Reverse Osmosis - Any advice on buying?

[orlando]

On another thread, which I think you have seen, Lars has talked about his experience and the rate of flow appears to me the only downside as the economics of buying RO or bottled water just doesn't stack up. Looking at his remarks if you can only average 5 litres an hour you could still collect enough the day beofre a brewday as long as you can either remember to shut it off when you have enough or you look at the shut off system I've mentioned.

Have to say I'm pretty convinced by all this and the benfits of making water treatment so much simpler is attractive. The hardness of my water means boiling or CRS. Boiling is a pain, as I then have to pump up to the HLT. CRS does not reduce the carbonate particularly cheaply either. I think I can ultimately save more time and money this way and simplify things into the bargain.

[barneey]

Yep i`m leaning more towards the system you have mentioned for £40.00 to trial, petshop route when also buying the container is half that cost anyway. My tap water here is hard at 238 Alkalinity & 184 Hardness so I do tend to use quite abit of CRS on brewdays, that and my water report is now nearly 9 months old.

[barneey]

Well it looks like my "orlando" RO system has arrived today, so will be testing it out sometime soon.

Cheers
C

[orlando]

Well it looks like my "orlando" RO system has arrived today, so will be testing it out sometime soon.

Cheers
C

Ooh! Now I am jealous. Did have some luck on ebay though and won myself a really nice microscope for £75 so I can at least now begin to build my yeast lab RO up next

[orlando]

Well it looks like my "orlando" RO system has arrived today, so will be testing it out sometime soon.

Cheers
C

Ooh! Now I am jealous. Did have some luck on ebay though and won myself a really nice microscope for £75 so I can at least now begin to build my yeast lab RO up next Can you confirm which one it was and make sure we get a full report on how it performs and what not to do etc!

[barneey]

Yep will do when I get to use the thing, upto my eyeballs with hop drying at the moment

[graemet]

I've got an ro unit from ro-man from when I had fish recently. With a pump it does about 10 l an hour, and the online tds (total dissolved solids) meter shows it at 0 on the way out, prior to the deionisation stage. Wasn't cheap, but quite shiny. The meter is an essential add-on. You know for a fact your unit is working well.

[orlando]

What model is it and where did you get it?

[graemet]

I bought the pump off eBay, and the tds meters are on there too. The ro unit itself is the 100 gallon per day unit with deionisation after the reverse osmosis. My water pressure is terrible, or was in the last place. Not tried the filter here yet. The pump was essential before.

[Aleman]

Wallybrew
A typical simple brew for me is pale :crystal 100:6. I know that there is something that is preventing my pH paper from giving the correct reading. I have all of the leading manufacturers papers. All give VERY low readings for tap water and mash.

When I test water at home and in my local area (half mile radius) I get low pH using pH papers. When I travel over a mile I get normal (around pH 7) readings.

When I get pH readings of my tap water from independent labs I get "normal" readings.

I will start a new thread asking for advice on pH Meter.

Thanks for your help.

As both Graham and Wallybrew have said a RO unit is only of benefit to those that live in an area with lots of minerals in it. I suspect that you do not as your water is 'soft' . . . Very much like mine.

As I see it you have too issues here

1) pH papers are next to useless at the levels of accuracy we require.
2) a 'cheap' pH meter is about as good as pH papers, i.e. not very good at all.
3) the pH of water from the tap is completely and utterly irrelevant!!! so asking a water company why your mash pH is out is a waste of time . . .the tap water pH falls within the range of acceptable drinking water and that is what they are bothered with!

If you are brewing a paleish ale and from your pale to crystal grist ratio then with soft water you should get an acceptable mash pH, if it is falling too low then add a tsp of gypsum to the mash . . . with progressively darker malts then you may have to look at adding some form of carbonate

[mentaldental]

Also make sure you look at the (scary) costs of the consumables before you go ahead. It ain't cheap and I suspect buying bottled supermarket water or RO from an aquarium shop would be much cheaper for brewing purposes.

Yes and no.

I have used RO for several years (for work). There are three consumable items.

1. Solids filter (every 6 month). A few quid.
2. Carbon filter. -ditto-
3. RO membrane. This is the expensive bit but should last years provided you replace the carbon filter and backflush regularly.

So the costs are pretty low and I my case it was cheaper than buying water.

[orlando]

Down to £275 now! It says that it adds back certain minerals but not what, any ideas?

[mabrungard]

Now that I live in the land of hard water and my city softens the water supply with salt, I have to brew with RO. I live only 2 hours from Gordon Strong and you might note my name in the Acknowledgements of his book. From what I can tell, our Midwestern US water is like a lot of UK water...rock hard! Brewing with RO water is a nice way to create great beer here.

The original question indicated that the water was 'soft'. One thing to note is that water hardness (or lack of it) is not an impediment to brewing good beer. Its alkalinity that is the biggest concern to brewers. But, since water has to balance ionically, its a little more likely that your water has low alkalinity to match with that low hardness. So as others have mentioned, RO water may not be the panacea you are looking for. Is a complete report available for your water?

All this concern is based on the results of paper pH strips. I can assure you that they are quite unreliable. If you must use strips, then you should get ColorpHast plastic strips. At least they are reliable, but they read about 0.2 to 0.3 units low. You can work around that problem.

The cost to upkeep a RO unit is not that high. I notice that some have mentioned the need to frequently change the particulate and carbon filters. In the case of the particulate filters, there is no need to change them on a frequent basis. They should ONLY be changed when the WASTE flow is dropping off. That indicates the filter(s) is too plugged to supply the membrane. There is no problem with allowing that filter to plug up. It just means that you won't get the rated production.

Replacement of the carbon filter is more important and needs to be more regular. Chlorine and chloramine will destroy the RO membrane, so you must keep the carbon filter up to date so that those disinfectants don't make it to the membrane. They don't instantly destroy the membrane, so its not a big deal if there is a little breakthrough. But the carbon should be changed on a regular basis. At the typical low flow rate through that filter, it should be capable of treating 10,000 gallons easily. But that does not mean 10,000 gallons of treated RO water. That is 10,000 gallons of total water supplied to the unit. Remember that RO units waste a lot of water while creating the RO product.

Another thing that EVERY RO water user should have in their possession is a Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter so that they can check the quality of the water from the RO system. This especially applies to those of you that are buying your RO water from a machine or other supplier. The TDS reading will alert you when the membrane needs to be replaced on your system or you need to find another RO seller. I suggest that a TDS reading of 25 ppm or more would be cause for alarm (and replacement).

All of these considerations should ease the amount of consumable replacements in a RO system. There is no reason that a home RO system should cost more than buying a similar quantity of water from a vendor.

Enjoy!