Distilled Water

You can buy home distillation units to distill water. Of course you can distill other things but we will not go into that. They are not cheap. Maybe someone knows of a cheap system.

Ray

PS. If you are going to the expense of making distilled water, you might consider buying a pH meter and then you do not need the distilled water to titrate. By the way I hope you meant that you got a pH of 7.3 not .73. ;o)

Ray

Louise,

You need to look a bit further. Distilled water is readily available in most supermarkets and pharmacies, right next to the mineral water. I'm guessing from your email address that you are in Quebec, but it should be available there too. Cost is about $1.00 per gallon (or less).

You have the right idea. Distilled water can be made by boiling, collecting the steam, and condensing it into a container. The easiest way is to buy a small pressure cooker, unscrew the pressure gauge, and hook a coil of copper or stainless steel tubing to the opening. (Plastic might work as well, but it might melt, and it won't stay coiled.) The other end of the tubing should be placed in your collection jar. You will get more liquid (and less steam escaping) if you wrap the tubing with some ice. If the tubing isn't coiled, you will get virtually nothing but steam coming out the other end. You can get coiled tubing at a refrigerator or air-conditioner parts outlet. Don't use used tubing that has contained Freon. It is highly toxic.

This is called a "pot still". Please do not try to distill alcohol with this procedure. It is both illegal, and dangerous. (Pure alcohol is very flammable, and the flame from your stove can cause it to explode; also the initial distillate is highly toxic. There are methods to reduce these risks, but we are discussing the distillation of water now.)

Kenmore Water Purifier[1]: On sale at Sears for $109.99 Kenmore Deluxe Water Purifier[2]: On sale at Sears for $139.99

Seems cheap enough.

Regards, Greg

I just realized --- of course, you have a pH meter! Otherwise how would you know the pH of the water? So, I feel like a bobo too.

To test and adjust acid with a pH meter: Take a small (measured) sample of must. Stick the probes in the sample. The pH should read around 3.2 for a white wine, and about 3.4 for a red.

If the pH is too high, add a measured amount of tartaric acid (or acid blend) until the sample reaches the pH you require. Then add the proportional (weight/volume) amount to the main must.

Acid reductions are a bit more tricky, but I believe you can do the same thing with H20, CaCO3 or K2CO3, i.e. add a measured amount of the water or carbonate until the target pH is reached.

You can also test TA and titrate with a pH meter. The end-point is reached when the pH is 8.2. Thus you don't need to add distilled water to make the endpoint more visible.

The pH meter must be accurate to at least +/- 0.1 pH or the test will not be very meaningful.

Jeez , I May as well keep checking different pharmacies :oP Louise

WWW --------+

With the method you describe it's dangerous but distilling by itself won't produce an intial highly toxic distillate... that would assume having highly toxic compounds in your wine/mash to begin with this... distillation only concentrates what is there, and from what I read there isn't much methanol in homemade wine to begin with. In home distillation it's always suggested to throw out the heads and tails since they most likely contain concentrations of the unwanted compounds. Again, I don't recommend trying to distill alcohol, especially with this setup, but in general, since it's illegal. *cough*

Check the grocery store as well... our office, for reasons beyond my comprehension, has distilled water in the water cooler...

Right, let's make sense of this all. Distilled and demineralized are practically the same: no salts. Water purifiers from the shop leave the salt, but remove organic compounds.

Second. I believe that you want to use it for acid titrations. Then, the quality of water hardly matters, unless it contains a lot of salt which can influence pH, not like ordinary table salt. It then can be said the solution acts like a buffer. Anyway, tapwater is fine.

If measurement is very critical, add the indicator to the water and add tiny bit of alkaline sol. until the water just about turns pink. Dilution of the wine with this water will then have absolutely no effect on the acid titration measurement. Anyway, I believe this is over the top. What can be important is to drive off carbondioxide from the wine before doing the test, I usually do that by putting 10 ml of wine in a beaker and microwave till it boils, before titration.

Last remarks, pH meter readings from demineralized or tap water cannot be trusted unless you have a specialized pH electrode for this kind of measurements. Unlike wine, the amount of acid particles (H-ions, or protons) is so low that a reliable measurement is difficult to achieve.

For titrations pH +/- 0.2 is fine. For pH measurements of wines, accuracy within 0.1 is needed. Also calibration becomes important.

Hope this helps,

Rene.

ALL alcohol distillation methods are dangerous.

All fermented beverages contain insignificant amounts of methanol. They remain insignificant until they are concentrated by distillation, at which stage they become highly toxic unless separated out. Methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol, and is thus the first thing to come out of the still. That distillate is highly toxic, and must be separated out. You can discard the "heads and tails", or you can use a slobber box, or you can build a refractor, but --- as I specifically stated earlier ---"There are methods to reduce these risks, but we are discussing the distillation of water now."

Yep, but we were discussing the distillation of water --- not alcohol. If you wish to learn how to distill alcohol, I suggest you go to rec.crafts.distillation or Tennessee.

Especially with this setup"??? This is as safe and efficient a still as the $300 Connelly design that is sold at homebrew shops "for the purification of water only". But I've purposely left out the additional details related to alcohol distillation, since we were discussing the distillation of water.

Because alcohol has a very low flash-point EVERY still is dangerous. Because every alcoholic beverage contains methanol, and every distillation process (incuding freeze distilling) will concentrate the methanol to toxic levels, EVER distillation process is dangerous. Because most governments ban the distillation of alcohol and the sale of homemade beer and wine (allegedly to protect the you for danger, but actually to gain tax revenues and control of your lives), every unlicensed distillation and every illegal sale is dangerous --- your produce, equipment, personal property, and the real property at which it is discovered will be confiscated and distributed amongst the Treasury agents who partipated in the raid.

But we were discussing the distillation of water. Or so I thought.

Even the pH of RAIN water varies immensely:

Tap water can vary from pH 5.0 to more than 8.0. This wide-range will surely render the results of acid titrations (where a diluent is used) meaningless, unless distilled water is used as a diluent.

Yes, it is totally unnecessary to use water of a neutral pH for dilution --- unless one wishes to obtain meaningful test results.

The CO2 will have a far smaller affect on the test results than a diluent of unknown or unexpected pH.

Why is +/- 0.2 "fine" for titrations? One titrates until one reaches the endpoint of 8.2 pH. If there is a +/- 0.2 inaccuracy in the reading, an indicated 8.2 can be anywhere from 8.0-8.4. If this accuracy were sufficient, one could simply use litmus paper.

Even +/- 0.1 is borderline, since an indicated reading of 3.2 could be anywhere from 3.1 - 3.3.

Again, calibration prior to taking a reading is only necessary if meaningful results are needed.

I would say they are, but it is a relatively safe procedure... so much so that the people of New Zealand can do it in their homes. With a proper still and by using even a small does of common sense, one can distill without injury.

You mentioned distilling alcohol first :^) Everything I've learned about distillation has come from r.c.d.

"A healthy person metabolises 1500 mg methanol/hr without any physiological problems" "wine which already contains an average of about

I will clarify what I was trying to say in my original post. If one were to research distilling and attempt it, I would wager than one would die from drinking too much ethanol before they ever poised themselves from methanol. Granted one could ferment high pectin fruit which is supposed to produce more ethanol, but again, by researching you could avoid these pitfalls. The process is safe enough that the gov't of New Zealand decided that people could do it home.

I agree that one shouldn't attempt it if you're not willing to pay the price, esp. in the U.S. where the ATF types are more zealous about it. Even so, it is not something I see myself doing, but I do find it interesting.

We were, but as I pointed out above, you mentioned the distillation of alcohol first.

Hi Rene, Thanks for the info, I will use my demineralised water... Louise:o)

I was taught to simply correct the waters pH with some dilute base or acid, as the case may be.

clyde

By correcting the water's pH, you are creating "a water of neutral pH". That is perfectly acceptable, although I would prefer to start with pure water to begin with, and save a step.

The implication of the post to which I was replying, is that the pH of the water is irrelevant to titration results. It is not.

Yep, me too. I simply add enough NaOH to get the water to pH 8.2, add the wine, and then titrate with base back to 8.2. That way I know that all I'm titrating is the wine acids, and all of the wine acids, and not anything else.

And for what it's worth, all that talk earlier about being + or -

Dave

Would you agree if I rephrased, "All methods of distillation are POTENTIALLY dangerous, but the pot-still I mentioned is no more dangerous than any other --- if proper precautions are taken and common sense is used?

As I mentioned, although various governments claim to have outlawed distillation because of the inherent dangers, the real reason is tax and bribery revenue, and (especially in Saudi Arabia) control of the life style of the general populace.

"I have a friend" who has been distilling sour-mash since he was 8 years old, and has yet to experience a still-fire, or die from the effects of methanol or ethanol or overzealous revenuers. :)

I did not neither either! See below. :P Everything "my friend" has learned about distillation came from enterprising Tennessee backwoodsmen, and a locked chemistry lab at UCLA.

How many cans of sterno is that? :)

Ethanol, Methanol, which is best? Finding out requires a test! You go first, at my behest Hope you enjoy your permanent rest. :)

Grrr. I did not! The following is excerpted (in chronological order) from my original post.

Louise: If I boiled water and vented the steam into a container on the counter, would that do the trick? Is that distilled water?

Negodki: You have the right idea. Distilled water can be made by boiling, collecting the steam, and condensing it into a container. The easiest way is to buy a small pressure cooker, unscrew the pressure gauge, and hook a coil of copper or stainless steel tubing to the opening....This is called a "pot still". Please do not try to distill alcohol with this procedure. It is both illegal, and dangerous. (Pure alcohol is very flammable, and the flame from your stove can cause it to explode; also the initial distillate is highly toxic. There are methods to reduce these risks, but we are discussing the distillation of water now.)

QED?

In days of old I have been told When alcohol was uninvented; They fought and maimed And killed and lamed And in general, stayed discontented!

Humm, "pure" water? Standard lab procedure is to use the alkline solution to nuetrlize distilled water prior to beginning titration. This is done to neutralize the carbonic acid that results from the disolving of atmospheric CO2.in distiled water.

I would have never believed it until I took a Must and Wine Analysis class a couple of semesters ago. We always had to use more than one drop to get the indicator color change in distilled water. If you continued stiring, the color rapidly faded indicating the reabsorbsion of more CO2.

Fred