(WATER) Distilled vs Tap????

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ChickenLuva

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Kodiak AK
I've recently moved to a new area and I'm unsure of the quality of tap water in my new location. Is it worth is to purchase several gallons of distilled water for the wart or should I use tap water without testing it
 
I have read that distilled water does not contain the nutrients needed for yeast growth. If you are worried about your tap water, I would suggest either using a water filter or buy spring water.
 
does it taste good to you? And are you using extract or all-grain? If it tastes good, I'd just use the tap water. I dunno if you're on a well or a municipal water supply, but if it's the latter, you can usually get water composition reports from whatever entity treats your water.

Brewing with distilled water requires adding a bunch of minerals and stuff
 
Yes I do drink the water here and it does taste ok. I have only brewed with tap water efore but only because the friend whom was helping me also lived in the area and had tested it already. On the off chance that I would use Spring water would I need to add anything to it?
 
Yes I do drink the water here and it does taste ok. I have only brewed with tap water efore but only because the friend whom was helping me also lived in the area and had tested it already. On the off chance that I would use Spring water would I need to add anything to it?

If you're brewing with extract, either bottled spring water or good tasting tap water will be fine. If you're brewing all grain, you might want to get a water report to see what the mineral levels are.
 
if you brew with your tap water and notice off flavors then switch to spring water or distilled and you dont have to add anything to those water for extract.
 
Get a water report from your water company. If anything is way off the charts high, it would be beneficial to cut your tap with a couple gallons of distilled to lower the levels because extract will be carrying additional minerals in making things worse.
 
Try to search for your water company in google if you're on city water. It's likely you can contact them for the values you need. If not, and you have a well, then send a sample to Ward Labs.

In the meantime, I would just get some cheap pH strips or a cheap meter and take a reading of the mash pH ir you're doing all grain. If it's within normal limits then I wouldn't worry about it. If not, you'll probably still make beer!

For extract, like others have said, if the water tastes good, just brew with it!
 
If using strait extract distilled water will reconstitute the original wort as it was at the brewery.

If you use tap or spring then you will be adding addition minerals and stuff to the wort.

Its unlikely an issue if the water tastes fine use it. Clorine or cloramine are the big things to worry about.
 
If using strait extract distilled water will reconstitute the original wort as it was at the brewery.
I don't know what you mean by the 'original wort' or what brewery you're referring to. I doubt the OP is planning to brew a beer with only one kind of malt and no hops.

Using only distilled water with extract is a bad idea, because there won't be sufficient (if any) nutrients for the yeast.

In the meantime, I would just get some cheap pH strips or a cheap meter and take a reading of the mash pH ir you're doing all grain. If it's within normal limits then I wouldn't worry about it. If not, you'll probably still make beer!
he clearly said he was using extract

ChickenLuva: Unless your tap water tastes horrendously vile, you really don't need to worry about water until you go all-grain. As you said, your tap water at your new place tastes ok and you're using extract. Use your tap water.
 
Ok, let me explain this in detail.

1. Some company breiss for instance, takes some grain and mashes it to make a wort. They then either "spray dry" or "reduce the wort to make LME or DME. Breiss made the wort(extract) with a specific water profile whatever that may have been. When it is either dried or reduced all minerals originally in the wort are present and exist in a concentrated form since water has been reduced to make LME and/or DME.

2. IF you take the DME, or LME and add lets say a really hard tap water this is what will happen, your wort in the kettle will now contain all your very hard waters minerals nearly 5gallons worth by the time you're done PLUS you'll have all the all the original minerals the were used to make it in the first place.

3. Adding anything except distilled water to DME or LME is adding minerals, bacteria, chlorine, etc over and above whats already in concentrated extract.

Now, that being said does it mater. Well I suppose it depends on your water profile, the water profile of the extract manufacturer and or what type of beer style you're trying make.

Minerals and such are very important for AG and so it ones water profile. People spend a lot of time building their water profiles to make beer in the correct style. I'm just now beginning to investigate this.

In extract you are reconstituting an existing wort created by the manufacturer. I always use distilled water for extracts and my beers are much better once I started doing it that way.
 
I would agree the above post.

IMO tap water is not the best solution (albeit not always a bad solution either). Even if you get a water quality report, or get your water tested, those numbers are either only averages or measurements at that particular day.

When it comes to tap water the water parameters can vary drastically over months/days/years, for a several reasons.

This is not a reason not to use tap water, but, using distilled water is the only way to overcome this potential variation in your water supply.
 
If I were still brewing extract and I didn't have a local water report, I would use half spring water, half distilled. Knowing what my tap water has in it, I would be using half dechlorinated tap and half distilled. I'd put a small amount of gypsum in for pale ale/IPA.
 
Why not go to the grocery store and fill up a large reusable container with RO water? Then use the spreadsheets available to add salts as needed for the style? Last night I paid $1.25 for 7 gallons of RO water for a pilsner I'm brewing today. Very inexpensive to make sure I'll have water soft enough to brew this right!
 
I think suggesting water modification to a new extract brewer is overkill. Extract contains minerals. You don't know what and how much. If you build water from distilled with minerals, you then have your water profile, plus whatever is in the extract. The most important thing for extract brewers is making sure their water is free of chlorine and chloramine. If it is, using tap water won't really hurt, especially if you are starting out. Still, you have the whole double mineral thing. If you know your water is very hard, cut it with half distilled water.

Also, TristanL, making sure you have soft water for an AG Pils is much different than having the correct water for an extract pale ale.
 
I think suggesting water modification to a new extract brewer is overkill. Extract contains minerals. You don't know what and how much. If you build water from distilled with minerals, you then have your water profile, plus whatever is in the extract. The most important thing for extract brewers is making sure their water is free of chlorine and chloramine. If it is, using tap water won't really hurt, especially if you are starting out. Still, you have the whole double mineral thing. If you know your water is very hard, cut it with half distilled water.

Also, TristanL, making sure you have soft water for an AG Pils is much different than having the correct water for an extract pale ale.

Thinking about this some more, I think you're right on all points. That's great advice. I like the take home point of making sure to get rid of chlorine/chloramine and think that's important.

I recently started treating my water for chloramine and there is a significant difference in the quality of the finished beer!
 
I think suggesting water modification to a new extract brewer is overkill. Extract contains minerals. You don't know what and how much. If you build water from distilled with minerals, you then have your water profile, plus whatever is in the extract. The most important thing for extract brewers is making sure their water is free of chlorine and chloramine. If it is, using tap water won't really hurt, especially if you are starting out. Still, you have the whole double mineral thing. If you know your water is very hard, cut it with half distilled water.

Also, TristanL, making sure you have soft water for an AG Pils is much different than having the correct water for an extract pale ale.

I think the benefit of treating your water has better side-effects than not doing it. Even for a beginner.

Its more frustrating to have nasty tasty beer than it is harder to buy some water and put salt in it.
 
Spring Water from the local supermarket is around $0.79 a gallon.
Isn't that a small price to pay for a quality brew?

As can be seen in numerous other threads, "Spring Water" is very often municipal water packaged and sold at the grocery store. Depending on the city, it may not be that much different from the tap.

To the OP, unless your tap water is very hard, i.e. contains alot of Calcium (sometimes can be seen by hard water deposits in sinks and showers) you're good to use tap water (properly de-chlorinated) for extract brews. If you want to dig deeper and learn what about the water is important, especially for AG, start here:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15.html
 
I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but I live in Fargo, ND, we get our water from a brown river...

Our tap water tastes like ass. Well it tastes like chlorine. What I did was I went to google, searched up "Fargo's Water Treatment Results" and the first few links were "City of Fargo" websites. I clicked on the most relevant one and looked for a print out. I found it in one or two clicks.

Upon investigating my water supply has like 3.15 ppm or something like that. Which I believe is pretty high so I just go to the grocery store and fill up 6 gallons of spring water for my extract brewing. Seems to be working out for me.

So, really, I would just get the spring water for now and take a look at the water results from the city whenever you get a chance.
 
I did an experiment on this very topic. Here is the link:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/attention-all-extract-brewers-harsh-bitterness-aftertaste-128731/

I personally fall in the category of using all distilled or RO water for extract brews because my water has 199ppm sodium and 162ppm sulfate (which together along with the minerals from the extract make some pretty harsh beer). If it were me, I wouldn't use 100% tap water, but I tend to be a little conservative. Let us know what you decide and how it turns out.:mug:
 
Don't take a chance.

My water tastes great but produces bad beer.
My alkalinity of 346 mg/L and sodium of 158 mg/L is a terrible combination for beer.

Wait for your water report rather than possible frustration of bad beer.
 
I use one of those on-tap filters on my kitchen sink. Just put the kettle under it and fill it up. It does get rid of the chlorine taste, and makes the water taste "fresher" (subjective unscientific claim).
 
If you're concerned about it, for $150 you can go Reverse Osmosis with De-ionization. That is PURE water. (Some could argue too pure.)

...Like the others said; if it tastes good to you, just go with it.
 
Was also told by my brewer supply that distilled water won't ferment properly. But I see some are doing this so apparently not true???
 
Straight distilled water is not good for all grain brewing. There are things that happen in the mash that need certain minerals to buffer the pH. What your supplier is referring to are the yeast health ions calcium and magnesium. You can get away with distilled for extract brewing since your extract already contains the salts and mineral profile of the place it was made. I'm not sure about exact content of malt extracts, but it could turn out after dilution, some things are a little too low.
 
I live in Kodiak too and our water is amazing. Wait until you go outside and you'll discover how wretched it is out there!
 
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