# Buying Water



## MarkBastard (30/4/09)

Has anyone here ever bought water to use with their partials? What I mean is use tap water for the mash, but when topping up into the fermenter using bought purified water.

Or is it just pointless anyway?


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## reviled (30/4/09)

Ive used store bought crap for a whole brew once cos my bro in law was getting 20 litre jerry cans filled for cheap, cant say I noticed a differnce at all...


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## Ducatiboy stu (30/4/09)

yeah...pointless

Or you are doing is to make Coke a Cola-Amital rich


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## Bribie G (30/4/09)

If you want to be fanatical, get a basic cheap water filter and you should get good results, especially if you have good tap water where you live. Here in SEQ the water is drinkable but when I go to Sydney I become a waterholic :icon_drool2: First thing I do at the rellies is head for the tap, they think I'm mad. Even so I get good results here without filtering, and with BIAB all the liquor that goes in is tap water. I use hot water from the Solahart which is cheap energy and hopefully all the chlorine has been sweated out.

Probably more useful is to add a bit of calcium and magnesium to your mash water (calcium chloride, magnesium sulphate) for better pH and yeast health, especially if doing pale ales.


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## t2000kw (30/4/09)

If you're only concern is to avoid possible microbial infection, you could boil your tap water. If you are trying to avoid adding flavors like chlorine to your beer, boiling might do the trick also, but you could also use distilled or RO (reverse osmosis) water. Even an inexpensive charcoal filter would remove off-flavors and chlorine.


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## ozpowell (30/4/09)

Mark^Bastard said:


> Has anyone here ever bought water to use with their partials? What I mean is use tap water for the mash, but when topping up into the fermenter using bought purified water.
> 
> Or is it just pointless anyway?



FYI - I've heard of some people not bothering, but I would definitely recommend boiling (and cooling) the tap water first.


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## peas_and_corn (30/4/09)

The only reason I would buy water is to get the container.


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## Swinging Beef (30/4/09)

peas_and_corn said:


> The only reason I would buy water is to get the container.


This is precisely the reason, in Australia, we should NOT be buying bottled water, but I get what you are saying.

Bottled water in Australia is a con.
It just comes from a different tap, not yours.
It is not sterilised, it is not (usually) filtered.

We have very good tap water in Australia, just have a visit to Yurp and try and drink the grey crap that comes out of their pipes!
Bleargh!


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## MarkBastard (30/4/09)

Actually the reason I made this thread is because my parents had a sort of cask (as in goon wine) of water. 10L and 'pure'. I scoffed but on closer inspection it really was pure. Reverse osmosis water by the look of it. No mineral etc content.

And it was only a few bucks, so I figured for partials it could be a good idea as top up water. An easy enough blank canvas for the person that doesn't yet want to go the hull hog.


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## Bribie G (30/4/09)

Well, if you want to go to the expense and if you want to use the water as a blank canvas then there could be benefits in using it as the mash water (not the top up) and add water chemicals to it to give your mash extra oomph. You might like to read Palmer's How to Brew water chemistry section if you can make head or tail of it  .
If you are doing a Pilsener mini mash for example, use the pure water with just a trace of calcium and magnesium in it. If doing a UK Ale put plenty of calcium in etc....

But again, personally, I wouldn't bother if it's a partial as any 'improvements' will be probably swamped by the extract or kit making up the bulk of the brew.


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## lczaban (30/4/09)

Mark^Bastard said:


> Actually the reason I made this thread is because my parents had a sort of cask (as in goon wine) of water. 10L and 'pure'. I scoffed but on closer inspection it really was pure. Reverse osmosis water by the look of it. No mineral etc content.
> 
> And it was only a few bucks, so I figured for partials it could be a good idea as top up water. An easy enough blank canvas for the person that doesn't yet want to go the hull hog.



What you'll find Mark is that the mineral profile of the water helps the grain enzimes work, and the minerals in your water contributes to the flavour profile of your beer. All commercial breweries who use RO water reintroduce trace minerals back into the water in a controlled fashion so that they can achieve a desired flavour profile. For 98% of home brewers, using a few tweaks to alter Ph and get rid of cholrine is about all they will ever need to do to their water to achieve good beer. If you are using proper RO water your beer is supposed to taste horrid, and even the water itself is very hard to drink because it is flavourless h34r: My thoughts are that your parents are probably using some sort of finely filtered water, especially if it is only a few $'s. RO is fairly intensive in terms of it's set-up and operation so I would expect it to be a bit pricey, but I'm not 100% sure on this.

Is it commercially available, and if so have you got a product name for us to do a search on to see what the story is with this water?

Cheers, GG


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## Bribie G (30/4/09)

I've just remembered that the brewer from Tamborine (now ex, sadly) gave us the talk in January at the BABBs meeting and he said that they use rainwater but then RO it to remove all the bat poop and then add water salts back in.


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## chappo1970 (30/4/09)

GravityGuru said:


> ...RO is fairly intensive in terms of it's set-up and operation so I would expect it to be a bit pricey, but I'm not 100% sure on this.
> 
> Is it commercially available, and if so have you got a product name for us to do a search on to see what the story is with this water?
> 
> Cheers, GG



+1 GG just priced the supply and installation for a 1500lt/hr RO unit for a certain government department for a set of PC3, PC+3, PC4 and PC+4 labs... lets just say you don't get much change for $2M. h34r: Proper industrial RO units will strip tap water to basically almost pure H2O. Not an expert, just involved with alot of laboratory construction and refurbishment. I am sure some of the more scientific brewers amongst us should be able to clarify this better.

Cheers

Chappo


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## MarkBastard (30/4/09)

Nah can't remember the product name unfortunately. It said that it was basically pure h20, and on the section where bottled water normally says stuff like magnesium: 2mg etc it had a list of minerals (all the usual suspects) and had 0mg next to it.

It was quite nice drinking water though so I don't know about it being horrid?

I've only made ales so far, and most of them weren't very pale. But if I was gunna do a partial of say a lager or a very pale ale I thought it was worth looking into.


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## leiothrix (30/4/09)

RO water is fine - however a lot of people have a deionisation unit hooked up after it. The DI uses ion-exchange resins which basically swap some minerals for others. The DI is what will make the water taste bad.


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