RO water

[MooseMan]

I hope this is the correct place for this, I can't find anywhere better suited on the forum?

I'm getting to the point where I will be running a proper neutral spirit run with my CCVM, from a combined 3 strips of low wines.

I completely understand the need to dilute to <40% with water and I intend to use RO for this, as I have a plant at work that sends as much as I could ever use in an entire lifetime of distilling, down the drain in a day.
I'll just bring it home in 25l jack's as required.

However once I have my lovely clean neutral, which is intended for lots of gin experiments, should I also use the same RO water to proof down?
Or should I be looking at spring/mineral water?
We have some lovely spring water here in Wales, UK and, I'm lucky enough to be good friends with a guy who works for a company who sells it! (Who is more than happy to swap 1 bottle of mine for many dozens of his, obviously!)

So, cost aside, RO or good (Probably the best) quality spring water?

[Laredo7mm]

I would use the spring water, but I’m not that into neutrals. I have an RO filtration set that I used a bit for brewing beer, but mostly for making water to put into a humidifier. I would think that the minerals in the spring water would be beneficial to the final product. I use filtered tap water to dilute my sprits and to make my mash. The filter supposedly removes chlorine and chloramines and leaves the minerals.

I have read that you aren’t supposed to drink RO water straight as it is “hungry” and will strip minerals/salts from your body. I would think it would be fine when used to temper a spirit though.

[still_stirrin]

… However once I have my lovely clean neutral, which is intended for lots of gin experiments, should I also use the same RO water to proof down?

Or should I be looking at spring/mineral water?

Do you drink the RO water? Do you prefer the spring water over the RO? And why?

When making a gin, you want the character of the botanicals to highlight your spirit. If your spring water has a “complementary” flavor, then it may be appropriate, if you prefer. Otherwise, RO water is completely neutral, without a flavor contribution. So, the botanicals would be the signature flavor in your gins.

So, you’ll have to decide for yourself, especially since you have an economical and environmentally-friendly source of RO water.

If it were me, I’d always use the RO water without exception. And I have an RO filter in my home, so that is exactly what I use for tempering all my spirits. And you know what else … it makes “lovely” ice cubes! Clear, not cloudy. BOOM!
ss

[still_stirrin]

… I have read that you aren’t supposed to drink RO water straight as it is “hungry” and will strip minerals/salts from your body.

Ridiculous. Sure, drinking lots of water will make you “pee” a lot, and that will wash waste chemicals from your body. However, that’s a good thing. Drinking good clean RO filtered water is fine and healthy … much healthier for you than drinking alcohol!!

Guys, let’s keep from propagating “misinformation”, OK?
ss

[Laredo7mm]

Drinking good clean RO filtered water is fine and healthy …
ss

Except you will never find a natural spring of RO water on this planet. I would do spring water over RO any day. To each their own. Opinions are not misinformation.

[MooseMan]

Ok so two very differing opinions so far!

I'm definitely going with the RO to cut the wines back before the spirit run, so that is clear.
Which leads me on to, the RO ice cubes comment by still_stirrin!
Is that the industry secret for clear, bubble free cubes?!?!! Wow!

[Laredo7mm]

I think the industry standard for large clear ice pieces is to freeze the water from the top down in a large container. You then harvest the ice before the block is completely frozen. From what I have read, as the water freezes it precipitates out the dissolved air and minerals that make ice cloudy, leaving all the “junk” in the unfrozen water at the bottom of the tank.

For clear ice cubes, I think they continually flood the chilled trays with water to wash away the air and impurities. But hey, since this is all hearsay, it’s probably misinformation.

[Salt Must Flow]

I use RO water for everything and it works great.

[Laredo7mm]

I use RO water for everything and it works great.

Even for cooling water in your condenser(s)?

[Salt Must Flow]

I use RO water for everything and it works great.

Even for cooling water in your condenser(s)?

I'm on well water so I just let it go down the drain. If I did recycle water, I probably would fill that with RO water. Couldn't hurt.

[Laredo7mm]

I’m on city water and I let all my cooling water go down the drain. Funny that you would think it was advantageous to use RO water if you recycled your water when RO has an 80% rejection rate. What do you do with the 80% that is rejected? Or would you be using the rejected water for cooling purposes and saving the good?

[Renhoekk]

… I have read that you aren’t supposed to drink RO water straight as it is “hungry” and will strip minerals/salts from your body.

Ridiculous. Sure, drinking lots of water will make you “pee” a lot, and that will wash waste chemicals from your body. However, that’s a good thing. Drinking good clean RO filtered water is fine and healthy … much healthier for you than drinking alcohol!!

RO is perfectly fine to drink. It can cause mineral deficiencies though in people who have a very poor diet. That’s because it will pull small amounts of minerals out of anything it touches, including teeth and tissues. The key words being “small amount”…so it’s a non-issue for anyone eating a balanced diet

[NZChris]

If you are having problems with louche, RO might help as it doesn't contain minerals to interfere with how much of the oils the gin can hold in solution.

Personally, I don't care if my gins are cloudy and don't taste as bland as most commercial gins, but if I'm proofing a gin that I do want to be clear in the bottle, I always use RO.

[MooseMan]

Thanks for all your input guys, based on what you all are saying I'm going to go with RO and maybe do a couple of experiments with the spring water when the chance comes.

I've got a mate nagging me to do something whisky/bourbon like, so I might use the spring water for that when I eventually get to it.

As I said I can bring home the RO entirely free, in convenient 25l jack's that previously contained DI water and get thrown out at work, so it's a no brainer I think.

[NZChris]

A freeloader with high expectations. A decent whisky/bourbon takes a lot of time on wood, so I'd tell him not to get his hopes up. You'll never have a nicely aged whiskey if you let the leeches get near your product years before it's ready.

[MooseMan]

A freeloader with high expectations. A decent whisky/bourbon takes a lot of time on wood. I'd tell him not to get his hopes up.

Haha yeah I already have in no uncertain terms Chris! What he's expecting is a rough and ready white lightning that he's going to put JD chips in and hope.

Not being a whisky drinker, I don't have the first clue what a good one should taste like, nevermind how to even begin making one!
All in good time.

[NZChris]

I've taken to leaving most of my white lightning corn likker white. When you put it on wood, it goes through a woody astringent period when it its's not very pleasant and you should really wait for it to come right rather than choking it down and pretending you like it.

[MooseMan]

Oh really?
Do you just proof it down to drinking strength and leave it to age a bit?
If that's the case I can sure do that quicker for him.
Ferment a cornflake/rye cracker wash and pot still it?

[Knife_man]

I've tried all three , RO water , spring water and tap water for both proofing for distillation and final proofing for drinking and can't say I could tell a difference apart from less scale in the boiler afterwards.

If you can get it I would go fo RO water.

[NZChris]

All of mine is stored/aged at barrel proof in 2/3 full demijohns so that there is room for O2. There is not normally more than one bottle of any one product proofed for drinking in my drinks cabinet.

[MooseMan]

Chris, please school me?

I understand the headroom thing. When you say "Barrel proof" what ABV do you call that?

And why not more than one bottle of anything at a time? Is it simply that much better to bulk store and proof down/bottle as required?

[Salt Must Flow]

I’m on city water and I let all my cooling water go down the drain. Funny that you would think it was advantageous to use RO water if you recycled your water when RO has an 80% rejection rate. What do you do with the 80% that is rejected? Or would you be using the rejected water for cooling purposes and saving the good?

I don't know why you are assuming that my RO unit is only 20% efficient. I use two 75 gpd membranes and a booster pump. It produces twice the amount of water with the same amount of wast, not to mention the improved performance with the booster pump. Waste water goes down the drain because I'm on well water. I don't pay for water or waste like people do in the city.

[NZChris]

Barrel proof is different for different products as the proof affects the flavors pulled from the wood, 125 proof is commonly used for bourbon, UJSSM, etc.. For white products, it's just what comes off the still so that it takes up less shelf space and glassware.

Aging pretty much stops when you take flavored product off the wood and bottle it, so I prefer to leave it on the wood for as long as possible.

[MooseMan]

Barrel proof is different for different products as the proof affects the flavors pulled from the wood, 125 proof is commonly used for bourbon, UJSSM, etc.. For white products, it's just what comes off the still so that it takes up less shelf space and glassware.

Aging pretty much stops when you take flavored product off the wood and bottle it, so I prefer to leave it on the wood for as long as possible.

Ah OK, I understand.

I'm not planning to oak age anything for some time yet, but I'll research it more before I do.

I was planning to store my neutral "Stock" for gins, either in a modded corny keg, or demijohns, so bearing what you say in mind, I'll definitely leave a little headroom.

[tchib]

You can think of the RO water as a sponge, it will soak up minerals and oils it comes in to contact with. If you are watering down Neutral to use for flavored spirits then you would ideally prefer as little minerals in the water as possible to leave room for the oils and flavors to dissolve.
Adding mineral water to ethanol is no real problem, you might get a bit of a spikey harsh flavor at first because it knocks a lot of the minerals out of solution but it will fall back into solution with time.
RO water doesn't have that problem as much and seems to work just as well when used to water down vodka. I would use RO water if I had a choice for any spirit but why not experiment? the cost of two shots of neutral and a bottle of mineral water isn't going to cut in to your time or money much.
My hypothesis would be that a gin would suffer but a whisky might get some interesting flavors from a mineral water. Just be careful as there are lots of experiments online about mineral water being 'dirty' with chlorine and calc far more than your average tap water.
For home distillation (which is what we do, right?) it shouldn't make much difference unless you are trying to get a very concentrated gin without any cloudiness. Navy gin for example, is best packed full of flavor to balance the abv so it's hard to get it clear without RO water.

[SouthwestAl]

RO water every time for proofing down Gin. Minerals in the water can be a cause of louche in your final spirit. That said, if you get yourself a cheap TDS meter, check what your spring water is like - depending on where it comes from (Malvern hills water is famously low in minerals, for example) you might not need to use RO. My water supply here gives a TDS reading of about 10, compared to 0 on RO of course, but I still RO it as part of my RO system is a triple filter as well as the RO part. It is slightly wasteful, although far less so than distilling water I suppose, which uses lots of energy, and you can always use the run-off from the RO for watering plants etc.

[MooseMan]

Thanks for your input guys, it's gonna be RO as standard then after reading all of your advice. I could bring 200l home from work every day in clean jack's if I wanted and it wouldn't even make a dent!
Our plant throughput is 2500l/hr.

I'll do some experiments with the spring water too when the time comes though, as it's a lovely clean tasting water so could add something nice to my stuff

[dat480]

Living in the city really limits our choices... You can raise the PH and the TDS (total dissolved solids) of RO water all at the same time with a calcite cartridge before the RO tank. RO TDS needs to be a 90% reduction of the raw TDS of the tap water to know the membrane is working. So 450 TDS should be less than 45 in the RO water. I've been using filtered tap water ~250 TDS but am going to try RO with the calcite and see how it turns out. For us city guys, this might be a good option to have water clear of all the crap RO removes and add back hardness for taste.

[bluefish_dist]

Ro or distilled water for blending. We tried a few spring waters, didn’t like the flavors it imparted. I believe the don’t drink ro water is a mistake. It’s don’t drink DI water. In DI water ions are stripped and it will cause issues if consumed. Ro water is just water that is run through a Teflon filter which filters at a molecular level. Commonly used for drinking water ie Aquafina and almost every water maker for making drinking water from salt water.

There is a case in Colorado where a brewer installed a large ro system and then uses ro water for brewing and builds the water the same every time. Was brought about as the town has several water sources, ground, surface and would switch regularly. This changed the beer flavors as the water was different. The solution was build the water the same every time. The unintended consequence was the beer could be brewed anywhere as they knew exactly how to build the correct water for the taste profile desired. There is a rabbit hole here for a distiller who wants to really get down into the weeds on what impacts flavor.

[MooseMan]

Yes correct bluefish_dist, RO water is just mains water passed through a filter system, ours at work is 0.2micron.

Many many beer breweries use the technique you describe, stripping the water and then building a different water profile for different beer types. One for lagers, one for stouts, another for IPA, NEIPA and so on.