Misleading Asda Water!

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Thank you. I’ve already signed up, and sent for some fobs.

Also take your point about mixing to minimise additions. I have been playing about with the dilution rates on brewfather and it’s pretty easy to customise the mix so you can add as little as possible to it.

 

[Leon103]

Depends where she lives - she might be spending the extra £8 on water treatment if she doesn’t buy her water in.

Seriously though, I was terrified by water treatment for quite a while but if you have a water report and find a decent calculator (I use the one on Jim’s Beer Kit) it’s actually very straightforward, and will be much cheaper (and better for the environment) than buying multiple 500ml bottles of supermarket water.

I didn't say she had to do what I did.

£8 a brew on water treatment is not worth it.

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

So I’ve just found this bad boy in the garage and I’d forgotten I had it. The website says the filters reduce carbonate hardness, so calcium and magnesium ions. It also reduces free and bound chlorine (I assume bound chlorine is chloramine, as I’ve been reading that chloramine is actually chlorine attached to ammonia), and lead & copper.

Although I don’t know how much it reduces these things, it will make me feel a little better about having to partially use my tap water when using the RO water. And I feel like I can use a greater percentage of my tap water now. Still partial guesswork of how many salts to use though

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Morning @Tess Tickle :-)
Entirely optional, but just in case at some point you wanted to measure the bicarbonate and calcium levels in your water (either fresh from the tap, or after filtering/acid additions etc), the 'Salifert' aquarium testing kits work well and are pretty easy to use.

They may seem a but pricey but you can get around a hundred tests out of them. If you have contacts who keep fish then they may already have something like this.

@strange-steve wrote a good HowTo with pics of how to use these tests and interpret the results: How To Use Salifert Alkalinity and Calcium Test Kits

This one measures hardness (bicarbonate):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Salifert-KH-Alkalinity-Profi-Test-Kit/dp/B001EJ3DOG

And this one measures calcium (less critical but still very useful to know)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Salifert-Calcium-Ca-Test-Kit/dp/B00PGOYVE6

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Morning to you also TETB and thanks - I think it would be a good idea if I got those for a little peace of mind yes.

I was also considering a TDS meter, but although they tell you how many solids are in your water, they don't tell you what they are and how much of each one there is. It's a minefield.

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

£8 a brew on water treatment is not worth it.

How right you are.

I bought all the salts I needed about a year ago, and you can't even tell I've started on them as you need so very little. They'll last forever.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I was also considering a TDS meter, but although they tell you how many solids are in your water, they don't tell you what they are and how much of each one there is. It's a minefield.

Yep - I may be wrong, but I only really use a TDS meter to tell when my RO membrane (or carbon filter cartridge in a jug like the one you showed above) need replacing

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Lol.

Speaking of those, there's a meter on the lid that tells you, but even that's useless as it's just a 4 week countdown timer. Apparently they're good for 100L.

I need a spreadsheet

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

@The-Engineer-That-Brews we’ve just left Aldi and I saw one of these! Couldn’t believe it!

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

@The-Engineer-That-Brews we’ve just left Aldi and I saw one of these! Couldn’t believe it!

View attachment 66081

blimey - that’s some coincidence!