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Author Topic: Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?  (Read 4161 times)

Offline rainmaker

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Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?
« on: July 15, 2013, 02:54:52 pm »
Saw this at target the other day. It claims to filter chlorine, mercury, lead, blah blah blah and filters the water through a mineral bed. I've got city water that's super soft and thought about giving this a whirl just to see if I could taste a difference in my beers.

Offline In The Sand

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Re: Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2013, 04:48:29 pm »
Saw this at target the other day. It claims to filter chlorine, mercury, lead, blah blah blah and filters the water through a mineral bed. I've got city water that's super soft and thought about giving this a whirl just to see if I could taste a difference in my beers.

Is your water from municipal supply or from a well?
Trey W.

Offline reverseapachemaster

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Re: Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2013, 04:55:22 pm »
I have a PUR filter at home. We are on a very chlorine-flavored municipal supply that tastes bad and not just from the chlorine. The PUR filter makes the water drinkable but it does not get anywhere close to as flavorless as bottled drinking water. I brew with bottled RO water that I adjust with brewing salts. I use some of the PUR filtered water in a pinch when I have run out of water but I generally do not like the flavor of the water, even filtered, to make beer out of it. The few extra dollars I spend on bottled water for brewing is worth it. Plus, the PUR filters are expensive.

If your water supply isn't too off putting I think the PUR system would be fine although if you brew a lot you can probably save a lot of money getting an inline filter system because the filters for those systems are supposed to be cheaper than the PUR filters.
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narvin

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Re: Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2013, 06:12:42 pm »
You should definitely do something to treat chlorine/chloramine if you have city water.  This can be campden or a charcoal filter.

If you're doing anything other than small batches, I'd skip the pur filter and go for one of these:

http://morebeer.com/products/water-filter-kit-10-inch.html

Offline rainmaker

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Re: Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2013, 06:27:21 pm »
Interesting.  I've done about a half dozen batches without any treat and don't get any off flavors. 

My thought on the filter was are the minerals something that may add a desirable taste.

narvin

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Re: Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2013, 07:26:23 pm »
You're not going to filter out any of the minerals that are important to brewing, or the alkalinity.  A house water softener or a reverse osmosis system will, but not a charcoal filter, Pur, Brita, etc.

Offline hopfenundmalz

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Re: Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2013, 09:09:15 pm »
You're not going to filter out any of the minerals that are important to brewing, or the alkalinity.  A house water softener or a reverse osmosis system will, but not a charcoal filter, Pur, Brita, etc.
water softeners take out Ca and Mg. they don't take-out bicarbonate. Those add Na in the ion exchange.
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Offline mabrungard

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Re: Anyone use the Pur Mineral filter?
« Reply #7 on: July 16, 2013, 06:49:16 am »
Some of the faucet-end filter units do include deionizing resins in the filters and they could be removing ions.  But more than likely, the filters aren't removing the ions we brewers are interested in.  Another consideration is that the faucet-end filters are VERY small in comparison to the flow rate.  Considering that you need to run water through one of those big 10-inch undersink canisters at 1 gpm or less to achieve adequate removal for many contaminants, it would be proportional that the flow rate through a faucet-end unit would be a trickle for it to perform well.  Guessing on the volume of those filters, I'd say that a flow rate of 1/4 gpm or less would be appropriate.  Some of the comments above regarding the filtered water not tasting as good as the bottled water may be to excessive flow rate through the filter and ineffective removal.
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