Opinions on using spring water...

...for brewing?


What do YOU think? Is it worth the $$ to buy good spring water, or do you prefer to boil your tap water, or do you have really good tap water already (if so, lucky you!!)

Spring
Boiled Tap
Tap

It will make good beer, no doubt. So if you think the money is worth it I would go for it. If you are not happy with your tap water I would also go for it.

I have pretty good city water here so I just run my brewing water through an inline brita faucet filter and I'm a happy camper.

Distilled water is about 88 cents a gallon at our local grocery store.

I used to use it for Extracts. You throw three of the gallons into the freezer at the start of the brew and it makes chilling your wort a lot easier.

My tap water is really not at all tasty. I use 2:1 RO water to tap. That works pretty well...

I normally just use 6 gallons of the bottled water from Walmart, a whole 64 cents a gallon, now its more than likely nothing special, just filtered, but at 64 cents, I don't complain. I normally get a big bag of ice and put 4 gallons and the ice in a big cooler I have the day before I'm brewing, and then use the ice that's left in the cooler to cool the brew pot down. So far no problems.

What about a water filter attached to the tap? Lots of people use those successfully.

-a.

I have great water for dark beers. Its not ideal for lighter beers, but I didn't have problems with the first Kolsch I made...in fact I got less efficiency from the 2nd Kolsch I made that included pH 5.2

I don't even worry about the chloramine.

I got an off taste from chloramine here, so I switched to spring water. I stock up when it goes for 2 gallons/$1.00. So far so good!

I use spring water, and it makes very good beer (ok, at least I like to think so... ;o) )

However...I have a family connection to a natural spring bottling company, and get it dirt cheap (less than 2 buck for 5 gallons).

Before that, I used distilled water from the grocery store...

the water here in Cincy tastes fine, but a PH test reveiled that it was WAY alkaline (8.6). Trying to get a water report proved very difficult as the people that answer the phone only have access to the propaganda pamphlets that only tell a fraction of the whole story. With more specific information, salts can be added to straighten out the PH. Without that info, you're just guessing; so my only other option was bottled water. I use distilled water for the mash, but I use tap water through a filter and boiled for the sparge. Seems to work well.

BierMuncher said:

Distilled water is about 88 cents a gallon at our local grocery store.

I used to use it for Extracts. You throw three of the gallons into the freezer at the start of the brew and it makes chilling your wort a lot easier.

Click to expand...

+1..
I do this and it cools the wort down very fast...

tap water, all the way (one of those lucky guys)

so it looks like spring water is preferred, but tap water works fine for some, too. i have always used tap, so I think i will try spring for the next brew.