The problem we have is that larger parts of the country do have medium to hard water as a lot of it comes through chalk i.e. if you get limescale in your kettle, then it's hard enough to have some effect.
Apparently, from what I could find (sorry, I didn't bookmark the links) soft water from distilling it, or de-ionising it, or running it through a reverse osmosis filter seems to do the trick. I've still to get round to fitting my filter, but I get it in 25 litre cans from the aquarium shop.
Hence I use it for the actual wash, and then also for letting the spirit down. That way, you don't get any of the slight bitter or harsh notes that can be caused by the calcium or magnesium salts found in the water here.
And yes, I've also read the crap about yeast needing nutrients etc but if you work out how much is actually in clean drinking water, then if you're relying on that for nutrient, you're pissing in the wind. Because there's not enough in it in the first place. If you wanted water with enough nutrients in it for the yeast, then try raw sewage as that'd have enough of the base nutrients to keep the yeast happy - but you wouldn't drink that would you eh ?
Yes, I do tend to double distill these days (with my T500), so if I do use tap water for the initial ferment, then the TDS is reduced by the first run, then anything that comes through the still, is further diluted by letting it down to 40% ABV with RO water, which further dilutes anything that's got through the still, which is diluted further with RO again in the final reduction to drinking/mixing strength.
That's also then carbon filtered, which seems to make the cleanest, most neutral spirit I can manage without going to mega lengths and modding the still or building one that will give me the further 1.5 or 2% on the strength of the output (that's not to say I'm not gonna have a go at that, just that I don't need to).Statistics: Posted by Phantom — Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:41 am
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