Water from own well

[DEMPSEY]

Pet  shops have RO water as its best for some fish and so you can buy it from them. RO or reverse osmosis is water with all the minerals stripped out and so it is simple H2O. A blank canvass as it's being called because the good and the not so good are taken out so you need to then add back the salts that are gone. In a hard water situation by diluting with RO helps to blend out some of the hardness .

[auralabuse]

Pet  shops have RO water as its best for some fish and so you can buy it from them. RO or reverse osmosis is water with all the minerals stripped out and so it is simple H2O. A blank canvass as it's being called because the good and the not so good are taken out so you need to then add back the salts that are gone. In a hard water situation by diluting with RO helps to blend out some of the hardness .

What Dempsey said

[neoanto]

You can buy an RO filtration system (approx €180) or I think someone said that you can get RO water from pet shops that deal with fish. Its pretty cheap i think someone said?

[Shaun]

As a microbiologist I just want to jump in here. One thing to be sure to do if you're using well water is to make sure you boil it properly. Particularly as certain parts of Ireland have a Clostridium difficile problem. C. diff's a spore forming organism that can survive even boil temperatures for a few minutes (About 8 minutes).
1) You won't have a problem with it as you've boiled your wort for an hour but just be careful not to top up your fermenter to the mark with cold unboiled water after from your well supply as you could make yourself very sick or contaminant your batch with other nasties.
2) Make sure to use proper concentrations of sanitiser (don't skip on it to save money!) when adding well water to your starzan as it will also have a higher background bacterial load than treated mains water. If you don't use proper amount of starsan/disinfectant. Your equipment may not sanitise properly due to the large amount of organisms present in the water and the concentration not being high enough to kill them. Finally with "chlorine" based (bleach) sanitisers make sure to add a little bit more than recommended as organic matter found in abundance in well/rain water bind to the chlorine in your santiser and reduce it's effectivity.

Sorry if this is stating the obvious but I've seen some nasty cases of bacterial poisoning from well water and wort is pretty much a perfect growth medium for every nasty individual you can think off!
Shaun

[RichC]

@grim reality, I've a well with really high iron, lime and some choli forms.  I've an ion exchange softener which it sounds like you have. Don't bother trying to brew with the softened water and it'll depend on a water analysis whether the water direct from the well is suitable. (Mine isnt). A proper full analysis from an accredited lab (such as public analysts) cost close to the cost of a 5 stage ro system.(I think I paid 160ish for full mineral/bacterial analysis) I brewed with the softened water for a while and it caused me terrible problems. I'd say buy a 5 stage ro system and you'll have a blank slate to create brew specific water profiles.

[auralabuse]

@grim reality, I've a well with really high iron, lime and some choli forms.  I've an ion exchange softener which it sounds like you have. Don't bother trying to brew with the softened water and it'll depend on a water analysis whether the water direct from the well is suitable. (Mine isnt). A proper full analysis from an accredited lab (such as public analysts) cost close to the cost of a 5 stage ro system.(I think I paid 160ish for full mineral/bacterial analysis) I brewed with the softened water for a while and it caused me terrible problems. I'd say buy a 5 stage ro system and you'll have a blank slate to create brew specific water profiles.

I got an ro system recently and have a question about building a water profile.   So say I'm looking at beersmith and a water profile calls for calcium 7ppm magnesium 2ppm.  How do I actually achieve that.  I thought beersmith had a tool to convert say 7ppm equals a half teaspoon per gallon or something to that effect but I can't find anything like that.

[auralabuse]

I just tried  www.brewersfriend.com,  it doesn't seem to suggest amounts of minerals to add to ro water to build a certain profile.   Anyone here use a specific one that they can recommend?

[RichC]

I don't use beersmith.  I follow the brewing water chemistry primer on HBT. It's an excellent starting point an AJ Delange answers the more specific Qs

[Drum]

@grim reality, I've a well with really high iron, lime and some choli forms.  I've an ion exchange softener which it sounds like you have. Don't bother trying to brew with the softened water and it'll depend on a water analysis whether the water direct from the well is suitable. (Mine isnt). A proper full analysis from an accredited lab (such as public analysts) cost close to the cost of a 5 stage ro system.(I think I paid 160ish for full mineral/bacterial analysis) I brewed with the softened water for a while and it caused me terrible problems. I'd say buy a 5 stage ro system and you'll have a blank slate to create brew specific water profiles.

I got an ro system recently and have a question about building a water profile.   So say I'm looking at beersmith and a water profile calls for calcium 7ppm magnesium 2ppm.  How do I actually achieve that.  I thought beersmith had a tool to convert say 7ppm equals a half teaspoon per gallon or something to that effect but I can't find anything like that.

1 PPM is equal to 1 milligram (mg) per litre so it's a farily easy conversion.
(required ppm) x total water volume in litres = weight required in mg

Say you want 7ppm of whatever in 20 litres it's 7mg x 20 L = 140mg or 0.14g.  The tricky part will be weighing out such small amounts without a very good scales 

[auralabuse]

@grim reality, I've a well with really high iron, lime and some choli forms.  I've an ion exchange softener which it sounds like you have. Don't bother trying to brew with the softened water and it'll depend on a water analysis whether the water direct from the well is suitable. (Mine isnt). A proper full analysis from an accredited lab (such as public analysts) cost close to the cost of a 5 stage ro system.(I think I paid 160ish for full mineral/bacterial analysis) I brewed with the softened water for a while and it caused me terrible problems. I'd say buy a 5 stage ro system and you'll have a blank slate to create brew specific water profiles.

I got an ro system recently and have a question about building a water profile.   So say I'm looking at beersmith and a water profile calls for calcium 7ppm magnesium 2ppm.  How do I actually achieve that.  I thought beersmith had a tool to convert say 7ppm equals a half teaspoon per gallon or something to that effect but I can't find anything like that.

1 PPM is equal to 1 milligram (mg) per litre so it's a farily easy conversion.
(required ppm) x total water volume in litres = weight required in mg

Say you want 7ppm of whatever in 20 litres it's 7mg x 20 L = 140mg or 0.14g.  The tricky part will be weighing out such small amounts without a very good scales

Ah ok,  didn't realize that.  Thanks for that,  have to get myself a digital scales.  Nothing dodgy about that arriving with loads of little bags of hops

[DEMPSEY]

In beersmith I put my RO water in as a zero additions on my system. When you open beersmith go to "inserts", there you can set the salts and such to 0. When you are then building your recipe e.g. AIPA go to your water list from around the world and pick Los Angeles CA East and add to your recipe. Bingo the system then lists the salts needed to be added. To make life easier I went through the list of water profiles and picked the ones I liked and copied and renamed them to make it easier to pick. Los Angeles CA East is now Wolstan AIPA and Edinburg Scotland is now Wolstan Nut Brown Ale.

[auralabuse]

In beersmith I put my RO water in as a zero additions on my system. When you open beersmith go to "inserts", there you can set the salts and such to 0. When you are then building your recipe e.g. AIPA go to your water list from around the world and pick Los Angeles CA East and add to your recipe. Bingo the system then lists the salts needed to be added. To make life easier I went through the list of water profiles and picked the ones I liked and copied and renamed them to make it easier to pick. Los Angeles CA East is now Wolstan AIPA and Edinburg Scotland is now Wolstan Nut Brown Ale.

Ah,  I had a mess around with it alright but I'm not quite at the build my own recipe stage of brewing right now.  Just started all grain so I'm getting the ready made grain recipes

[johnrm]

I do similar to Mr D.
I have my base profile, then have 3 target water profiles set for beginners styles...
Stouts
Ales
Lagers

There is nothing to stop you doing this for every different style.