tap water or bottled water? who uses what?

i read that a lot of people (or it seems like to me) that they use tap water to brew. I on the other hand use bottled spring water thinking its better than whats comes from my tap. I figure there is less unwanted chemicals and minerals also. Does it matter when it comes to extract brewing?

tap water, from my outdoor faucet and ran through a charcoal filter.

I think it comes down to taste. I live in Utah and our water is all mountain snow runoff so our water tastes great so i dont see the point of buying bottled water.

However in my travels i have tasted some cities water that was down right nasty and would never think of using it to brew with.

Our well water has far too high levels of dissolved minerals like calcium and iron. I use RO (reverse osmosis) water from the grocery store exclusively.

Tap for darker beers. RO or RO/Tap mix for lighter beers. Our water tastes good but is fairly hard.

Comes to the water profile but I don't like the local water at all so I use bottled water. There is a local water delivery company that delivers their spring water. I use it for most everything in the house including soda water and brewing.

I just installed a filter on my kitchen, the city uses way too much chlorine in the water. I've been using bottled water some RO and some Ozone.

teej_810 said:

Does it matter when it comes to extract brewing?

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For extract beers I use RO filtered water. Cleaner tasting beers result. For mashes I use carbon filtered tap water to retain the minerals (helps to buffer the mash.)

I run my water from the outside faucet through an RV water filter. The water tastes alright from the tap, but has chlorine in it.

I get the 5 gallon plastic carboy bottles at home depot, and add an extra gallon of filtered water from the sink to compensate for what boils off. that way I get an even 5 gallons or more

I got a water profile for our city water and oui it was pretty bad, even though it tastes OK, so I buy bottled water from Wal-Mart. I reuse the jugs which is even cheaper so it only costs a few bucks per batch.
I'm interested to hear about the cost/gallon from those who use filters. I'd probably need reverse osmosis for water.

Our tap water is horrible, I just buy the jugs of drinking water from Kroger.

Tap water. I usually add a little bit of gypsum and some table salt unless I'm using a few specialty malts, then I skip the additions.

i have great success with kentwood springs.

tap water plus campden tablets to treat the chloramine

i add a little gypsum for all but the maltiest beers too

Filtered tap water here but I always boil my water before brewing

Usually tap for boil water, bottled for topping off the primary. The local stuff is about average chemical-wise (after wringing necks to get a water report...long story), so nothing filtered here except whatever goes into the primary.

My tap water tastes fine, so I just use that. I add a tiny bit of potassium metabisulfite to dechlorinate. I add far less than what you would use to knock down wild yeast, but I wait a day to let the SO2 dissipate.

I just did my first batch and I used distilled water. I know that isn’t ideal, and is considered a no-no in AG brewing, but I’m doing extract so I should be ok. When I start doing AG I am going to look into building my own water. The problem for me is I move to a different country every couple years and in many places, like here, it isn’t recommended to drink the tap water. I figure I will have more consistency if I end up building my own water. But that will wait until I move on to AG brewing.

I use bottled water. My local water tastes like pool water.

I used bottled for my first batch as I wanted to minimize as many possible problems the first time.

Used to use bottled drinking water (not spring, but the municipal stuff that is filtered and minerals added) for my extract batches.

Moved to using tap and hit it with some campden to get rid of the chloramine. Have used gypsum for more hop forward beers, but otherwise have been doing little modification for beers. Did a ward labs test on my water and it isn't far off from the city of austin reports.

Tap water through a Pur filter for the boil and distilled water to get to volume. I don't do full boils yet.