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.