My grocery store has a drinking water dispensing thing where people can fill up gallon jugs, 3 gallon jugs, etc. etc. It appears to be reverse osmosis by some company called Harmony Brook. But I’ll be darned if I can find any information about this company online.
So, I thought I’d post here to ask if anyone out there has used this and might have some kind of water profile? I’m not entirely sure if this is RO or just filtered spring water. It seems to be OK for brewing, but if there are some adjustments to be made I would like to look into that.
Or maybe it’s just simpler to use distilled water and go from there.
While I can’t speak to that specific machine, in general the machines have a bad reputation. People have reported high TDS, among other issues. In addition, drinking water implies it has minerals in it. Unless you know what and how much, it makes it uncertain for brewing water.
Thanks, @denny. I had some doubts, so it’s good to know there are others out there who have suspicions too. I will probably just go with distilled water from here on out and dust off my chemistry memories. And use an app.
If your local water is mineralized and you want to use RO, go ahead and buy a TDS meter now and use it to check that Harmony Brook water. If it’s low (say under 25 ppm TDS), then its probably RO water. If its way higher than that, it’s probably just filtered tap water.
A TDS meter is pretty inexpensive and they’ll last forever.
I’d just go with water bottled in one-gallon plastic jugs, for example Walmart’s Purified Drinking Water, if I was concerned about what’s in my brewing water. I’d never use water that comes out of a machine because how do we know when was the last time the plumbing inside the thing was sanitized and sterilized? Also, what’s the level of cleanliness inside your three-gallon plastic carboy? The water where I live is essentially “liquid gravel,” so I buy the gallon jugs of Purified Drinking Water and rest easy knowing that my incompetence is the reason my batch failed versus water that wasn’t up-to-snuff for the job.
I had a sick day today and sleuthing the internet for Harmony Brook gave me something to do, so thanks!
It looks like Harmony Brooks was a Minnesota-based manufacturer of consumer water purification products. They were bought by Culligan in 1998 - so your grocery store has quite a relic of the past. From a fish aquarium forum of all places I learned that Culligan does not typically have RO in their grocery store dispensers and just uses carbon water filters. A fun fact about Harmony Brook: They patented a water dispenser spout with an ultraviolet lamp and a delivery nozzle to provide a secondary purification just prior to delivery.
All that is to say, I agree with the other folks. TDS meters can be very affordable, and are a great way to determine if your water is good for brewing. I was also going to mention using Bru’n Water when you’re ready to further explore building water profiles, and then I noticed previous poster mabrungard was THE Bru’n Water guy! Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
