Chlorine and H2O

My brother who is in the water testing/management profession tells me that as you raise the tempeture of treated water the Chlorine disapates.

If this is indeed the case, why do we worry so much about it?


Wednesday I did a full boil with tap water (unfiltered) and then brought my volume up to 5 gal with bottled spring water.

How To Treat Water For The Average Homebrew <--- goes into detail re: boiling for 30 minutes etc, I didnt do this, I boiled for like 5 minutes.

So now the question:

Does anyone use Tap water?
and if so do you feel a need to boil it?
Has anyone had a bad batch due to using tap water?
Also, does anyone do a partial boil and use an 8lb bag of ice to cool the wort?
Will the ice bug my brew?

Thanks in advance!

Does anyone use Tap water?
and if so do you feel a need to boil it?
Has anyone had a bad batch due to using tap water?
Also, does anyone do a partial boil and use an 8lb bag of ice to cool the wort?
Will the ice bug my brew?

Click to expand...

Many people use tap water - I use filtered tap water - I do not boil it. All of our water comes into the house soften (the city does it), What you CAN do is just put it in your pot and let it sit for a day. The only thing you are worried about it taste.

The problem with ice is that it COULD have infection in it - 99% of the time it won't but . . . . .

Does anyone use Tap water?
Yes. Lots of us do. No reason not to unless your tap water has problems with it.
and if so do you feel a need to boil it?
Yes, but only because I do full boils. When I did partial boils, I didn't boil the top off water.
Has anyone had a bad batch due to using tap water?
Possibly. I've had one undrinkable batch. It could have been infected by the tap water, but it could have been infected by something else
Also, does anyone do a partial boil and use an 8lb bag of ice to cool the wort?
I've never tried it, but some do.
Will the ice bug my brew?
It could do, but I have no idea how likely this is.

-a.

Heating or even boiling the water does remove chlorine from tap water. However, it does not remove chloramines, and many municipalities are switching from chlorine to chloramines. Chloramines have the same effect on beer as chlorine, forming chlorophenols which can taste something like someone spiked your beer with Comet cleanser. No bueno.

So, I don't bother boiling the tap water I use to brew. I add a bit of campden tablet. That removes chlorine and chloramines.

Sanitation is not an issue, since that water gets heated to better that 150F for quite a while and then boiled for an hour. Bye-bye, bugs.

Will ice get you? I don't know. I've never tried it.


TL

Thanks guys, Texlaw got me thinking about "chloramines."

I live in NY so I thought I would let my neighbors know the following:

"In New York state chloramine is almost not used at all. Only two water providers (Seneca, WaterlooCounty) are using it on a routine basis. The city of Utica is currently doing a study to see if it is a feasi-ble measure."

full article is here: Factsheet 17_RS.pub


Thanks again guys for the wisdom.

BTW I live very far away from the Counties mentioned :cross: