Treatment of RO water

[oxonbrew]

Hi All,

I'm going to attempt to brew two clones tomorrow, bluemoon and fat tire.

I'd like to use Reverse Osmosis water for this but I'm unsure about how to treat it.

Could you suggest suitable salt additions please?

Cheers!

 

[mabrungard]

Visit the Water Chemistry Primer thread that is a sticky in the Brewing Science forum. That provides you with some basic guidance as you move into water adjustments. If you get more curious about water adjustment, visit the Water Knowledge page on the Bru'n Water website.

 

[Natdavis777]

There are a few things you will need to know before treating your water. First off, you need an understanding of what water profile fits those styles of beers and what each mineral or salt contributes to the beer itself. Bru'n water is a great tool to get you where you want to go. You can input your RO water if that is all you are using, or you can plug in your own source water details (if known) and adjust from there. Either way, it has many water profiles built in and you can add in your own if needed. Tinker around with it for a bit and you will be able to find out how much gypsum, CaCl, etc you need to add to your mash and sparge water to hit the water profile you are wanting. I played around on it for a day or two before I got the hang of everything, but now I am glad I did.

 

[bigdongsr94]

Oxon brew, it's kind of annoying but what the others are saying is you need to understand a bit then maybe ask questions for adjustments. Without knowing anything I would say add 1 tsp CaCl and 1 tsp gypsum. Mabrun developed the spreadsheet bru'n water so I by no means want to steer you in a different direction than he. I would read the primers and then using the latest copy of bru'n water, add your water and grains to the spreadsheet. This will get a mash thickness to tell you where you are at for pH. The spreadsheet has selections for basic water profiles of beer. You could choose the best match and go from there.


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[Xpertskir]

Hi All,

I'm going to attempt to brew two clones tomorrow, bluemoon and fat tire.

I'd like to use Reverse Osmosis water for this but I'm unsure about how to treat it.

Could you suggest suitable salt additions please?

Cheers!

You are WAY WAY WAY oversimplifying it. The water chemistry primer and bru'nwater are good resources.

I'd use spring water for your brewday and use the time until your next brew day to study and understand what the different ions do to finished beer and figure out how to use bru'n water.

 

[Homercidal]

There is nothing wrong with starting with RO water and adding a bit of gypsum and maybe some other minerals for flavor. It can get difficult to calculate mineral additions when you are using water with minerals already present, and you need to "fix" it.

But you can safely add 1-2 teaspoons of gypsum for most pale beer styles without causing much harm. It's possibly MUCH better than using your own water, and maybe even better than using a spring water which probalby also contains an unknown amount of minerals.

I would advise picking up Bru'nwater and reading the stickies on water chemistry with the assumption that you are brewing with RO water. It's not difficult and you shouldn't have too much trouble entering the water into Bru'nwater and adding a bit of this and that to adjust the pH and dial in a flavor. Actually, I'd even skip the flavor concerns to start with.

Water chemistry for homebrewing can be a bit of a learning experience, but it's not difficult after you've played with it a bit. Bru'nwater removes most of the math involved and leaves you with plugging in some numbers. The hardest part is setting it up (which you won't need to do if you are using RO water) and navigating the spreadsheets.