Home Distiller

I may be over thinking this topic. I have been using distilled water for my fermentations now for the past year. This is getting expensive I must say at a a dollar a gallon. There has to be a better way. Where I live in south east Missouri the water is extremely hard and cant be used. Theres no spring that has soft water like I see on all the shows of moonshiners flowing.

We have abandoned lead mines and high mineral compounds in our wells. You turn on a faucet in the shower and you could be hit by a rock if your not careful.

Could I be using water they sell that's filtered at the car washes and grocery stores they sell for 25 cents a gallon that is considered drinking water. Does anyone else have these issues. I maybe just being tight with this hobby and water purchases.

Just wondering is there a better way.

Any replies on this matter would be helpful.
Thank you
raptor 402

Did you once try it with the hard water? Normally hard water is better than soft water. And minerals are generally beneficial too. Ok, lead probably not...
If you don't have, try it once.
But for diluting your spirits you will need distilled or demineralized water.

Right now I have a water softener and its on a city tap. I need to do some experimenting to see if it will work. I will kill the chlorine in it before use and go from there.

I have been using distilled water for proofing it down.
I made a rip roaring fermentation once with some well water once in my area. I was trying to make wine. It was a flop. I was trying to make banana wine. This was before I got in to distilling. Blew the top off a primary fermentation. what a learning experience that was...

Make sure you check the pH of the hard water. It likely will be quite basic (high pH) due to the limestone (calcium) in it. But, as der wo noted, it should work for fermentation. Calcium is a yeast nutrient.

Incidently, in years past, I brewed with water that came from a deep limestone well. It was at least 250 ppm total hardness. It would make great European ales. But making German-style lagers required soft water. So, I installed a whole house water softener. And then, I added a reverse osmosis filter with 2 large collection vessels. I brewed quite successfully using the RO water. I did add gypsum back to the mash water, however, to help with conversion.

But, if you buy the drinking water they sell at the car wash or Walmart, or wherever those water shacks are, it will work great. They have multi-stage filter, including RO and UV. The water from them is very nuetral and certainly will do what you need it to. I have made many a gallon of beer using that filtered water...even award winning beers.

Good brewing water is paramount. It's where the product originates. You certainly need to pay attention to the ingredient that go into the mash, as that's where the product originates.
ss

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Do three partial batches if you have the fermentation buckets and try with your distilled (baseline), well water, and the local filter water source. Keep the mash the same varying only the water. See how your yeast reacts in each and time to complete ferment should tell you a lot. I suspect very little practical difference will be noted.

Test your tap water for lead though, that would be worrisome. RO systems are supposed to block that.

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raw water from the well is going to be your best bet, it has the stuff yeast need (assuming lead content is absent). chlorinated city water would be next, just let it stand in a clear jug for a few hour in sunshine to burn off the chlorine. Post-water softener would be the worst, yeast don't like high sodium environments and most softeners are sodium-ion...do you add salt to the softener equipment?

how is the rainwater in your area? any big factories 15 minutes upwind from you? clean rainwater is great for ferments too.

RO water for dilution will give the best mouth feel, IMHO.

raptor402 wrote:Where I live in south east Missouri the water is extremely hard and cant be used. Theres no spring that has soft water like I see on all the shows of moonshiners flowing.
raptor 402

How far are you from Weston?
Travelling through I toured McCormick/Holloday Distilling where they have a limestone spring.
See if there's a nearby creek.

Beside that, I'm glad you brought this up as I'm mulling similar issues.
One thing I did was put some buckets out when a tropical storm came through, dumped a ton of rain on us and I collected 20 gallons of rain water.
Gotta admit I was too noob to check the ph.

Good Luck!

BB

Hard water good
Soft water bad
Distilled water dead

I've had good luck with hard, soft, RO, and distilled water. You will have to make some adjustments to each, depending upon what you are shooting for. Like Still Stirrin says, you can't make a good German lager with hard water though. And for all grain mashes, you need to add at least some calcium to soft, RO or distilled water. I like a scoop of gypsum and a pinch of epson salts for all grain mashes. I usually use my softened water.

If tap has too much of whatever, you could try diluting it with distilled or fitered water. Cut your $1/gallon habbit in half?

Thank you for all the ideas. I'm gonna try them soon as I get operational again. Distilled ph is like 7. The tap is like 11. I'm gonna do some experimenting. I went 10 rounds with ujssm before I stopped. I graduated sweet feed college last year. Now I'm on to a bird watcher neutral soon as I get operational again. Process of selling a house has been stressful. Have my still all broke down and out of sight. Have my stock pile hidden. Got rid of the fragrant beautiful bread smells in my back room. Right now I'm researching my water problems. I like my new found hobby better than hunting and fishing.
You guys rock.... Thank you for the knowledge

Holy cow! At pH 11 I bet you could do UJ forever and never have the pH drop low enough to stall it out! I'd be afraid of losing teeth just drinking the water though. It's almost like you have PBW on tap!

I can only do four runs of UJ before I'm tossing eggshells in there. Ten runs is awesome! Try a mash with your your tap water - I'll bet the yeast like it. Happy yeast are what gets you good drink - you're going to be distilling the stuff anyway. Save the distilled water for watering your drink to 80 proof.

There may be technical reasons this would not work, (and it actually may work out more expensive) but...

You are paying a lot for distilled water, besides the inconvenience of getting it in;

and you run a STILL...? !

Geoff

As with beer brewing, so with distilling, it depends on what you're trying to make...corn and bourbon whiskeys come from very hard water sources, as in...JD has a spring that flows directly out of the lime stone. The hard water is very good when mashing corn. A good neutral would probably also be OK using high pH levels. Caribbean Rums are made from quite soft water that have quite a high sea salt content according to the USGS. French Brandy and Scotch Whisky are made from ultra soft water, some of the highland malts use water that runs though peat, and have a pH of 6 to 5.5
I live in an area that has very hard water which percolates up though a marble base rock. I pre-boil my brewing water to get rid of the temporary hardness and cut this back by 50% with store bought spring water, to reduce the permanent hardness. If I don't do this I get a "bite" from the barley when I mash it and this does distill over. The Chlorine is also removes by boiling HOWEVER...if there is a source of ammonia in your town supply (as in a large city that reuses piss water in it's supply) It will form a Chlorammine that is not removed by boiling and is quite toxic to man and yeast.

The Baker wrote:There may be technical reasons this would not work, (and it actually may work out more expensive) but...

You are paying a lot for distilled water, besides the inconvenience of getting it in;

and you run a STILL...? !

Geoff

Lol

+1 Hillbilly Popstar LOL!

If the problem is the calcium, boiling the water and letting it rest a bit, might cure at least partly the pain. The calcium should precipate, leaving softer water above it.

raptor402 wrote: The tap is like 11.

Is this really possible? Water with pH 11? Or measurement failure?

Good question, der wo. A pH of 11 is VERY CAUSTIC! It's like lye (sodium hydroxide). Ouch!
ss

Good graphic bilgriss! Thanks for that.