APEC RO system arrived

My little Apec portable RO system arrived today. I ran it for a few hours and collected about 8 gallons or so into my cooler. I am going to do a quick extract batch of Irish red ale to get more beer in my pipeline.

I had to cut off the faucet connector that came with it as I want to connect to an old laundry connection in the basement or to an outside faucet when it’s nice out. Of course the tubing connecting to the faucet adapter is not exactly compatible with the quick John guest fittings as there is a slight ridge on this tubing so I lived with some dripping into a bucket while I get a couple of inline clamp type fittings to transition to actual 1/4" smooth tubing.

So it seems to work nice, I spent the money to have both my tap water and the new RO water tested at Wards, and I just mailed off the two samples. I am curious how well it works and figured rather than wondering I would suck it up and have the experts test it.
I will post the reports when I get them in case anyone is interested.

3 Likes

Now you need another meter… TDS meter… “total dissolved solids”… now, I don’t do any of this, but that is to help you determine when to swap filters… I’m curious if you can tell difference right from the get-go… Sneezles61

Ya luckily they are pretty cheap. But since this will only be used for brewing I will have a pretty good idea how many gallons have passed through it.

I prob won’t taste any difference… I mainly want it for all grain brewing to know what I have for base water. And hopefully this means the end of lugging 10 gal of spring water home for every batch. It’s largely a convenience thing really.

1 Like

I would believe, once you get your head wrapped around how to manipulate water to coincide with a style, you’ll have arrived at the next level of brewing for you! Sneezles61

Just got my test results back from Ward Labs:

Unfiltered Tap water:

Same water through the APEC Portable RO:

RO seems pretty good to me… although I am a newbee on the water topic.

Just figured I would post the results in case anyone was curious how the RO filter would perform.

That looks great! A nice blank slate for building your ideal water profile.

1 Like

Yes I am happy to at least know where I am starting. If my tap water sources did not change so often I could deal with it but since that is not the case I will use the RO. I should have had the poland spring water tested just for the heck of it, but I am not so sure how stable spring water is either. No more 10 gallon trips to the grocery store is ok with me.

1 Like

Now for the TDS meter… I couldn’t see all that well, but that fell way down… Calcium was almost nothing, and mag wasn’t even worth looking at… Like PC said… blank sheet to start with! Now, have you got some ideas to build up too? Sneezles61

I am looking into some ipa profiles. My wife’s sister and her husband really like the Chinook ipa and like it bitter. So I guess I have to increase the sulfate to chloride ratio and add a bit more Chinook hops early in the boil.

I need to read the water book a couple more times for sure.

1 Like

Don’t worry so much about the ratio of sulfate to chloride, but more the actual values of each and your mash pH. It’s a handy term to discuss more sulfate or less chloride, but the important thing is the actual values in ppm versus the ratio.

Check out brun water’s pale ale profile - it’s a great starting point for an IPA. You don’t have to go full-on Burton for an ipa (although it’s fun!) but the pale ale profile works well. I usually don’t go as high on sulfate as the profile recommends, but that’s personal taste. Don’t have the numbers handy, but I think it has sulfate at 250 ppm? I’m usually at 150 ppm. Just my sweet spot for ipa to my taste. YMMV.

Something I would highly recommend… mash and sparge at pH 5.2. Drop kettle pH to 5.0 before adding your hops. I’ve found that using hard water can lead to a harsh bitterness. Dropping kettle pH to 5.0 can reduce the harshness and lead to a “cleaner” bitter beer.

1 Like

Thanks! Yes I have been looking at that profile. Brulosophy also has an interesting podcast on water.
When lowering the kettle ph, is that done by adding a bit of lactic acid?

There is Lactic and phosphoric acid… I like the Lactic… I got a syringe gizmo from Walgreens… It has teaspoon measures on it… Or was it tablespoon…hhhmmm … just looked… teaspoons, 2.5 in my 13 gallons to get to 5.8 pH… so when I’m doughed in I arrive at 5.2pH. Sneezles61
That should be noted for pale brews…