Water minerals

[bourbonstill]

Hey guys,

What should be removed from city water? I know iron should be filtered out, but what else?

Will fluoride harm the product?

Are there any "good" minerals?

Thanks!

[Sherman]

I am a little confused. I have heard over and over that the iron should be removed from water. My well water has 7.3 ppm iron. I saw a post on here earlier say that they wanted to get the iron down to a rediculous low of 750 ppb.

Isn't it a fact that barley malt has nearly 450ppm iron? The iron in my water is less than 1.6% of the iron in the barley malt. '

My well water makes really great beer withough treatment. Someone enlighten me.

[Panoscape]

Regarding iron, I feel it's all just marketing hoopla from Jack Daniels. Filter chlorine out or just let it sit for a day or two. Our water is amazing here in Bend so not much is needed to do to it. If yours isn't, best you RO and/or carbon treat it.

Sorry I have to brag a little :-) go Bend! maybe that's why we have over 13 breweries in our town...

[stevea]

No, the ridiculous part is water with 7.3ppm of iron. All the surface water in my region has <50ppb or iron, and my

home well is 30ppb. Some wells here have iron tho'. The WHO suggest 2ppm as an upper limit. EU municipa

waters prefer <100ppb and accept up to 1ppm. One of the local cities gets water from wells with ~150ppb and after treatment they ship water with <10ppb iron. You have a LOT of iron.

Iron can't be filtered out mechanically - you can use one of the oxidation processes (green clay or permanganate salts) and a settling tank, or you can use an RO filter to remove 90-99% of it.

Barley contains ~20-40ppm of Iron. Malting reduces the iron content to half that amount. Nowhere near 450ppm.

Keep in mind that the iron in grains is not all free iron - only a fraction will ever appear in solution.

BARREL DILUTION WATER:

Iron in the barrel dilution water is a major crime. ~20ppb would be a good target. Use RO water if you must. Note that a small RO unit acting on your high iron (7.3ppm) will NOT drop enough iron to make usable dilution water IMO. That is not marketing hoopla - it's from 'The Science and Technology of Whiskies' by Piggott, et al, that iron will discolor whiskey and create a negative flavors.

MASH/BREW WATER:

Significant Iron (or copper) in the mash/brew water negatively impacts enzymatic mash reactions, inhibits yeast, and catalyzes oxidation reactions to produce off-flavors and aromas. Truly tiny amounts (a few ppb) of iron copper and others are needed as enzyme co-factors for yeast growth. For beer brewing iron levels above 1ppm are completely unacceptable and zero is preferred.

CLEANING WATER:

High free iron levels in water lead to increased corrosion or pitting of metals, esp at high temps like a boiler.

That level of iron in your water implies an underground iron source (often associated with a limestone shelves) and if your water also contains sulfates (very likely) then some bacteria can live off the energy from oxidizing iron, and reducing sulfates to sulfides. This gives rise to the "rotten egg" aroma in some iron rich well waters. The problem can be temporarily cured by sanitizing the well with chlorine.

===

As far as water quality - entire chapters are regularly write non the topic. The very quick outline ....

Microbiologically clean. Not much of the common metals Iron, Copper, Nickel, Tin. A little more Manganese (few ppm) is OK. Nitrites or Nitrates imply farm runoff.

The major ions (Ca, Mg, Sodium, Potassium, carbonates (CO3), sulfates, chloride) and Alkalinity & total Hardness should be measured.

The carbonates add basic buffering (just like baking soda) so you'll need to either mash carefully, or reduce the carbonates or add acids (like setback) to get a proper mash pH & fermentation pH.

The Calcium(Ca) and to a lesser extent Magnesium(Mg) impact the phytase reaction in the mash tun and lower the mash pH. So these can, in effect replace acids in overcoming carbonates to a limited extent. You may actually want to add calcium (as gypsum, CalciumSulfate)

The others mostly impact beer flavor, and tho' we distillers care a lot less about that then beer brewers do - it makes sense to use good tasting water so you can judge what is happening in the fementer. If you water tastes metallic (and 7.3ppm iron will taste bad) or salty or bitter/sour - then you need different water.

[Panoscape]

Thanks Stevea! Learning something new is great, much appreciated. BTW, the lead in our water is at 3ppb.

[Sherman]

Barley contains ~20-40ppm of Iron. Malting reduces the iron content to half that amount. Nowhere near 450ppm.

Keep in mind that the iron in grains is not all free iron - only a fraction will ever appear in solution.

I was going by the nutritional analysis provided by Cargil 47mg in 1kg = 47.0 ppm I missed a decimal on the water 0.76 ppm. Was typing from memory. Geriatric mistake. Even though the proportion is rediculous to be worrying about such a small amount of iron for mashing.

I agree whole heartedly about dilution. I would have nothing in dilution water if it were possible.

[stevea]

I was going by the nutritional analysis provided by Cargil 47mg in 1kg = 47.0 ppm I missed a decimal on the water 0.76 ppm. Was typing from memory. Geriatric mistake. Even though the proportion is rediculous to be worrying about such a small amount of iron for mashing.

I agree whole heartedly about dilution. I would have nothing in dilution water if it were possible.

Hi Sherman. 47ppm is pretty high for barley and very high for barley malt. I've seen several research papers

where barley often fall in the 20-25ppm range for raw barley. Wheat often runs up around 40ppm. Still that's

an 'ash' analysis where they completely burn off the hydrocarbs and then chemically assay what is left as

ash. That's not the same as free iron ions available to the mash. Also some of the mash constituents act as

chelation agents and will modestly decrease the levels of free mono-valent metal ions.

But if you calculate from your 47ppm in grain - and say use use grist at a 1:4 ratio (mass) with pure water -

then you have 47/5 = 9.4ppm of Fe ions *if* all the iron ions were free. Most ppl can taste 500ppb (0.5ppm) of free iron and it's clearly nasty at 2ppm. So at 9.4ppm your mash would taste like rusty nail soup. So that s clearly NOT

the case. Most of the iron from grist never gets into solution.

For example ...

http://europepmc.org...3cnzd7qQtC5t5.6

Hard wheat bran contained no butanol extractable or water extractable iron, but approximately 60% of

the iron was extracted by 1 to 1.2 M NaCl or ammonium acetate solution. This salt extractable iron complex was

purified and identified as monoferric phytate.

Not water extractable and requires a strong basic solute or by 'salting in' to extract the monoferric phytate. This

implies it's bound to proteins.

FWIW in my homebrew days I've tasted some beers make with high iron well water and there were truly

bad. Metallic tang reminiscent of blood, and it's not subtle. The iron won't make it through a still but it will make evaluating your wash difficult. I expect at 7ppm you *might* be impacting yeast performance, but that's

guesswork based on the fact that copper is a factor above a couple ppm. The texts say iron can have a

similar impact, but don't specify levels.

===

The $300 brewing texts discuss water & ions and the mash ions, but it's not a concise description.

This amateur brewing book has a very good description of water ions, and also describes the phytase/calcium

mash reaction.

http://www.amazon.co...g/dp/0882665170

This is an amateur brewing online resource that talks about the issues and has some very good calcuation

guidelines.

http://www.howtobrew...hapter15-1.html

hunt thru the several chapters. John Palmer is a friend and the website gets high marks for accuracy, but

the background details are quite simplified (it's for new brewers).

Then keep in mind that we aren't making tasty-hoppped beer - we are making wash. So flavor issues like

sulfate levels impacting hop flavor, of MgSO4 in excess creating sour/bitter taste is a 'don't care' for distillers

except that you probably want to taste/sample the wash for problems.

If i had a choice I'd pick mash water with a fair bit of calcium & magnesium sulphates, maybe a

modest bit of sodium chloride and microscopic pinch of the enzyme co-factor metals; no carbonates,

So medium hardness, but no alkalinity, and a dash of mash/yeast co-factors. A little hardnes in the diluiton

water isn't a problem, but since you don't want much carbonates or sodium and nearly zero iron - then

de-ionized distilled or RO) water is probably the safest choice for dilution..

[pressure9pa]

This is an amateur brewing online resource that talks about the issues and has some very good calcuation

guidelines.

http://www.howtobrew...hapter15-1.html

hunt thru the several chapters. John Palmer is a friend and the website gets high marks for accuracy, but

the background details are quite simplified (it's for new brewers).

Then keep in mind that we aren't making tasty-hoppped beer - we are making wash. So flavor issues like

sulfate levels impacting hop flavor, of MgSO4 in excess creating sour/bitter taste is a 'don't care' for distillers

except that you probably want to taste/sample the wash for problems.

Good link Steve, thanks.

[varocketry]

Has any knowledgeable Gent in the distilling world made a tool like John Palmer's Mash Residual Alkalinity Adjustment Worksheet but tailored for whiskey/whatever profiles?

http://howtobrew.com/section3/Palmers_Mash_RA_ver3ptO.xls

Or his spreadsheet to calculate Mash Ph after application of target grains? His spreadsheet doesn't recognize (offer) CORN as a grain option.

This would be a great tool for beginners looking to refine technique.

[Valerii_Fedorov]

For stableness of vodka in the bottle it is very important point is - in order to content of iron as well as other minerals such as calcium, magnium was minimal. But if to be correct high limit of iron in water for preparing of vodka depend on hardness of water, for instance if hardness is 0-0,20 mg-eqv/liter (or Amirican Degrees of hardness 0-0,004 ppm) allowable content of iron have to be less than 30 mg/liter (or 30 ppm) and if hardness of water is 1,01-1,2 mg-eqv/liter(or Amirican Degrees of hardness 0,02-0,024 ppm) then content of iron have to be lesser than 5 mg/liter (or 5 ppm).

For wine brandy it is very significant to keep content of iron the lower the better, for instance less than 0,5 ppm as iron inclined to form such compounds as tannates of iron that have ib the brandy bluish-grey or even dark grey colour. And the phenomenom is very unwanted one in brandy and cogniac producing.