My new brewing friend: Canned water

I made a sort of discovery today and wanted to share it -- my apologies if it's already known. For those of you who live in the country, using an unchlorinated well system, like me, it may be useful.

My usual routine is to boil a big ol' canner full of water the night before -- it cools down to room temp overnight and there it is, my only source of trustworthy water! Which I then have to divvy up between a pan for rinsing bleach off stuff, and a pot for topping off my carboy with after the wort goes in. And of course I'm paranoid that I'm introducing bacteria into the stuff at every point in the day.

Well -- yesterday night I put seven quart Mason jars full of water in that canner, with used lids screwed on just like I was canning tomatoes. I gave 'em 10 minutes before I shut off the fire. This morning -- voila! Seven quarts of sterile, sealed, canned water.

I'm using one of them to get my starter rolling right now, and the other six are waiting patiently in perfect sterility for the topping-off part, pouring into the carboy to rinse it out, and anything else I might need. The ones that are left over can go into the shed for use during the next power outage.

Just another idea ... hope somebody finds it useful!

--Finn

I use star san, and don't fear the bubbles. So, I don't have to worry about rinse water. In fact I rinse my stirring spoon in star san between uses.

But as far as water going into my beer, I boil any top off water first (when I start my brew session) and let it cool with the lid on, in a sink full of water while I boil my wort. Or, I chill it and add it to my fermenter before boiling my wort.

It would be nice to have the water already canned and ready to use as you've said, and I'm big on having emergency supplies around anyway. So, I like your idea, and may start storing up water this way too.

Good idea, thanks for the tip.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how long is it recommended to store drinking water this way?

This may be slightly more expensive, but those $.47 gallons of spring water at Walmart are great for wort and top off water. Plus you can print "all natural spring water" as one of your ingredients on your labels!

LOL! I often rinse my bottles and stuff off with tap water! Should I start being paranoid? So far no problems. I had never thought about boiling water for anything other than wort, but I also use a no-rinse sanitizer (Although it DOES leave a residue, which is why I risk rinsing anyway). Perhaps I should boils a bunch of rinse water the night before, like you say...

Homercidal said:

LOL! I often rinse my bottles and stuff off with tap water! Should I start being paranoid? So far no problems. I had never thought about boiling water for anything other than wort, but I also use a no-rinse sanitizer (Although it DOES leave a residue, which is why I risk rinsing anyway). Perhaps I should boils a bunch of rinse water the night before, like you say...

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I was paranoid about it at first but then I just started using tap water and I've never had a problem. Too much work for me to boil all that water ahead of time since I sometimes just decide I want to brew. Although if I was really concerned about it I'd probably just buy the cheap spring water from the grocery store myself.

I've been advised to not bother boiling if you're on a municipal water system, but when you're sucking your water straight out of the Earth's crust, all bets are off! Not that well water isn't clean and good for you, it just hasn't been chlorinated, etc.

Maybe this will turn into a big thing in Canada like bagged milk.

I thought this was going to be about Coors Light.

Joker said:

I thought this was going to be about Coors Light.

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lol. coors light... canned water... ha

I thought it was this...

For rinsing my brewing brick-a-brack, I just use an electric kettle. It boils in a few minutes. I fill it up (8 cups) before starting, cover the spout with aluminum foil, and let it cool. By the time I need it for rinsing, it's cool enough. Haven't had an infeciton yet! [knocks on wood]

I'll have to look up the storage times on the canned water, it slips mymind right now.

But one way to make sure you have enough around is to use the jars full of water to round out any batches that are short. IE, my canner holds 9 qt jars if memory serves. If canning up a batch of sauce that only was7 qts big, go ahead and fill two other jars with water and throw them in to fill the canner up. THen just use these when you're brewing. Will keep you fromhaving to do quite as many batches specifically just for water.