Water Filtration

all about mashing and fermenting grains

Re: Water Filtration

Postby PeterC » Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:10 pm

I don't think you need to worry about your water too much. The e.coli are pathogenic organisms and should never be present in drinking water. That is why they test for it. Naegleria is an amoeba found in warm unchlorinated water like in pools and ponds. Bad stuff but not in chlorinated supplies. Most of the other stuff are salts. Yeast actually need them in small quantities and some people add gypsum and epsom salts to give them more magnesium or calcium. You have high hardness (calcium and magnesium) high alkalinity (lots of carbonates and bicarbonates) so that is why your pH is above 7 (slightly alkaline). This is why your mate cannot put fish in it. Softening will remove calcium and magnesium (which cause scaling in pipes) and replace with sodium. Not much benefit. The main thing you should do when fermenting is to adjust your pH by adding citric acid. Many recipes call for citric acid to lower the pH to 5.5 You may need to add a bit more than some people to get to this. Buy a pH meter.

You don't mention chlorine level but the yeast can handle small amounts. Otherwise pour your water the day before and let it sit or even aerate it a bit and the chlorine will dissipate.

None of the salts are going to distil over so not all that relevant for the ferment of distilled products. What you cut your spirit with is the important bit. Rain water is good.
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Re: Water Filtration

Postby A&O » Tue Oct 24, 2017 1:36 am

Thanks PeterC for the great explanation. It’s certainly put my mind at ease.
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Re: Water Filtration

Postby Wineleader » Tue Oct 24, 2017 3:00 am

We have tank water here and unfortunately the trees close buy drop a lot of muck so filtering and boiling the water is the way to go for us. Getting the tank water to 80 degrees for 3 minutes will sanitise your water suitable for drinking.
As the water is heating you can certainly smell the organic material... actually stinks.... mostly Gum and Blackwood close by to the shed.
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Re: Water Filtration

Postby hillzabilly » Tue Oct 24, 2017 2:19 pm

There is only one solution ta water filtration that is relevant for every location and use in my opinion,after a demo at the Dowerin field show were I watched the mankiest stinky water filtered for drinking(wich I personally drank afterwards) was a reverse osmosis unit,I bought a Boss 020 unit with a digital TDS display as a result,not cheap but for us with tropical aquariums and specialist plants and distilling it has given fantastic quality and consistency,I will also add that I am a padantic mother f#*cker and pride myself on quality and consistency wich it nails every time ,down sides are cost and slow output and a large amount of waste water.Not for everybody but ifn ya haveing problems with ferments and water quality ,it will be a solution.Some mineral and spring water I have used caused a cloudiness for the dilution of final product,and after useing it in the kettle for 2 years there was not a skeric of buildup at all,as allways your choice.cheers hillzabilly ;-)
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Re: Water Filtration

Postby Kenster » Thu Nov 02, 2017 7:18 pm

Chlorine will evaporate quite quickly and if left for a day or so, is no drama. But as they add ammonia to chlorine into the water catchment, that creates Chloramine/s... that will NOT go away...Unless you treat it with aprox. 1 gm of Potassium Hypochlorite per 40 lit of water.
This rapidly oxidizes the water and removes/converts the chlorine and chloramines within a very short time, minutes, i am lead to believe. The residual is not an issue for the yeast (nor us) and is the quickest and cheapest fix.
I am sceptical of the lovers of store bought "Spring Water"... what is really in it, and how pure is this spring? Does the plastic container leach anything into it... too deep?, maybe so.
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