Do You Boil Your Make Up Tap Water?

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smata67

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I'd like to get a sense of how many people feel there is a benefit to boiling tap water even if its been carbon filtered and tastes good. I usually boil 2.5 gallons and mix with 2.5 gallons make up water to get to 5 gallons. In a previous life of Mr. Beer brewing I never boiled the make up water and I think it may have resulted in a degradation in taste, but this is of course hard to determine. So should I boil the extra water "just to be sure" or is there no benefit?
 
What kind of degradation did you think it caused? Because I did this with my last batch and at first I thought it was a sour taste, but the longer I let it sit the more it seems like a chlorine type chemical taste...
 
i use cold tap water when making extract brews. it gets my temps down to pitchable temps really fast. I often got to the local gas station and buy 2 bags of ice and throw in the frementing bucket. - never had an issue with bacteria or off flavoring
 
I use tap water, fresh from the tap

(1) it's easy
(2) it's relatively cheap
(3) it's hard enough for brewing but not too hard
(4) we don't have a ton of chlorine in the water

I don't boil it because it seems to work out fine without boiling. Never had a problem. But tap water is pretty good IMHO

A big reason I brew is economics. I like decent beer, but I don't like paying out $10 for 72 oz when I can pay $30 for 640 oz of like-quality beer. Cost is a factor. Sure, I could buy water and control the mineral content manually, and perhaps get a better beer, but how much better?

Maybe I'll try brewing with store-bought RO water and add minerals sometime and see if it works out better, but I need to fine-tune fermentation temps and pitching first (that's job-one right now).
 
I read that boiling tap removes "temporary hardness". Not sure, but since my water is great but extremely hard, I can use the help (vs. cutting with distilled).
 
I've never boiled make up water, I usually top off with whatever water I used for the mash or boil (tap, distilled, RO, etc). I can appreciate the arguments for boiling it ("bugs" in the water, possibly reducing hardness) but I've never had a problem or heard of this causing a problem for anyone. I suppose its one of those things that would be nice to do if I run out of more promising ways to improve my procedures to try first.
 
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