Can You Use RO Water in Wine Making?
December 1, 2008 by Scott "The Wine Making Guy"
Filed under Ask The Wine Making Guy, Tips
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I have a wine making friend and colleague (Greg) who I know through a local business group. He owns a local environmental company (Douglas Environmental Solutions) and he specializes in mold remediation as well as water quality.
At one of our meetings we discussed the use of reverse osmossis (RO) water for wine making as he makes wine himself and has access to this kind of water.
I’ve heard a lot of different opinions on water but here’s the general consensus. You could use tap water with wine kits but you risk having a chlorine taste in your wine. One thing you could do is let your water sit for 24 hours so the chlorine evaporates but then again you need to leave this open to the air so bugs could get in it. You could also filter your water but that’s a pain in the butt too. The best type of water to use is clean spring water as it has just enough trace elements in it that the yeast can use them as food.
The problem with RO treated water is that it’s “dead” so the yeast won’t have access to some minerals to act as food. I recently read that if you used RO or distilled water you could bolster the water with yeast nutrient so technically could use it.
You could use RO water to rinse your equipment (if you wanted to find a good use for the water) as RO limits adding bacteria or germs to the equipment after you’ve cleaned and sterilized it.
Here’s a good article that I found for you that can explain it in further details:
http://www.grapestompers.com/articles/winemaking_water.htm
Greg asked the author of the above article at GrapeStompers.com to clarify his position on water used in wine making and here’s what he said:
Using RO or distilled water to dilute a concentrate makes real sense to me as you are replacing what was removed. I don’t recall ever saying to add minerals to wine must as a general practice. I suspect the effect of using tap water is small unless your water is heavily mineralized with calcium.
Calcium can precipitate out tannins affecting taste and color. For example, if calcium carbonate is used to remove acid in grape must or wine, a lot of color and other flavors go down with the precipitate. This is just like that soap scum you get around bathtubs in hard water areas and with real soap. Using un mineralized water makes sense, but I wouldn’t pay the shipping costs, just go to your local supermarket and get ozonized RO. I don’t know if chlorine (or now chloramines) will have any effect, as there is so much else that is oxidizable in the must, it will probably not affect the yeast.
BTW the best way to reduce acid and not affect the wine is to use potassium bicarbonate and then chill the wine to remove the potassium bitartrate as crystals (wine stone).
There are plenty of minerals (potassium, etc) in the grape juice to supply the yeast and the weak acids (tartaric and malic) buffer the pH, so the yeast stay within their desired pH range for fermentation.
With meads, these minerals are not present and pH control becomes more difficult as there are no weak acids in sugar or honey and leads often to stuck fermentations as the pH drops out of the operating range. In this case, adding potassium or (less desirable) sodium carbonate periodically during the fermentation to maintain a pH around 4 or above will cause the fermentation to finish in the same time range as wine. Beer also benefits from minerals as this can affect the after taste (dry, bitter, round, etc), but there are plenty of weak acids in most beer worts.
So I guess using RO water is that bad after all …
What type of water do you use in your wine making and what’s your opinion on the subject?
Leave your comments below!
- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”
hi scott yet another good article
i use tap water left standing for 24 hours it seams to be ok to me but i put it in my carboy with a fementation trap on.
i did try using bottled water but it worked out so expensive that you might as well have bought your wine,instead of making it your self.
so tap water left standing won hands down.
i hope this is of some help.
cheers peter
I use tap water and leave it standing in the carboy with a fermentation trap for at least two days.It has always worked for me especially for fruit wines. My best wines were with cherries . Keep the good work going . We appreciate your work to keep us up todate. Best wishes for the future.
G’day from Oz down under.
I am a newby and plan to make my first batch this year. My vines are coming along beautifully with bunches fattening up.
I plan to use our tank water – water straight out of the sky. It is crystal clear and tastes delicious. Hopefully, the impact on the wine will be positive.
Make it a great day.
Terry
I use tap water (town supply). Having read the article I am interested in trying tank water (from the roof. I know someone who has a tank. The only risk with tanks in the industrial cities is air pollution ending up in the water.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your comment. I mentioned to Greg that I let the tap water overnight to let the chlorine gas evaporate but he was quick to point out that whatever bugs the chlorine as killed are still in the water so you should probably filter it. I thought that was a good point.
Scott
Hey Mervyn,
Thanks for your comments and well wishes. As per Peter tap water is good but might still filter the water.
Scott
Hi Dennis and Terry,
Natural rain water would be interesting in wine making. Try it out and let me know how it turns out. I agree with Terry though that you have to consider the environment around you as it’ll influence whats in the water. Might be worth having a sample tested to see what’s in it. Just a thought …
Scott
hi scott i never gave that a thought about filtering but would take for ages, i havent had a problem as yet with using tap water left for 24 hours, i will still use this method, could ypu ask your friend what if you was to boil the water first, would that make any difference.
keep up the good work scott.
good health
peter
Hi Peter,
Actually another guy in your area just emailed to say that he does indeed boil the water first to kill the larvae.
Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to filter afterwards to get rid of the dead larvae ….
Scott
Hi Scott, I have always used RO water. I have had very good luck with it. We have our own RO machine on our softened well water so there is not much cost. Keep up the good work…….Gord
Hi Scott,
Ive considered useing ro water in my wine but the cost is just to much..I thought it might make it taste better ,but we learn something new every day.. So I guess ill stick with good ol tap water.
tom
Howdy Scott.
For a start I thought what water do you use for winemaking. The majority o0f my wine thes days is made from grapes straight from the vineyard, so I don’t need to add water. With kits and fruit I have always used rain water collected from the roof into a tank. I have always intended to boil it to kill bacteria etc from bird poop etc but have never made the time to do it. All the wine I have made has been drinkable. Some has been of questionable quality but that is more due to experimentation than water Quality. I do live in an area with low polution levels and have been raised using rain water straight from the tank, so to me it was a natural choice.
Regards Jim Haseldine.
Scott. I live in the country and have soften water from our well. What is your opinion on using this type of water in wine making? I have made both apple cider wine and cranberry-raisin wine recently with very good flavors. The softener leaves very little minerals but like any softening system will contain trace salts. BTW, there is no sulfur and very little iron in the pre-treated water and its removed by the softener.
-comments?
Hey John – if you feel your water has a decent smell to it and no off tastes then should be good to go. Yeast needs minerals though so you might consider adding some yeast nutrient. Let me know how it goes!
Scott