I was asking an employee at my LHBS about local water and brewing IPA’s. He said that it’s important to remove chlorine and iron in order to brew a good IPA and that I could achieve both of these tasks by using a carbon filter. However, when I started researching carbon filters, the info I read stated that
they’re not very good at removing iron but very effective at removing chlorine. Which is correct?
Filter will remove some iron, but not all. Depending on how much iron you have it may be perfect.
Essentially, my water used to have a metalic taste to it, after running through a filter, it was much better.
I brewed with the filtered water and won many awards with my lagers and light ales…so I the answer is…they are both right.
The filter may remove enough you can brew with it, but it is not 100% effective… but it likely be effective enough.
Carbon filtration will not remove dissolved iron. A water softener (salt softening/ion exchange) will remove some. Reverse osmosis will remove almost all dissolved iron.
Carbon filtration will remove chlorine. Chloramines require longer contact time with the carbon for removal.
Martin should have some input on this one, as he lives close by.
I would think the alkalinity might also be a problem.
A greensand filter is effective at removing iron and manganese. Activated carbon is not effective at iron removal. Ion-exchange is a common iron removal technique and is suitable if the raw water is otherwise free of calcium and magnesium. If there is a lot of Ca or Mg, then the resulting Na or K content of the ion-exchange treated water is likely to be too high to brew with.
Can’t you just toss a magnet into the kettle? ;D
RO water in Indy for me. Pretty consistent.
Thanks for the info :0)
Jon, do you buy your RO water or have your own RO filtration system?
Martin, we’re both pulling from the same water supply. How do you handle it?
I buy it at a local grocery for ~ 29 cents/gallon. Makes a nice consistent base to build on.
BTW that price is based on using the big RO dispenser where you fill it your self. I live near a Meijer and they happen to have a machine. Pretty cheap.
The Meier in Novi MI recently went up to 39 cents/gallon. I still use it.
That’s cheaper than I would’ve guessed. I’ve used the 5 gallon filtered water bottles and it seems they’re more expensive. I’ll have to make a trip to Meijer right down the street :0)
You may want to check on the type of treatment provided by those bring-your-own-bottle water vending machines. Many use municipal water, carbon filter it, send it through a UV disinfecting unit, and/or ozonate it, and dispense it by the gallon - basically, city water with the chlorine removed.
The machines that provide water pushed through RO membranes will most likely be marked fairly prominently as being treated by reverse osmosis.
FWIW quest4watneys, the machine I use (@ Meijer) states that its water is purified by RO.
Same with me.
See the first FAQ for the water I use.
http://glacierwater.com/ask-glacier/faqs/
The one I buy from is RO, and the Ward Labs test had it with the brewing ions <1ppm.
Anyone ever brewed a batch with just plain old RO water? I had someone at work ask me if that was possible.
I think you would end up making beer.
The Congress mash uses distiller water, for example. Ca helps the enzymes, aids the yeast, etc. so it would not be optimal for some aects. No flavor ions might lead to a bland beer.
I haven’t but I’ve heard of it being done. A common rule of thumb is to shoot for at least 50ppm of Calcium in your mash, but RO water has a lot less than that as most (but not all) of the minerals have been removed. The 50+ ppm Calcium help with enzyme activity, beer clarity and yeast performance. So it’s easy to add some gypsum ( calcium sulfate) or calcium chloride to your mash water to get your calcium content, as well as help bring pH into range for some beers. I highly recommend downloading Bru’nWater. It’ll walk you through it.
You can certainly make beer with straight distilled or RO water. I have tasted the result of a brand new brewer attempting a pale ale with distilled water. It was at one of my club’s meetings. The beer was fine, but very bland. Some flavor ions are important to beer perception.