Distilled water

I often use a mix of distilled and tap water (which is quite hard here) and then make any adjustments with minerals to get my desired profile. This is reasonably easy to calculate in the water chemistry - advanced calculator on brewer's friend.

 

It sounds like you're saying stop paying attention to detail and your beer will improve because of it. I don't see how, unless paying attention to (relatively unimportant) details was taking valuable time away from creativity.

 

This is exactly what I do, works great. Cuts your water costs down too so that's an added benefit.

 

I was with you until this point, pretty sure this did not add anything to the conversation

 

I heard brewery's in Munich Germany boil their water first because of hard water. I'll have to try this since i'm surrounded by lime quarries.

 

They might use lime softening these days to save on energy costs. They can also use RO filtration also.

The bigger breweries have deep wells that pull up very soft, low alkalinity water. Ayinger has another well that in not so deep, has more mineral content, and is blended in for the dark beers.

 

I asked a friend who has his own small brewery here and has lots of connections to breweries in the Bamberg region and he said it is normal for German breweries to treat their water... Is gypsum RHG?

 

Maybe?

“Alan Taylor, a Berlin-trained brewer now overseeing three breweries in Oregon and New Mexico, describes the conundrum. “The Reinheitsgebot talks about barley, water, and hops,” he began. “It doesn’t talk about dry hopping; it doesn’t talk about PVPP for clarification—it doesn’t talk about this stuff. It talks about simple things. It doesn’t say what to do about calcium chloride. Can you add it to the kettle? Can you add it to the mash tun? Can you add salts to the mash tun? Doesn’t say. Can you use pure oxygen to aerate the wort? Doesn’t say.”

http://allaboutbeer.com/article/happy-birthday-reinheitsgebot/

Cheers!

 

I had an interesting conversation with a group of Germans recently where I asked if bubbles were an ingredient. In other words, why is it ok to add CO2 to beer but not sugar or fruit, say. The main thing I learnt is that most people have absolutely no idea how beer is made. Getting off topic. Sorry.

 

Gypsum and Calcium Chloride are allowed if added to the water. The RHG just says water, so it is permissible to reproduce any water profile.

Here you go.
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2013/07/german-brewing-waters.html

 

The CO2 is allowed if it is recovered from the fermentation, i.e. natural CO2 produced by the yeast fermentation. Industrial CO2 is not permitted.

 

What about in pubs? They're not hooking kegs up to co2? Or is that ok because the pub is not the brewer? It all gets very murky if you ask me, and no one does.

They would have to be careful. As soon as one grain of malt comes into contact with the water it is now wort, so no gypsum!

 

Good point on the pubs, but they are mainly pushing the beer with CO2, not adding carbonation.

When added to water, gypsum dissolves into the Ca and SO4 ions. But you are right, not into the mash.

 

I think you overstated that by a factor of 10. $100 to $200 is more typical for a home RO system. You'll probably want to add a bigger tank for another $75 or so, but $1,000 is way out of the ballpark, even for a professionally installed system.

 

It hammered the point home. totally needed

 

Those of you that use distilled water: I bought a distiller and it costs me about $.40 to make a gallon of distilled water. It distilled water at about a gallon at a time. I store it in old gallon containers and in 5 gallon buckets. Works well. However, the distiller produces a lot of heat. Great to help heat the house in the winter, not so great in the summer...

It was $250 from amazon

 

There is no cart or horse in brewing. All controllable variables should be treated equally if the intention is to brew the best beer possible.
I buy RO water from my local grocer that has always tested below 5ppm for the astounding price of $1.50 per 5 gallons.

 

You can buy a 75g per day 5 stage RO system for $149....I bought one when I used to be into marine-reef ornimentals. RO systems have become pretty cheap.

Depending on the quality or lack there of, of input water the filters will last 3-4 months. In the long run a RO system will be much cheaper then buying gallons of water from the grocery store if you brew alot....

 

I think this is the answer that Cadets3 should embrace.

You might be able to convince me that extremes in the baseline variability of RO could lead to differences in a soft water style like Czech pils, but I am skeptical.

I think products like hops and malt will have greater batch to batch variability, with greater impact on the beer, than the variability you encounter in the RO water. Time spent worrying about baseline variability in RO will be better spent by tasting grains and smelling hops. This assumes one is already do everything possible to minimize the effects of variability in yeast quality, right?

 

Any recommendations as to a RO system? I will buy one, as it will be more convenient, and the water can be used for coffee and other uses.