water question

[stevey]

Hi all,
reading through the how to's I've noticed that some use campden tablets to remove chlorine from their tap water. Being a man of many hobbies I also keep tropical fish and have a reverse osmosis filter. For those that don't know, these remove about 98% of dissolved solids from tap water giving almost pure water.
Now what I'm wondering is could I make a brew with RO water?
I haven't seen any posts from anyone that already does this. Do we need some of the nasties that come out of our taps for flavour? or am I missing something else? :hmm:

 

[jonnymorris]

Gordon Strong (Brewing Better Beer) uses RO water though adds calcium carbontate and calcium chloride to the mash water and phosphoric acid to the spage water. I suspect the simple answer is to use tap water unless you understand the chemistry.

 

[stevey]

Thanks, I remineralise for my fish so that wouldn't be too difficult. Our water's so hard and chalky a lot of the time, so I might try a 50/50 mix and see how that goes. I haven't started drinking my first effort yet so I'll wait until I have something to compare. :thumb: