water to whort?

wayne buss · 06-20-2007, 09:56 PM

hello guys and gals
a friend of mine recently started doing some home brewing, with the extract method.
now this is what i find a bit puzzling, is that the place he buy's his supplies gave him a couple of recipes, and in the instructions they told him to add tap water to his whort ...after boiling, and before puttind it into the fermentor jug.
does this sound correct? won't it lead to an infection?
thanks,,, wayne

Hopleaf · 06-20-2007, 10:03 PM

I use tap water to brew, I used to use bottled water exclusively use tap now and I haven't had any problems. I don't have any chloramines in my water though, if you do you'll need to boil the water first to remove it.

The one thing I do do is sanitize 1 gallon jug which I use to measure out the water and add it to the primary from that.

**Yooper** · 06-20-2007, 10:10 PM

When I did extract brews, I always topped off with cold tap water. I have very good dependable water, though. If the water is in question (well water that may have some contaminates, or it tastes bad), use bottled water or boiled and cooled tap water.

In general, if your water tastes good it's good to use for brewing. If your water tastes bad, use bottled water.

kaptain_karma · 06-20-2007, 10:55 PM

I used to run taopwater through a brita filter and save it up in pitchers on brewnight and use that to top off. Now I brew all grain, so no top off is necessary.

Whelk · 06-20-2007, 11:00 PM

I use all tap water. No problems so far, knock on wood. Like Yooper Chick said, if you'll happily drink it plain, it's fine for your beer. Unless you have really, really bad taste--but I guess then it won't matter if your beer sucks!

**ajf** · 06-20-2007, 11:54 PM

Topping up with untreated tap water will almost certainly lead to infections if the tap water is infected. Fortunately, most tap water is not infected. If it was infected, then a lot of people would get sick from drinking the tap water.
I topped off with untreated tap water for nearly 20 years before going All Grain, and during that time I only had one infected brew (and that probably wasn't caused by bad tap water).

-a.

homebrewer_99 · 06-21-2007, 12:12 AM

PUR filtered tap water here...and it's wort.