Tap water question..

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zanemoseley

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I just did my first brew and its priming in the bottles now. All the water I used for my wort or top off was boiled tap water. I used "no rinse" sanitizer but have been rinsing everything after sanitizing with tap water. This includes all buckets, carboy, airlocks, bottles and other equipment. I have city water that is treated but wonder how safe I am. I can say the batch stayed clean through 1 week in primary fermentation, racking to secondary and one week there. So how safe is what I'm doing?

I do have a full sized 5 stage 75 gallon per day water purifier used for my saltwater fish tank that has sediment, 2 carbon blocks, RO membrane and DI resin filtration which is capable of producing 0 TDS water. I will use this in the future for brewing but since it doesn't filter microbes it may not be a good option for rinsing equipment, may actually make it more risky because its possible to filter out all chemicals and leave any microscopic organisms in the water.
 
1) Stop rinsing your **** after sanitizing with NO-RINSE solution.
2) Do you drink your tap water straight out of the faucet? If so, you probably don't even need to boil it. If you filter it first, then filter before brewing with it. Good rule of thumb: if you drink it plain, you can drink it in beer.
 
Pre-boiling top off water is a good idea. Just because your water source may not make you ill, doesn't mean it won't make your beer infected. A very small percentage of microbes are human pathogens. Municipal tap water is not microbe free... some of which could infect beer. It's risky... some people top off with unboiled tap water and get away with it time after time, but why risk it?

Rinsing after sanitizing with unboiled tap water is a bad idea. That essentially negates sanitizing. If it's a no-rinse sanitizer, you obviously don't need to rinse at all. But if you feel like it (for instance, you mixed an iodophor solution a bit strong and want to rinse it off), it's perfectly fine to rinse as long as you use pre-boiled water.
 
I think I'd continue to use straight tap water. Using the carbon/reverse osmosis treatment will remove too many minerals. The beer will likely be OK, but it will seem like the taste is off because of the lack of minerals.
 
Ok I'll stop rinsing stuff after sanitizing it, the Midwest Supply DVD says that most people rinse their stuff after using a "no rinse" sanitizer. That will definitely take away the majority of contact my equipment/brew has with the tap water.

I have no problem boiling the top off water, the worst part is cooling it.

I didn't think about removing too many minerals with the water filtration. My unit basically produces the gallon jugs of water sold as drinking water at the store.
 
zanemoseley said:
I didn't think about removing too many minerals with the water filtration. My unit basically produces the gallon jugs of water sold as drinking water at the store.
Click to expand...

True, but most bottled drinking water has minerals added back to create a specific taste and chemical profile.
 
FWIW...and I'm not saying to do this but...I have always just used bleach and water to sanitize (never anything else except in SS cornies) and always just rinsed with tap water. And I always topped off my fermenter with straight bottled water right out of the bottle (refrigerated so I can get my temp down). I've never had any sort of 'beer infection' problems and if I did it didn't affect the beer that much because I never tasted it.

But I've always tried very hard to get quick starts on fermentation. IMO, a quick fermentation start can erase some sanitizing 'errors'. Once the yeast consume and/or scrub all the free O2 from the solution most of the 'bad stuff' doesn't have a chance.
 
SpanishCastleAle said:
FWIW...and I'm not saying to do this but...I have always just used bleach and water to sanitize (never anything else except in SS cornies) and always just rinsed with tap water. And I always topped off my fermenter with straight bottled water right out of the bottle (refrigerated so I can get my temp down). I've never had any sort of 'beer infection' problems and if I did it didn't affect the beer that much because I never tasted it.

But I've always tried very hard to get quick starts on fermentation. IMO, a quick fermentation start can erase some sanitizing 'errors'. Once the yeast consume and/or scrub all the free O2 from the solution most of the 'bad stuff' doesn't have a chance.
Click to expand...

[Note to self: Remember this post when SpanishCastleAle posts an "Is my beer infected?"-thread.]:D
 
If you boil all your water, remember to aerate properly.

You will remove most or all of the Oxygen from the water
as you boil it.
 
[Note to self: Remember this post when SpanishCastleAle posts an "Is my beer infected?"-thread.]
Click to expand...
I'm sure I'll have one some day.:eek: But my tap water is chlorinated (actually...chloramine-ated ;))...such that it can sit in a pipe for a long time and you can still drink it with no ill effects. And once any residual rinse water is mixed in with the rest of the water volume the trace amounts of chlorine (or chloramine) are negligible. We're just sanitizing not sterilizing...so it's all just a matter of degree anyway. Could be a new Nike commercial: My sanitary is more sanitary than your sanitary.:D

0202,
Good point about aerating the boiled water. My method of aeration is probably another 'taboo' in the homebrewing sanitation world...I just boil a whisk in water to sterilize and then whisk the living **** out of the fully cooled wort right before it goes into the fermenter. I think good aeration of cooled wort (not warm or hot) is very important to quick fermentation starts. My brews are almost always blowing off within 12 hours of pitching.
 
I used to sanitize with bleach, and rinse with hot tap (briefly turned up the water heater) and drain. It worked fine for a while, until a few off flavors began to creep into my beers. It was nothing I would call "beer ruining" but it was certainly something another brewer would notice.

After a thorough cleaning of equipment, hose replacement, etc. didn't solve the problem, I switched to a no rinse and any water that contacts the beer is pre-boiled. The problem disappeared.

Domestic water is going to vary a lot. What works fine in you're area may not in others. Those who's water is from rivers may seen swings in mineral content, chlorination etc. throughout the year. All domestic water is clean and safe to drink, but maybe not be safe enough to ferment with.
 
SpanishCastleAle said:
I think good aeration of cooled wort (not warm or hot) is very important to quick fermentation starts. My brews are almost always blowing off within 12 hours of pitching.
Click to expand...

Water loses it's ability to retain oxygen as it gets warmer. Cool wort
should hold up to twice the Oxygen in solution that warm wort will.
 
1. Find a way to treat your tap water for chlorine and/or chloramine. For the former just letting it sit in a container for a while open will work, for the latter consider potassium metabisulfite or a carbon filter paying attention to the instructions (flow rate and temperature). Chlorine in beer will form chlorophenols which taste medicinal or like a band-aid.
2. Carbon filtration does not remove minerals important to brewing in general.
3. If you are brewing with extract, consider using RO or distilled water. The extract was made with water that is good for brewing and all of those minerals are dissolved therein. You are probably not hurting anything by adding additional minerals but it certainly is not necessary.
4. It is highly likely that your municipal water supply is free enough of microbes to use as is in brewing. However, I am much less confident about the state of faucet you are drawing it out of. I recommend against using it. Boil the water before using it for best results. Water is cheap at the store if you are lazy.
5. It bears repeating, stop rinsing after sanitizing.
 
Water loses it's ability to retain oxygen as it gets warmer. Cool wort
should hold up to twice the Oxygen in solution that warm wort will.
Click to expand...
Exactly! And any potential oxidation that might occur happens at a faster rate at higher temps.

I'll try to keep an eye/nose/tastebud out for off-flavors. Once my wort is boiled the only thing it touches are the sterilized whisk (boiled in water), the sterilized funnel (boiled in the wort), and the carboy. Nothing else...although once my IC gets here that will be another...but I'll boil it in the wort to sterilize.
 
Ah yes...a thermometer that was boiled in the wort. At work we use those infrared 'guns' for checking temp and they work pretty well...so I could eliminate that if I wanted but...a boiled thermometer works fine.:)
 
menschmaschine said:
Pre-boiling top off water is a good idea. Just because your water source may not make you ill, doesn't mean it won't make your beer infected. A very small percentage of microbes are human pathogens. Municipal tap water is not microbe free... some of which could infect beer. It's risky... some people top off with unboiled tap water and get away with it time after time, but why risk it?QUOTE]

+1. And just to emphasize this point.

Milwaukee Cryptosporidium outbreak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My parents lost a dog to this. They started filtering their water when it happened, but didn't think to give the dog water from the filter.
Click to expand...
 
Tap water for the most part (not always) is very low on microbes because of the treatment process the city does. The bigger thing you have to worry about with tap is the chlorine content.

When using tap in your wort, you have three things going for you:

1) Big infection of saccharomyces cerevisiae that you put in there getting a foothold.
2) Hops protect to an extent against infection.
3) Very low microbe count in tap water

Tap contaminated with Crypto or other potentially fatal diseases is rare, and if you do have tap with Crypto, then you have bigger worries than your homebrewing.

Santize, not Sterilize...
 
Starsan, and don't rinse it! Also, if your water tastes good to drink then your beer will taste good, but if not, then go get some spring water from the store, or install a filter to clear the taste.

I use Starsan and just let it drip off until the excess is gone, then it's good to go.
 
...but if not, then go get some spring water from the store...
Click to expand...
FWIW,
I got the water analysis from the local bottled water company and it turns out that for this company (Zephyrhills), their Spring water is better for light colored brews and their Drinking water is better for darker brews. Have no idea if other water bottlers do it similarly. And the two are not that far apart.
 
I have ZERO first hand experience with either type of water,
but I used distilled water in my first boil in order to maintain
the amount of salts/minerals in the original wort.

Speaking of course, about extract.

Adding spring water to top off (because it's oxygenated).

The theory being that distilled water is pure and won't flavor
the extract that already has the appropriate minerals/salts
 
I use Distilled too...to get softer/less alkaline water to then add some minerals/salts to. I make my AG Pils with a 7:1 ratio of Distilled:Spring and very, very minor additions to try and emulate the extremely soft Czech water. But my Stout gets Drinking Water plus a decent amount of minerals/salts to get in the London-water ballpark.
 

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