago. City water to RO with treatment, then back to city water. If you use the water report from the city, it may just be an average. I was over-treating it during the winter months. And treating the chlorine was a big game changer. On lazy brew days all i do is treat for chlorine.

 

[teesherv]

Double post

 

[Jayjay1976]

...there are those that firmly believe that RO water is bad because it has none of the trace Ytterbium your yeast need. Then there are those that believe in homeopathic medicine.

Slightly OT, but I agree with you on this point regarding brewing water science and LODO brewing practices.
Both are a little like acupuncture in my mind; with fervent dedication and blind faith it my yield a little improvement, but no effin' way I'm going to tolerate all those little pricks. Homebrewing it seems, like nearly every aspect in life, is subject to superstition and quackery, it's up to each individual to separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

[ajdelange]

Are you referring to the needles or the acolytes?

 

[Big Monk]

Are you referring to the needles or the acolytes?

Good question...

(I think you know the answer already though)

 

[Jayjay1976]

Are you referring to the needles or the acolytes?

Good question...

(I think you know the answer already though)

 

[Big Monk]

I recognize that humor is often how people deal with things that are at the core pretty frustrating for them. The LO ideas have gotten a ton of flak and bad press. No arguments there.

The choice is that of the individual brewer to decide how they want to spend thier precious brewing time. Everyone has to decide what’s important for them.

With that said, science is science and it is often directly applied from the lab to the pros and on down to us with only a few tweaks. I fully support anyone’s right to say they don’t want to complicate thier brewday, but that don’t change the facts or invalidate the science, or in this case the applied science, which we know is at work in everything we do.

I think something really vital and important is happening in Homebrewing right now: a healthy renewal in interest regarding how hard brewing science translate to the home brewery. It really is a great time to be a homebrewer.

 

[couchsending]

I’ve recently started using my well water for brewing after 2 years of only using RO. Was inspired after hearing Tim Clifford from Sante and Averie Swanson from Jester King talk about how their water is horrible and they still use it.

Haven’t bothered to send it to Ward Labs but I did have it tested back in 2013 when I bought the house

Hardness: 257
Alkalinity: 240
TDS: 650
PH 7.5

Looks awesome I know. Anyways I preboiled and decanted and estimated alkalinity was 60ish and CA 20ish. No idea what So4, CL, Mg, NA levels are bit I’ll probably send it for a lab report here soon.

Plugged those numbers into Bru’n water and PH came out pretty darn close. Adjusted Sparge to 5.4 with phosphoric and measured final runnings and they didn’t rise. Beers aren’t quite done yet but the gravity sample of the Saison that was at 1.009 tastes phenomenal with no water related off flavors.

Not sure which is more of a pain, preboiling or having to go to the store and pay for RO. Brewed three more beers using my preboiled water and again samples have tasted great.

Interested to see how they turn out. Might be done with RO from here on out.

 

[Jayjay1976]

I recognize that humor is often how people deal with things that are at the core pretty frustrating for them. The LO ideas have gotten a ton of flak and bad press. No arguments there.

The choice is that of the individual brewer to decide how they want to spend thier precious brewing time. Everyone has to decide what’s important for them.

With that said, science is science and it is often directly applied from the lab to the pros and on down to us with only a few tweaks. I fully support anyone’s right to say they don’t want to complicate thier brewday, but that don’t change the facts or invalidate the science, or in this case the applied science, which we know is at work in everything we do.

I think something really vital and important is happening in Homebrewing right now: a healthy renewal in interest regarding how hard brewing science translate to the home brewery. It really is a great time to be a homebrewer.

 

[Jiffster]

Perhaps the sour taste your talking about isn't really sour, you are just describing it poorly? (no offense) Are you treating the water to remove chlorine? Do you have any idea what the iron and magnesium levels are?

It's possible I'm describing the taste wrong. I'm not treating the RO water to remove chlorine. Should I be?
No idea what the iron and magnesium levels are.

An excellent point worth repeating. Has the OP been tossing a lot of Epsom salts into his RO water?

No Epsom salts used so far.

 

[ajdelange]

Sour is a pretty distinctive taste but it does come in variants. An interesting experiment is to go to the LHBS and buy a little of all of the carboxilic acids he has in stock (malic, lactic, tartaric, citric) and make up solutions of them to pH 4, do the same with vinegar and taste them all. But you did put sour in quotes.

As to the chlorine - if your source water has chlorine (or chloramine) in it that needs to be removed before the RO membrane as it will eventually poison it. Most RO systems contain a charcoal filter for this purpose. If your RO water tastes or smells of chlorine replace the charcoal filter ASAP.

 

[Jiffster]

Sour is a pretty distinctive taste but it does come in variants. An interesting experiment is to go to the LHBS and buy a little of all of the carboxilic acids he has in stock (malic, lactic, tartaric, citric) and make up solutions of them to pH 4, do the same with vinegar and taste them all. But you did put sour in quotes.

As to the chlorine - if your source water has chlorine (or chloramine) in it that needs to be removed before the RO membrane as it will eventually poison it. Most RO systems contain a charcoal filter for this purpose. If your RO water tastes or smells of chlorine replace the charcoal filter ASAP.

I'll seek some other opinions to see if others have the same perception of sour as I do. If you tasted my beer, you might describe the taste I'm describing totally different - and I would bet you would know exactly how to address it.

Shall I send you a bottle? ;-)

Regarding the RO water I use - I get it from the RO water dispenser at my local Kroger.