Going to try something different with this brew. Since this is my monthly brew kit I had the question for the Homebrewhappyhour.com. I had wondered what they do for brewing salts as I have heard they use RO water. Since I use RO water as well I thought it would be cool to match what they are doing. Come to find out, they don’t do anything, That was interesting to me and thought, Lets give it a try. Its been a while since I changed up my process so this batch, No brewing salts, Straight RO water. I’m going to take probably more readings during this brew.

So as I normally do the night before collected my water for the morning brew. Pulled the grains and sent them through the mill. The only difference here is no brewing salts added, straight RO water. I did have concerns with keeping the RO water in my stainless Anvil, so I collected it into plastic buckets.

I took some PH reading. Tap water off my tap the PH is 7.1. After the RO process it drops the PH down to 6.3. Not sure if this is because we pulled all the stuff out of the water.

Woke up the next morning and fired up the Anvil. Typically id set the timer but I had a few things I had to do this morning so opted out of the timer. Once the water got to the dough in temperature of 152F (~66.6C) I doughed in and started the mash process. After a few minutes I took a PH reading of 5.6. I took another sample at 10 minutes and it still at the 5.6. A little on the high side but I’m going to let this ride out. Let the mash continue and after about 30 minutes I gave the grain bed a stir to help the extraction of the sugars. With about 10 minutes left in the mash I turned the Anvil up to 168F(75.5C) to mash out. Once mash out was complete I pulled another PH sample of 5.6. Pulled the grain basket and let the wort drain while I cranked the Anvil up to 212F(100C) and 100% power. Once the draining stopped I pulled the grain basket and put it at an angle to finish draining out while the wort is being brought up to a boil. Once finished draining, gave the bag a squeeze and pulled the grains. Took a wort sample and took a pre boil gravity reading of 1.043 but had 6.4 gallons of wort. Conversion wasn’t affected by not adding the salts here as I’m at 73.1% on the conversion. I had thought it would be lower as that is what I experienced when I brewed with just tap water. I think since the RO has a lower PH to start with and probably easier to move the needle, as there is nothing in the water help get the PH in a better range than I use to be in with straight tap water. Put in the hop screen and also when the wort hit 200F(93.3C) I pulled my typically two cups of hot break off the top.

Once boil started I added everything per the recipe. With about 15 minutes left in the boil, I added in the wort chiller and ran the hoses. Pulled a wort sample at the end of the boil . Original gravity came in at 1.045 and PH was 5.5. Once boil was complete, quickly chilled down the wort, and transferred to the Anvil bucket fermentor. As I transferring the wort I put my air pump on through a HEPA filter. Pitched the yeast and let it fly at 72F(22.2C). I added a few ice packs to the side of the fermentor to drop the temp into the 65-68F(18-20C) range.