Distilled Verses Tap Water

I'm debating witch water to use for a Stout that I will be brewing this weekend. Anyone have any suggestions for witch one will provide a better taste.
Deep Winter Stout, from "The Brew-master Bible"
Thanks

If your tap water tastes fine, use that.

I wouldn't go all distilled water, my understanding is that you would be starting with a literal blank slate as far as water chemistry goes.

Which is good if you want to build a water profile from scratch... not so great as a "ready to use" water source.

Push come to shove you can use partial distilled partial tap to bring the profile down if you need.

Since I don't know the make up of your tap water, I can't say which would be preferable.

My tap water, high in bicarbonate, makes an awesome stout. My tap water doesn't make very good kolsch, though. So I use tap water for my stout, and RO water for my kolsch.

It really depends on your own water chemistry.

After using tap,distilled & spring water,I settled on local spring water from the source for 10c per gallon. The yeasties seem to love it,& even the malt flavors seem to pop a bit more.

I use half and half. Just enough distilled to neutralize any bad effect the tap water might have and just enough tap water for essential minerals.

aubiecat said:

I use half and half. Just enough distilled to neutralize any bad effect the tap water might have and just enough tap water for essential minerals.

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I second that

Use campden to remove chloramines if tap and your not sure about your water profile. Helps me a lot.

In my opinion it is best to start with distilled water an build your water profile up. Tap water contains chlorine that can produce some off flavors and negative chemical reactions that you don't want. Add gypsum, MgSO4, Calcium Chloride, baking soda and chalk to adjust you water to fit the beer profile. Calcium is the most important ion to worry about as it is very important to both mash chemical processes and yeast biology. You should have at least 100 ppm of calcium in your water. There is a lot of info on water chemistry and brewing on the web, but if your not up for some homework and number crunching, just use tap water with camden tablets or a carbon filter to remove chlorine. Here are a couple of good starting points for adjusting water profiles.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-4.html

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2008/09/i-think-that-water-treatment-has-made.html

It depends on your process.

AG can't use straight distilled because essential mineraks for the yeast won't be there.

Partial mash and extract can use staight distilled because the extract has (at least most of) the nutrients the yeast need.

I was using Ozarka spring water, which had an off flavor consistently on my beer. A friend brewed with me and accidentally bought distilled and it worked great for the partial mash.

My tap water is high in minerals and other crap (i.e. very hard water). So for my 5 gallon batches I use 1.5gal tap + 2gal RO - .5gal boil off + 2 gal distilled. This seems to work well, especially since I prefer lighter beers (cream ale, Kolsch, belgians, etc).

The only beer I ever made with 100% tap water was by far the worst beer I've made so far. It could be complete coincidence, and other factors, but I'm not willing to chance it again.

Upthewazzu said:

The only beer I ever made with 100% tap water was by far the worst beer I've made so far. It could be complete coincidence, and other factors, but I'm not willing to chance it again.

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not sure I'm willing to brew 5 gallons with 100% from my tap.

it tastes OK straight from the tap, but if I make coffee or lemonade from it, it just tastes nasty. we use a brita pitcher and have a filter on our fridge's icemaker/water dispenser. (do NOT use both at the same time)

started off brewing with Deer Park, then the last couple batches started using some of our filtered water. my last batch was 100% filtered, we'll see how that goes. it's still in primary for now, but the batch before that 50/50 DP/filtered is about done bottle conditioning. we'll see how that one tastes on Saturday.

right now, working up a 1 gallon recipe for an extract mild using straight tap water, just to try it.

Wow, A lot of info, I should have spelled which correctly, I was just waking up when I posted this. I concure with partial distilled and tap water. I did not mention my water source is a in ground well. Won't have to worry about chlorine. My last two home brews I did use distilled throughout the whole recipe for a partial mash. The beer came out great IMO(lager and Speckled Heifer) comparied to the other brews(pale ale and Amber) I made with just tap water (well water). The well water contains a lot of minerals and it is the best tasting well water I have ever tasted. But it may not be the best beer brewing water. Now back to the question, distilled or not or a mixture of the two. The stout is a partial mash. Should the stout have a dry mouth feel?

I typically use 9 gallons of water per 5.5 gallon batch, Which includes a mix of 6 gals distilled and 3 gallons tap. I try to save about a half gallon of the distilled in case i need it for a hop tea or yeast starter or something else down the road.

Remember that when they make extract, they leave minerals behind from the mash in the extract. So if you add extract to your tap water, you are actually adding more minerals to already mineral rich water- the "double profile" effect. That might explain why you liked your distilled water batches brews than your tap water brews. So for your extract brews, distilled might be the way to go.

Partial mashing in distilled water might lead to some problems. Maybe you should consider mashing in tap water, or add some DME to distilled mash water before mashing, and then once your mash is done, get to your boil volume with distilled water.

I had no problems when mashing with distilled water. The local spring water works well,& I think tastes a tad better. Plus the distilled is like 79c a gallon,local spring water 10c a gallon at the source.