Best bottled water for AG brewing

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Whatever you think tastes best, I guess.

Most bottled drinking water is dechlorinated, filtered tap water (except distilled which is -- distilled), so it tends to be very soft water. The benefit you get with bottled water -- which can be replicated at home with filters or by boiling the water and letting it cool -- is the dechlorination. (Distilled water can also be useful for building the water profile from scratch or diluting your local tap supply.)

For some beer styles, you need to add salts or acids to arrive at the appropriate water profile for that style. Because bottled water tends to be soft, you can easily use it to brew lighter beers, but you will probably want to mix it with your local water supply and/or add salts. The problem is that you may not be able to find reliable water profile information for the bottled water.

Also, buying bottled water may be cost-prohibitive, especially if your local water supply is of good quality for the kind of beers you make or can be adjusted with some salts at a much cheaper price. You can buy a bag of epsom salt that will last hundreds of batches for the price of a few gallons of bottled water. However, your water supply may taste off or you may not want to go through the hassle of trying to dechlorinate your water.
 
I use my tap water, direct from the city. It tastes good and I run it through a softener. No complaints and it saves money on buying bottled water.
 
Many of the brands of water will have different chemistry depending on where you buy it. For example, Aquafina and Dasani are both just municipal water that's filtered and bottled at the closest Pepsi or Coke plant. Same thing goes for most grocery store branded bottled water. If you want a specific water chemistry, buy either distilled water or RO water and add brewing salts.

Any particular reason you want to use bottled water over your tap water? Most issues with tap water have a fairly simple fix.
 
I use my tap water, direct from the city. It tastes good and I run it through a softener. No complaints and it saves money on buying bottled water.

That's surprising. Water softeners typically remove many of the minerals needed for brewing and replace them with either sodium or potassuium chloride (depending on the softener type) in quantities way above desired limits. Unless your water softener badly needs to be recharged, I'd think it would make for pretty poor brewing water.
 
My tap water tastes like it came from a pool... I finally switched from bottled water to filtering the tap water. Any basic additions I should consider after running tap water through a 2 micron filter?
 
I installed a filtration system underneath my sink, and it works great. The filter removes a lot of what I don't want, it tastes great. I do add some gypsum when making darker beers tho. I figure I save $8-10 per batch and only have to change the filter 3-4 times per year.
 
That's what I bought, specifically for use with my brewing, so I will set it up as part of my brew setup. For $20 for the housing and $10 for a 2 pack of filters, I figure I'll save $10/per batch over bottled water. After the 3rd brew that savings will really show.
 
Just to let you know you CAN NOT remove chloramine with boiling and standard carbon filters. There is special catalyzed GAC filters that require low flow rate to break it down.
 
As long as the water tastes better, I'm happy. How will chloramine affect a beer? My normal britta filter does a great job making my tap water drinkable. I'd use that if it was feasable to get 10 gallons through that little guy ;-)
 
As long as the water tastes better, I'm happy. How will chloramine affect a beer? My normal britta filter does a great job making my tap water drinkable. I'd use that if it was feasable to get 10 gallons through that little guy ;-)

Chloramine reacts with the phenols produced by the yeast resulting in chlorophenols, which have a very harsh chemical or medicinal taste to them. If your water supply is treated with chlorine the filter should remove it. If it's treated with chloramine, it can easily be broken down by treating the water with campden tablets at a 1/4 tablet per 5 gal ratio.
 
i'm on a well, so out of the ground my water is pretty real nasty.

after the softner my water is pretty real salty. 211ppm NA, along with 352ppm HCO3

i've used Ice Mountain Spring water for all my ag beers (8 or so) and haven't had a problem, except for ~70% eff.

maybe i'll try my tap next time.
 
Chloramine reacts with the phenols produced by the yeast resulting in chlorophenols, which have a very harsh chemical or medicinal taste to them. If your water supply is treated with chlorine the filter should remove it. If it's treated with chloramine, it can easily be broken down by treating the water with campden tablets at a 1/4 tablet per 5 gal ratio.

Thanks! I'll find out.
 
I use the local grocery branded (Publix) bottled spring water. Don't know jack about the chemistry of it but the source is Florida spring water and it makes great beer. I would think it's relatively high in dissolved carbonates due to most of Florida being on a limestone aquifer.
 
We are in College Station Texas where the water has a very extremely high sodium content. On a hot day you can run a water hose onto concrete and wait a few minutes and see salt after the water evaporates. Many people here can not even shower or bath in it as it dries out their skin, including me.

For my first home brew, a replica of Paulaner from Austin Home Brew Supply. last year, I used Crystal Geyser bottled at source in the Arkansas Ozark Mountains. Have found it to be the purest and best tasting water available in Central Texas, at $1 a gallon. Will be using 5-6 gallons of it again in the morning when starting a 5+ gallon batch of German Wheat beer with lemongrass, double yeast pitched and 28oz corn sugar for double 1% alcohol boost to bring it to 7.8%. A wicked non-session Circus Boy yet with real german yeast and hops.

Water is the very key element of success in many foods, like Chicago pan pizza, Jimmy John's bread and the list goes on.
 
Absolutely pure water has a ph of 7, and is completely neutral. Distilled water and RO water, because of it's exposure to earths atmosphere, absorbs CO2 and becomes slightly acidic. Distilled and RO water has a PH of around 4-5. Softened water is exposed to salts and so becomes more of an alkaline with a higher ph. Softened water can have anywhere (in my experience) of a ph from 6-8. Softened water is technically too high for brewing and distilled and RO are either perfect or slightly to low for brewing. Aquafina is RO water, as is most cheap 5 gallon water bottles.
 
I agree completely. That's why I prefer to drink and brew with source bottled spring water that is still alive and not processed. Crystal Geyser is the best we can get in College Station, but because of the Aggies vs. Florida SEC opener at Kyle Field, all grocery store shelves are bare, looking like a pending holocaust because of the tailgators.

I might actually delay my brew if Crystal Geyser from Arkansas isn't restocked by noonish.

Grego
Aggieland


Absolutely pure water has a ph of 7, and is completely neutral. Distilled water and RO water, because of it's exposure to earths atmosphere, absorbs CO2 and becomes slightly acidic. Distilled and RO water has a PH of around 4-5. Softened water is exposed to salts and so becomes more of an alkaline with a higher ph. Softened water can have anywhere (in my experience) of a ph from 6-8. Softened water is technically too high for brewing and distilled and RO are either perfect or slightly to low for brewing. Aquafina is RO water, as is most cheap 5 gallon water bottles.
 
I've used all kinds of water but now I use distilled water from the grocery store (RO water is pretty much the same thing). Adding salts (usually just calcium chloride and/or gypsum) to distilled water allows me to literally make water that's *perfect* for the style and individual beer I'm brewing.

It even comes in large recyclable PET bottles (similar to Better Bottles) that I can use as a one-time fermentor, so there's less worry about infection, and no real cleaning necessary! Though I'll give it a rinse before recycling anyways.
 
Wal-Mart RO'd drinking water. At 88 cents a gallon, it doesn't add a huge amount to the brew. I have a well, and things seem to vary from season to season. At least that is consistent, and I have one less variable to keep track of.
 
Mineral water is the best choice, most of bottled water are distilled or undergoes with purification. Minerals are important substances of water. However, Nestle Waters, the bottled water department of Nestle, has been hit with a case by a store in Chicago. The shop owners found the water they were being sold was filtered after being purchased from a city source, meaning it was filtered tap water. Many water businesses use municipal sources, which not every person knows about.
 
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