I searched the forum and since most of the threads on RO water systems are 3-5 years old I thought I would ask if anyone has any recommendations on a system that would be good for brewing. I have city water however it can come from 1 or a combination of 5 different sources so depending on a water report would be almost impossible.
I am getting lazy about going to the grocery store to buy my 10 gallons of Poland spring water for each batch and thought it would be pretty nice to be able to accumulate 10 -15 gallons of RO water prior to brew day. Since I usually end up adding a little salts to the spring water I may as well get RO water for a base and build from that.
Please let me know if anyone has any experience with these systems.
Thank you !
Tom
From my experience you get what you pay for. I’ve looked at cheaper units all the way to high end units. Cheaper units were just that, cheaply made. Luckily my brother works for Kinetico and hooked my up. I also just had him install a 10gal tank and can collect 7gal at a time. Collecting water for brew day is no problem now.
Not sure about your budget but one thing to keep in mind is that if your water is hard it will blast through filters quickly. Softening the water before filtering helps the filters last much longer.
Thanks Loopie, I have seen units for a bit under 300 or so that appeared to be good… But I am not up to speed on these units so I am not sure if they are what I need. I don’t think my city water is very hard.
I agree I would prefer to buy something of good quality, or not bother at all and keep buying spring water.
If I got one I would also send a before filter and after water sample to wards for analysis just to be sure of the water I will base my brewing on and because it would be interesting to see.
In my experience, a RO system only needs to cost somewhere in the $100 to $200 range to provide the kind of performance and service you need for homebrewing. The system only needs 3 stages, particulate filter, carbon filter, and the RO membrane.
There is a summary of recommended RO system features on the Bru’n Water Facebook page. You’ll have to search through a lot of posts since there is a bunch of other good information on that site.
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Thank you for the information. I will check out the Facebook page and get some education on this. Seems like a good solution to me so far.
Its quite like a blank page for your water… Easier to tinker with for the different types of brews you wish to make… Sneezles61
Did see a nice system at amazon for about 300$ makes up to 100 gal.
