RO System or Brew Lab?

[leesmith]

I'm Considering moving from buying bottled water (Poland Spring) to using my tap water at home. I've never tested it. It's municipal water and contains chlorine. I had brewed with it when I first started brewing. I'd boil it or use potassium metabisulfate to remove the chlorine. After a few off batches (which I can't prove were due to the water) I started using bottled water. Although the water may have not had as huge a role as I may think, my process and beer have improved since then.

For what I spend in bottled water for the year I could afford to buy an RO system or a Lamotte Brew Lab kit. All I would need is the basic Brewlab kit since I already own a ph meter. The RO system would only be used for brewing beer. I brew 2.5 gallon batches and usually use 4-4.5 gallons for brewing liquor at at time. At the least I brew 2 times a month and at the most 4.

The Brewlab kit would allow me to tailor my existing tap water to my needs...I may find out I need to cut it with bottled water. It would be less equipment to install and maintain. If the concentrations of minerals are low enough to use with lighter beers which I brew often then the test kit would really be worth it to me since I'd know on brew day what my water consists of. If having to cut the tap water with bottled water then the water expenses for the year could probably be half of what I'm spending now. Annual filter changes for the RO system could cost as much or more as buying water to dilute my tap water.

The RO system (if maintained properly) would allow me to just fill up and go without testing the water since I'd basically be starting from scratch. There's this little voice that would nag at me because I don't really know what the concentrations (although very low) are of the solids that do remain in the water. The filters would cost money every year and the slow rate at which I could filter the water into a container to be used for brew day are a con I guess. Yeast starters would be a breeze since I'd just collect the liter or so that I need to mix with the DME.

Any have an opinion or advice on which item could be better than the other?

 

[myelo]

Until the smart folks get here with the real answers, what I would do is get a water report on your municipal water to see what you have and what you'll need to do to fix it. If you just need some tweaking then the lab kit might be best. If you're going to have to do a lot of diluting, you'll need to figure out if the RO system is going to be cost effective.

 

[mabrungard]

I echo that recommendation. Unless your tap water tastes metallic, its probably usable for some brewing. But it requires that you find out what is in your water with a water quality test. Armed with that info, you can then make your own assessment of your tap water to see if you need to go to the extreme of getting a RO machine to supply your brewing habit. If your municipal water supply has relatively consistent quality, then that can further reinforce the recommendation to work with your tap water. You would need to call the water utility and talk with their water quality lab person to determine if the water quality is fairly consistent.

With water quality testing info, you can then resort to info contained on the Water Knowledge page of the Bru'n Water site to help you determine if there are ions that are way out of line...which could force you toward RO. But, you won't know until you get your water tested. Its the first step. Don't buy a RO machine or a fancy test kit until you have obtained a competent testing result. I would only buy the fancy testing kit if the water utility tells you that the water quality varies greatly.

 

[ajdelange]

There is little question that RO will make your brewing life simpler than any other scheme but you still need to know what is in the water you feed the RO system as there are limits as to what an RO sytem will take as feed. Often you can get water treatment company to do a free water test for you in the hopes of selling you a treatment system which could be an RO system, of course, but most here send a sample off to Ward Labs. It isn't free but they check alkalinity (which most water treatment company tests don't) and they won't try to sell you a neutralizer. I guarantee that you can do whatever you want with RO water. It is a blank sheet of paper on which you can draw whatever you want. With your tap water things are more complicated especially when you try to brew a beer that needs less of some ion that your water contains. The sure way to 'remove' any ion excess is to dilute with RO water so you may find that you wind up using RO water anyway.

Now the downside of RO IMO is that it isn't very challenging. You won't learn much about water treatment if you use RO for everything but that may not be a factor for you.

 

[leesmith]

Wow, thank you for the info guys!

Is one water report that reflective of the changes my water may go through during the year? I have tried twice to contact the towns water department and haven't gotten a response. I'll give it one more try and then go from there.

Thanks again. I'll post an update as soon as I know or do anything.

 

[mblanks2]

Wow, thank you for the info guys!

Is one water report that reflective of the changes my water may go through during the year? I have tried twice to contact the towns water department and haven't gotten a response. I'll give it one more try and then go from there.

Thanks again. I'll post an update as soon as I know or do anything.

I found out the hard way that water sources and quality can change rather quickly. I had my water tested and utilized the Bru'n Water spreadsheet for all my adjustments with great results. I never questioned where by concentrations or PH would fall. Then one day my PH was off by .4 low.
I completed my brew by making on the fly adjustments which I had never had to do before. After I completed my brew day I double checked all my additions and measured the PH of my incoming water to find out that it had changed. After contacting our Mayor (a friend) I found out that the water treatment plant had had a major malfunction that required them to change our supply. While waiting for this repair (months) I decided to go with an RO system and haven't looked back.
AJ is correct that the challenge is reduced when working with RO water, because you can build any profile you want, however I am all about being able to control every aspect of my brewing to the best of my ability and that is what RO water allows me to do.

This is my two cent.

 

[jtp137]

Go to Walmart and fill up 5 gallon buckets of RO water think its about 35 cents per gallon unless you brew an awful lot remember most home RO units are not that efficient

 

[gspot]

Go to Walmart and fill up 5 gallon buckets of RO water think its about 35 cents per gallon unless you brew an awful lot remember most home RO units are not that efficient

Relative to what? My unit is pretty darn efficient. I believe the membrane I bought has around 96% rejection IIRC and makes 80gpd. Drops my TDS down to around 8ppm. Not much practical room for improvement there.

 

[biochemedic]

I too have pondered an RO system b/c of the worry that water may change over the course of the year. Ward labs isn't particularly cheap to the point that I would consider sending off a test every month and chart what changes, although I have considered sending a test in the middle of the summer, as opposed to the winter test that I just sent a month or two ago. My water is "buildable" though, based on the recent results, so I think for now I will just work with it assuming it is stable, and I'm going to start roughly checking mash pH with test strips (not quite ready to spring for a formal pH meter...)

 

[ajdelange]

Is one water report that reflective of the changes my water may go through during the year?

That depends on several things. You'll find stories here of how things have changed dramatically over a short period of time because something happened at the water works and they had to 'patch' a quick solution (see # 6), a usual source became unavailable and they had to buy from another utility etc. I, for example, have just discovered that my alkalinity, which has run between 70 and 100 for years is now running around 200 - 230 and have no idea why so you need to keep on top of it for sure unless you are using RO. One way to do this is obtain an inexpensive alkalinity test kit from an aquarium supplier. They aren't very accurate but that doesn't matter as you are fundamentally looking for change. Another approach is to use a TDS meter. They are inexpensive and while what they tell you isn't very meaningful in terms of what to do, they are good at detecting change.

 

[ajdelange]

....I am all about being able to control every aspect of my brewing to the best of my ability and that is what RO water allows me to do.

I pretty much implied in #4 that you have complete control over the ion content of your water when using RO or DI as the base but that's not entirely true. You cannot just jot down a desired ion profile and then go make a water with that profile. In the salts you have to work with the anions and cations are in fixed ratios and that limits what you can get by adding them to pure water.

As an example of this you can't achieve the Black Malty profile of Bru'n water by adding the commonly available salts because that profile wants more sodium and calcium that can be obtained by adding the sulfate and chloride salts of those metals without exceeding the sulfate and chloride targets. If one wishes to attain the specified sodium and calcium levels he must add sodium and calcium salts with another anion such as calcium lactate and sodium phosphate. In effect one gets those salts by adding sodium bicarbonate and calcium hydroxide neutralized by lactic or phosphoric acids. Thus one has to accept the presence of another anion (one that wasn't in the original profile). Also one has to ignore the bicarbonate but that's OK as we don't care about bicarbonate.

 

[jtp137]

Relative to what? My unit is pretty darn efficient. I believe the membrane I bought has around 96% rejection IIRC and makes 80gpd. Drops my TDS down to around 8ppm. Not much practical room for improvement there.

Were did you get it? How much

 

[jtp137]

The ones I see take 4 gallons of water to make 2 gallon of RO

 

[ajdelange]

Most of them are set up to recover only 20% (take 10 gal to make 2) or less but they can be modified to recover up to 50% or even more.

 

[gspot]

The ones I see take 4 gallons of water to make 2 gallon of RO

I think we're talking about two different things. Y'all are taking about ratio of waste to product, and I was talking about effectiveness of the membrane. No doubt there's about a 2-4:1 ratio of waste to product. Cost of doing business, y'all!

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

Guys - if the amount of "waste water" relative to the amount of purified water is critical to you, remember that YOU control this ratio with a small $4 part called a flow restrictor. The often heard "4 to 1 ratio" comes from recommendations by the membrane manufacturers. In many cases if you restrict the waste water further you risk the premature demise of your RO membrane. But in some cases that's not so much of an issue.

Russ

 

[ajdelange]

It is actually done to keep the concentration of calcium and carbonate in the brine below the point where deposition and consequent fouling of the membrane occurs. Since the Home Depot units are intended to produce only small amounts of permeate the relative large amounts of waste produced are not deemed a problem. The manuals usually state the highest level of hardness at which the unit as it comes out of the box can be operated. If you put a flow restricter on a unit such that you double the recovery you will also double the concentration of calcium and carbonate ions in the concentrate and, if that leads to super saturation WRT calcium carbonate (or any other salt) you will foul the membrane. The obvious solution, and the one most people use, is to feed with water that has been through a softener. Yes, it increases the sodium content but the membranes are particularly good at getting sodium. Mine, for example, which have been in service over 6 years and had thousands of gallons through them, still reject 98.9% of the sodium.

I run my system at about 40% recovery and could go higher but want to keep the brine concentration of everything lowish so the membranes will last a long time and I guess it has paid off.

A very interesting possibility is to feed back some of the brine to the input of the feed pump. This leads to recoveries of up to 70% or more at the expense of higher ion concentration in the permeate. If things work out such that this higher ion concentration happens to be right about what you want for brewing or does not exceed the minimums desired for any particular ion obviously you are in fat city in this regard. The concentrate in such cases is obviously pretty high in ion content and disposal may be a problem at the commercial scale but for home brewing should not be.

The important thing here is that you should not put on a flow restrictor without checking on the consequent increase in brine ion concentrations. For example, if your system out of the box delivers 20% recovery and the manual says that it should not be installed where hardness is greater than 200 you can go up to 40% recovery if your water hardness is 100 or less. Or you can use a softener.

 

[Firewalker11]

Go to Walmart and fill up 5 gallon buckets of RO water think its about 35 cents per gallon unless you brew an awful lot remember most home RO units are not that efficient

I sent in a sample from my RO system and a couple guys that have salt water fish tanks to save on postage etc and our ebay systems came back and the results were the same as test results I have seen posted elsewhere online from home users.

These systems are all under $100.00 which would provide a full payback in only 300 gallons.

pH 6.5
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 4
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.01
Cations / Anions, me/L < 0.1 / < 0.1
ppm
Sodium, Na < 1
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 1
Magnesium, Mg < 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3 2
Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S < 1
Chloride, Cl < 1
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 < 1
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 < 1
Total Phosphorus, P 0.09
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01

 

[ajdelange]

As you can see from your data it is sufficient that you demonstrate a low TDS. So next time get a cheap TDS meter from Amazon and use that. You'll save even more on postage that way.

 

[leesmith]

OK
Revisiting after quite some time.
A friend of mine has a Lamotte test kit and so I ran my water through it.

These are the test results:

Chloride: 90ppm
Sulfate: 0ppm
Alkalinity: 200 ppm
Hardness: 260 ppm
Calcium Hardness: 150ppm
Magnesium: 26.4 ppm
Sodium: 31.51 ppm
Residual Alkalinity: 141.43ppm

Any advice would be appreciated. I do know the water supply is treated with chlorine but this is my base water right out of the tap. I'd assume if I boiled it to remove chlorine or used Sodium Metabisulphite to remove it the water profile would change but I think I've got something I can work with here.

 

[Sbe2]

I sent in a sample from my RO system and a couple guys that have salt water fish tanks to save on postage etc and our ebay systems came back and the results were the same as test results I have seen posted elsewhere online from home users.

These systems are all under $100.00 which would provide a full payback in only 300 gallons.

pH 6.5
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 4
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.01
Cations / Anions, me/L < 0.1 / < 0.1
ppm
Sodium, Na < 1
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 1
Magnesium, Mg < 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3 2
Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S < 1
Chloride, Cl < 1
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 < 1
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 < 1
Total Phosphorus, P 0.09
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01

Edit: Didn't realize this was posted a year ago:smack:

Where can I research said systems? I am on a well and am sure that my water changes throughout the seasons.

I have not done a wards report on my well, thus I have been buying bottled water. I wish I had the Wal-Marts that offered .35 RO water around me. A local chain offers Prime RO water for $1.25/gal. I go with distilled at .70/gaL

 

[leesmith]

Edit: Didn't realize this was posted a year ago:smack:



Where can I research said systems? I am on a well and am sure that my water changes throughout the seasons.



I have not done a wards report on my well, thus I have been buying bottled water. I wish I had the Wal-Marts that offered .35 RO water around me. A local chain offers Prime RO water for $1.25/gal. I go with distilled at .70/gaL

I think the advice of getting your water tested first is sound. I was lucky that a friend had a kit already but in hindsight I would now recommend sending a sample to Ward Labs. It gives you a point of reference to help make a choice.

I'm leaning toward the test kit so I can account for any changes in the water supply. It was easy to use.

I've talked to the guy at Buckeye Hydro and he was very knowledgeable about the RO systems and it seems their customer service would be good. I had a friend buy a system from them and they set him up with everything he needed. If I was going to purchase one, I would go with him.

 

[Buckeye_Hydro]

The advisability of testing your water prior to installing is correlated with the size of the RO.

In all practicality, the bigger/faster the RO, the more expensive replacement membranes are, and the more important it is to test the feedwater and provide appropriate pre-RO treatment.

Residential RO membranes (generally 150 gpd and less) run $30 to $55 - so if you ruin one and need a replacement every 2 yrs instead of 4, its not the end of the world. Commercial RO membranes run $100+, and customers generally go the extra mile (e.g., testing the feedwater) to prolong the membrane life.

If you're on residential well water, and you're having non-brewing related water issues (e.g., staining on plumbing fixtures and laundry, scale, bad taste/smell) it makes sense to get your well water tested for the safety of your family. Some issues you may not notice may also be present (e.g., bacteria).

The water tests we provide are a bit different/more comprehensive than the brewing water tests Ward Labs performs.

Russ

 

[leesmith]

Alright. I called and talked to Russ over at BuckeyeHydro.com and he set me up with one of his Premium RO Systems. It's a 100 GPD system with an auto shut of valve kit (ASOV Kit). The 100 GPD should allow me to grow in case I ever increase the volume of my brewery (I do 2.5 gallon batches). Russ was very helpful and we went over everything I'd need. We went with the in line TDS meter for ease of use, the manual flush valve for maintenance, and since I was paying for shipping anyways I bought an extra sediment filter and carbon filter. Excited to get my new system and install it. I'll check back with you guys once I've done so.