Water Filters?

[Jim Blockley]

Hi Folks,

I've heard tell that using an in-line water filter for the liquor prior to boiling can help remove some of the nasties from my tap water. Can anyone suggest what type to go for? I'll only be using it for drawing the water for brewing (all grain), so don't need it to be plumbed into my supply permanently.

A link to where I could buy something suitable would be grand.

I haven't gone as far as testing ph yet, so thought this could be a step in the right direction. Saying that, Jim recommends a campden tablet in the liquor, so I'll try that on my next brew.

Thanks in advance.

[AnthonyUK]

Until you know what your water is like I would wait.
What are you hoping to remove?

[Jim Blockley]

Good advice, because the answer is I don't know. Chlorine I suppose. I've just been boiling all my liquor beforehand up to now and I seem to be making pretty good beer!

[orlando]

It's an expensive way of removing chlorine and chloramines when half a campden tablet added to the brewing liqour is enough for a standard brew length. Boiling your water is a simple and reasonable method of reducing alkalinity but can be something of a sledge hammer to crack a nut as it may remove more or less than you want. If you want to get into water treatment then I suggest you get some cold towels to wrap round your head and a dark room and start by reading this. Then have a look through this thread. Good luck, if you survive all that you will improve your beer or fry your brain .

[SiHoltye]

I used campden for a long time, 200 brews. An activated carbon filter has made a world of difference to my beers. I got mine from http://www.ontapsystems.co.uk and chose conversion kit 2. His name is Mark. I think screwfix do a system too, as well as others though these filters are solid and eliminate the risk of channelling through the medium. Tell him Simon sent you if you do.

[AnthonyUK]

Hi Si,
I don't doubt your perceived improvements but from what I have read an active carbon filter will basically only remove chlorine.

Carbon filters are most effective at removing chlorine, sediment, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), taste and odor from water. They are not effective at removing minerals, salts, and dissolved inorganic compounds.

So it will not have any effect of pH, alkalinity or mineral content.

[Eric]

I have a particular kind of filter in my water supply. When we revamped the kitchen I thought it a good idea to agree with my wife that she needed this really expensive, good looking, tap that just so happened to incorporated an equally expensive filter, after all, her tea (in truth, my beer) would be all the better. Well she was the first to comment there was no change and when it came to ordering the second replacement cartridge at forty something pounds, we stopped using it.
A bit of campden tablet is put in my liquor, when I remember, and a few specks of sodium metabisulphide in vessels after they've been rinsed with tap water when sanitised with a bleach solution, but I can't taste any influence of chlorine in my beer when it's been overlooked. There is no doubt there are brewers whose beers are adversely affected by the presence of chlorine, but I'm convinced from reading the majority of threads where chlorine is thought to be the cause of a bad result is due to infection. The result is sometime brief periods of paranoia.
I was raised drinking beers that were brewed in areas with high mineral content waters. The main brewer in this town once bought out a smaller concern, it was said, for its well and water, not because of what that water didn't contain, but for what it did. Brewers would malt their barley (or buy) to suit their water whereas now we have a tendency to alter our water to suit the malt we use. I saw this happening in this same brewery when the large shallow rectangular fermenters were sidelined by tall conicals and the output switched to what I thought of as a perculiar tasting fizzy stuff. Many younger friends were raised on such products and when one visited last week he had a sample of a recent brew, one that was fermented with a yeast that stripped out nearly all the taste except perhaps that of the water used in its making. His comment was it was amongst the best of mine he'd tasted.
If you are making good beer, carry on, make what you want and like. Let those that want shout from the rooftops that you can't make good beer unless you add X or if it does contain Y. When you find you can't quite get a particular style or flavour then is the time to investigate, but don't ever forget, it might be nothing at all to do with your water.

[Jim Blockley]

Thanks for all your advice folks. For the time being I'll use 1 Campden in 45l and a brief boil. Keeping it simple will compensate for a tiny fluctuation in quality. The murky world of water treatment can wait a while...

[Nofolkandchance]

To be honest, you say your beers good already so why would you start to mess around with your water ?

There's a lot of information to take in and many considerations you need to think about depending on the style of beer when adjusting you water profile.

Keep it simple. Id go campden tablet and then water analysis at Murphys for £18.00 http://www.murphyhomebrew.com/laborator ... d_104.html

If it improves thereafter its money well spent

[SiHoltye]

Hi Si,
I don't doubt your perceived improvements but from what I have read an active carbon filter will basically only remove chlorine.

Carbon filters are most effective at removing chlorine, sediment, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), taste and odor from water. They are not effective at removing minerals, salts, and dissolved inorganic compounds.

So it will not have any effect of pH, alkalinity or mineral content.

OK, but I'm not saying it does anything. I'm just saying it makes my beer taste better when used in place of adding campden. That's based on taste buds.

[Nunez100]

I was raised drinking beers that were brewed in areas with high mineral content waters. The main brewer in this town once bought out a smaller concern, it was said, for its well and water, not because of what that water didn't contain, but for what it did. Brewers would malt their barley (or buy) to suit their water whereas now we have a tendency to alter our water to suit the malt we use.

Sounds like a good approach - do you know what sorts of malts they were choosing?

[Eric]

I was raised drinking beers that were brewed in areas with high mineral content waters. The main brewer in this town once bought out a smaller concern, it was said, for its well and water, not because of what that water didn't contain, but for what it did. Brewers would malt their barley (or buy) to suit their water whereas now we have a tendency to alter our water to suit the malt we use.

Sounds like a good approach - do you know what sorts of malts they were choosing?

The purpose of that statement was in counter to increasing advice to eliminate much or most of the minerals and anything else present in ones water supply as the route to better beer. There will be waters with problems, but I think it unlikely such circumstances exist frequently among those on UK water company supplies. For concern over chlorine, add a bit of campden tablet, I do this without fail every time I remember.
Imagine a novice cook, supplied with good equipment and ingredients. The first attempts not as good as hoped, advice is taken and changes made and before long finds their produce can be severed by teeth and tasted with delight. It can be wrongly assumed all improvements were due to advice received which have by then readily passed to others while the the cook overlooks he is no longer a novice. So it can be with making beer.
The brewery was Vaux, that comment from visit some fifty years ago which started high in a building with a floor covered in sprouting barley. (There is a truly wonderful thread on malting here by Subsonic.) No doubt that the brewery did a significant amount of water treatment then, but also retained the facilities to kiln their malt to match the alkalinity of their water. The then owning/managing family were (still are) farmers and possibly may have supplied barley to the brewery.
Meanwhile, for that one time novice cook to become great, he may find it frequently necessary to go back to first priciples and check some conclusions.

[Matt]

Meanwhile, for that one time novice cook to become great, he may find it frequently necessary to go back to first priciples and check some conclusions.

As a lurker in this section may I say, without intended sicophancy, how much I enjoy your gently put wisdoms Eric

[Clibit]

Meanwhile, for that one time novice cook to become great, he may find it frequently necessary to go back to first priciples and check some conclusions.

As a lurker in this section may I say, without intended sicophancy, how much I enjoy your gently put wisdoms Eric

+1, cheers Eric, you explain things very clearly and common sense-ibly. New word.