Do you always boil water before adding it to the must?

In one of my batches, after adding the boil-now-cool water to the wort, it was till at 4.3 gal mark. So I added tap water to make it 5.0 gal, it was too late at night to boil and cool the water. It however started fermenting within 15 minutes thank to the big starter I had made. The beer turn out fine, or at least looked like beer, smelled like beer and tasted like beer.
This make me wonder how is everyone else doing with the adding water.

I have yet to have a problem with tap water (I have a water softener and filtration system in house) The only precaution I take is spraying star-san on the faucett before using it.

budbo said:

I have yet to have a problem with tap water (I have a water softener and filtration system in house) The only precaution I take is spraying star-san on the faucett before using it.

Click to expand...

Please don't kid me! I always think that 100% of people out there boil their water, only lazy me having the idea of not boiling.
Are you serious? We can use tap water?

I use bottled water. Sometimes the tap water tastes like chlorine. I rather not get off flavors from the chemicals and minerals in the tap water.

I have added up to 3.5 gallons of tap water before. No problems with it. I have used bottled water the last couple batches but think ill go back to tap because ours is excellent here - no real benefit to using bottled except that I can put the jugs in the freezer so they are just above freezing after my boil. Good for cooling the wort quickly. I usually boil 2-2.5 gallons and add the rest with cooled water.

If it's a little bit to top up to the 5 gallon mark I just draw it straight from the tap. Usually I try and make sure I've made extra wort than I need. Water is never completely sterile, sure, but as long as you've been careful with everything else it's never a problem IMO.

Our tap water tastes fine, so I use straight tap water for my 2 gallons of top off water. No boiling.

I have never boiled. In one apartment at college the water tasted terrible and used bottled water. Boiling and allowing it to cool seems like too much of a pain in the A$$. When brewing is a pain in the A$$ its time to evaluate your procedures.

Beer Snob said:

I have never boiled. In one apartment at college the water tasted terrible and used bottled water. Boiling and allowing it to cool seems like too much of a pain in the A$$. When brewing is a pain in the A$$ its time to evaluate your procedures.

Click to expand...

My first ever batch got some water from the tap while I was cooling down the wort, I boiled the wort again!
However I still am surprised on the result that vast amount of people don't boil!

I won't drink tap water, so I'm not going to use it in my beer either. Spring water at Wally World is only like 68 cents a gallon. Granted, I use tap water to fill ice cube trays, but I may stop doing that too.

On a side note, I can water (soak) my vegetable gardens with a hose using tap water, and the plants just sit there. Then after it rains, the plants just shoot up and grow like crazy. Coincidence?

I'm a fan of boiling all my water to remove chlorine. My question is: I thought I would have time to brew last week so I measured and boiled 5 gallons of water and let it cool. It's still sitting in 2 pots on my stove with the lids on, been like that for 4 days now. Do you think it's become contaminated? Should I boil it again just to be safe?
-Terrag

I use tap water straight from my well 210 feet deep, no water softener or filter. I only boil the water I use to rinse the chlorine and vinegar sanitizer from sanitized equipment.
Doing all grain and full boil so its boiled any way, never top off (normally have to much wort any way... save it for the next starter.)

I use bottled water because the water supply in my part of the country is abhorrent for practically any application.

Are you also boiling your water for sparging? If so, me doing 10 gallon batches would require me to boil and cool 16+ gallons of water. If I buy water, same thing goes, thats an additional 12 dollars just in water. I recently bought a whole house water filter, with a carbon filter, and have been using that to brew. I know that this will not take out the horrible alkalinity I have in my area, but it will at least take out some of the chemical/chlorine taste I have. I certainly hope this will help with the harshness by beers have been having.