Home Distiller

I'd much rather use our well water for mashes and washes but after testing we found we have an Extremely high amount of this manganese in our water. We cannot drink it and after a $3500 filtering system, we still can't get it out.
But because it would be distilled, would it be OK? I don't understand the info I find on wiki. Would it put off a gas or infuse something in the distillate.
If you guys could shed some light on this iron like mineral (Mn) I would appreciate it.
For those who know, I'm still not sure if I can get back to distilling or not but as this is my passion, I have to at least read and/or entertain the idea.
Thanks

Iv read "Berkey" water filter systems remove like 99%ish. Of manganese . Not sure about price. Softners may help but I doubt it.

If you’re willing to spend a bit more cash, you can use a BrewRO reverse osmosis system. They strip literally EVERYTHING out of the water. They’re the size of a briefcase and produce a little over a gallon per hour. This is what I use for everything from beer to bourbon mash. I even checked it’s performance with a total dissolved solids meter, 0.0! Nothing in there.

I moved to a home with a well and wanted much finer control over my water profiles for brewing beer. I used to be on a municipal water supply at the old home with very soft water, the new well water was pretty gross when we moved in. We had an unbelievable amount of iron and sulfur in the water, which we later fixed with an aerator system.

When I know I’m gonna brew, I just turn the thing on a day in advance to collect water.

I’ve made some of the best beer to date with my BrewRO water setup. Makes predicting a mash ph pretty damn easy too!

Thanks for the info guys.
It's much appreciated. I'll definitely check into both.
Cheers!

Distillation will certainly remove manganese.

You could produce gluconic acid during ferment, which is used in food production so its no big deal. The manganese itself may help fermentation, any residual manganese will stay in your backset. You will produce some manganese dioxide, that's covered in this post: viewtopic.php?t=8043

You could produce manganese sulfate during ferment or distilation, its poisonous but should stay in the pot. If you have any residual chlorine in your equipment (some people use it to clean... don't do this) you could produce manganese tetrachloride which is also toxic but should stay in the pot.

Overall I don't think the maganese will be an issue for distillation, it is a protective antioxidant and can help with your ferments.

You have another option if you are concerned, which is to use your still to distill the water prior to using it to brew (handy to have a big still!). That will drop all of the manganese and salts out of your water. You can then add brewing salts to create the desired profile.