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Water Treatment Equipment for Blending/Product Water


Josh

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Having just finished the book "Water" by John Palmer, chapter 8 discusses different equipment for treating water to for brewing operations.

I deducted from this chapter that a full blown water treatment process utilizes the following steps:

1. Sediment filter

2. UV Degradation

3. Granular Activated Carbon (GAC)

4. Mixed bed Ion Exchange (Deionizer)

5. Reverse Osmosis

6. Deaeration

It seems to me like this might be a bit overkill, but I was interested in this forum's thoughts as to which of these (or which combinations) are used for your distilleries.

For myself, I think that UV degradation + GAC + RO is probably sufficient, but go back and forth on the idea of adding a deionizer to that process.

In reading about RO+DI water, it seems that it's generally not healthy for the human body (called "hungry water") because it absorbs nutrients and minerals from whatever it touches, but then thinking about this further, in flavored spirits (gin for example), I wonder if it would allow for higher suspension of more flavor compounds without as much louching or potential cloudiness. I'd be interested if anyone has any general thoughts on this theory as well.

Lastly, does anyone use deaeration to remove dissolved gasses prior to bottling to reduce any potential oxygenation in the bottle?

Thank you in advance for any thoughts you'd be willing to share on this matter.

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I'm puzzled by the vilification of RO water.

Without getting into the chemistry over the whole thing (because I always sucked at chemistry), what I do know anecdotally is that water makers on boats, ships & submarines are all RO. There's literally billions of gallons of the stuff consumed every year on the oceans of the world (including a fair amount by me) and ain't nobody died from it.

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Hogwash psuedoscience, the problem is there is some truth to it, but in reality the impact is so minuscule it is irrelevant. Drinking RO+DI is not harmful - however, there are two issues. RO+DI should not be stored for more than a day or two, as it no longer contains disinfectants. It should not be considered potable in mid-term/long-term storage without additional treatment. This is why gallon jugs of DI water at the supermarket have the "not for human consumption" label on them. I suspect many misinterpret the warning and associate it with the mineral myth, and not the real-world microbiological aspect. We get more than our daily requirements of trace minerals from diet, water isn't considered a source of nutrition. For reference, the average American consumes somewhere around 3000mg of sodium a day, typical water has 50mg/liter of sodium, the equivalency is nearly 16 gallons of water. Now, we shouldn't be eating 3000mg, but that's another thread.

Also, RO+DI has no taste, but when you drink it, it sometimes tastes pretty bad, other times good. The "flavor" of RO+DI is really being driven by the fact that it has no taste, but will do a good job of dissolving whatever you had left in your mouth from lunch, and with no off-flavors to mask it, you get to enjoy your meal a second time.

I'm puzzled by the vilification of RO water.

Without getting into the chemistry over the whole thing (because I always sucked at chemistry), what I do know anecdotally is that water makers on boats, ships & submarines are all RO. There's literally billions of gallons of the stuff consumed every year on the oceans of the world (including a fair amount by me) and ain't nobody died from it.

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Distilled water is perfectly safe to drink. People (most likely NOT from a science/biology background) argue that distilled water is so pure that it will pull out all your electrolytes due to the "desire" for the two substances (the water, and everything in your body) to equalize.

The difference between tap water and distilled water isn't that profound in most areas, the dissolved minerals in the water are miniscule and compared to what is in your body already there might as well not be any. It most likely wont leach calcium from your bones (a common myth), because the amount of calcium in your blood contains somewhere around +10x the levels of calcium of tap water. Blood (normally) contains >100mg/l of calcium while tap water normally contains 1-100 mg/l. By this logic most people's tap water would be "robbing" them of calcium and other nutrients.

If anything, too much calcium (and other minerals) in drinking water can be more of a health concern especially to those who are prone to kidney stones.

tl;dr as long as you aren't chugging like 5 gallons of distilled water a day without any meals, you will be fine.

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