Adding Cold Water to a Finished Wort?

While making my first batch, the directions said to make my wort 3 gallons. After my boil it said to chill the wort down to 80 degrees before pinching. This can be accomplished by adding 2 gallons of cold water to my wort to make a 5 gallon batch. Is this normal? I was so paranoid to add cold water because of contamination, so I boiled the 2 gallons of cold water to sanitize it before adding it to my wort. By doing this, it took a little longer to chill my wort. Can I add cold water to my finished wort before putting in the yeast? Or is this bad technique. I don't want to contaminate the beer. Please help.

You want to add the water prior to the yeast, then mix your batch up real good, maybe swish it back and forth between two containers to mix it and aerate well. You should see a foamy head develop as you aerate it. After done, pitch your yeast on top of this.

Your yeast, (I am assuming is a dry pack), is the last step before you put it away to ferment. Adding water can actually help oxygenate your wort as you pour it and splash it in there. This is the one time you want your wort well oxygenated, so the yeast will take off. They will gobble it up and crap out CO2 before you know it.

I've only completed two batches so far. On my last batch I put three gallons of water in the freezer while I boiled my wort. I put the kettle in an ice bath and added one gallon of ice water. Checked the temp. Added another gallon of ice water, then checked the temp. Checked the OG. At this point, I just added water, checked temp and OG until was in my target range. Once I met my OG, I stopped adding ice water and let the ice bath bring the temp down to 75 before I finally pitched the yeast. Using ice water helped get my temp under 80 about 50 minutes faster than my first batch. I did forget to aerate though. Fermentation was vigorous however, so all must be well.

I have not noticed anything wrong with this technique.

When I brew extract batches, I always do a 2.5 gallon boil and then top it up with cold tap water. I don't boil the tap water, and I've never had a contamination issue. When I brew all grain, if I have more boil-off then I intended, I'll often top it up with tap water to bring it up to 5 gallons. Again, no issues.

Like dbhokie says, adding the tap water can help oxygenate your wort. I actually use the sprayer faucet on the kitchen sink to make lots of foam. Once it's up to 5 gallons, then the yeast goes right on top!

NochEineMassBitte said:

When I brew extract batches, I always do a 2.5 gallon boil and then top it up with cold tap water. I don't boil the tap water, and I've never had a contamination issue. When I brew all grain, if I have more boil-off then I intended, I'll often top it up with tap water to bring it up to 5 gallons. Again, no issues.

Like dbhokie says, adding the tap water can help oxygenate your wort. I actually use the sprayer faucet on the kitchen sink to make lots of foam. Once it's up to 5 gallons, then the yeast goes right on top!

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Thanks guys. Another quick question. When you say put yeast right on top. Does that mean you dont mix it in the chilled wort. I mixed the yeast in the chilled wort before fermenting. Is it ok to mix the yeast in?

This is a common question and if you need more answers do a forum search for "adding cold water". The long and the short of it is that some home brewers boil their tap water and cool it in the fridge, or use purified/bottled water. And some just use their cold tap water straight from the tap. It tends to break down on whether they "trust" their tap water to be free of microbes, contaminants, or anything else that could make their beer taste weird.

I've always used my tap water and have never had a problem, going on 9 batches. I live in a small city with city water pulled out of Lake Michigan and I drink it all the time without issues. I also think my water tastes pretty good, so I'm going to stick with it.

Mike

It doesn't really matter, but most experts and the yeast producers on a lot of dry yeast such as US-05 and Notty recommend re-hydrating the yeast. If you oxygenate prior and get a good layer of foam, then sprinkle the yeast on the foam, the foam kind of rehydrates them on the way down to the wort. Or you can rehydrate with water, just search the forum for rehydrating.

Dry yeast has come such a long way, and generally is so healthy, you may not notice a huge difference, but it helps them "wake" up and overcome some stresses.

I never rehydrate in water with them, I always pitch on top of head.

Yes, I use cold water to further chill my wort. I usually ice bath it down to approx 70* and add it to a gal of 55* water, shake the daylights out of it, and then add another gal of 55* water, I effectively hit a pitching temp of about 64*

Adding the top off water adds O2 (if you dont boil the water 1st) which the yeast NEED.

I always rehydrate, there was a post somewhere on here if I can find it with the yeast manufacturers microbiologists explaination of why you need to rehydrate and how to do it best. Just do a quick search

There are benefits to doing full volume boils (I just did my first last weekend) but you can totally add cold water on top of your wort to cool it and/or bring it to 5 gallons. Just make sure to give it a good stir before taking your OG and pitching the yeast.

I've only used dry yeast once but I just put it right in the fermenter with no issues.

I just cold water right out of my tap. We're on private well water and we get it tested every couple of years. The only thing I don't like about our water is the iron content but that isn't really an issue unless I run the well down low (we have a slow well, low replenishment rate) so watering the lawn in the summer can be a real problem....which is why I have a crappy lawn.

You don't need to areate when using dry yeast but still want to mix things up well. You can add cold tap water with very little risk of infection, but nearly all city water supplies will have chloramines in it to prevent microbial growth and you don't really want chloramine in your beer. So one benefit of boiling it then cooling it is you will remove some (not all) chloramine. A better way, and what many of us do is always prep all brew water with sodium metabisulfite which removes basically all chloramine instantly.

I also do extract kits with a 15 minute boil. instructions say to boil a seperate pot of water, cool it, and add it. I'd be okay using filtered water out of my fridge dispenser right? My tap water is good to begin with, girlfriend just likes the filtered taste.

Does anyone know a formula or calculator to achieve a target pitching temp for a given volume of wort by adding cold water?

TomBrooz said:

Does anyone know a formula or calculator to achieve a target pitching temp for a given volume of wort by adding cold water?

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If you are adding cold water and not ice it is just a simple ratio.

Volume A x Temp A + Volume B x Temp B / total volume = Final temp.

If you add ice it is significantly more complicated due to the energy absorbed from the change of state of ice to water as well as the difference in the specific heat of ice vs liquid water, but can still be calculated fairly easily.

brewit2it said:

You don't need to areate when using dry yeast but still want to mix things up well. You can add cold tap water with very little risk of infection, but nearly all city water supplies will have chloramines in it to prevent microbial growth and you don't really want chloramine in your beer. So one benefit of boiling it then cooling it is you will remove some (not all) chloramine. A better way, and what many of us do is always prep all brew water with sodium metabisulfite which removes basically all chloramine instantly.

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Don't need to aerate when using dry yeast? This is the first I've heard of that. Why isn't there the need to aerate?

cincybrewer said:

Don't need to aerate when using dry yeast? This is the first I've heard of that. Why isn't there the need to aerate?

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yeast need O2 to produce sterols and lipids for cell wall integrity and reproduction. Dry yeast allegedly has enough sterols and lipids as is to facilitate a healthy fermentation without adding O2. At least that's the claim. for clarity's sake, I am neither questioning nor supporting that claim, merely relaying it.

BrewKnurd said:

yeast need O2 to produce sterols and lipids for cell wall integrity and reproduction. Dry yeast allegedly has enough sterols and lipids as is to facilitate a healthy fermentation without adding O2. At least that's the claim. for clarity's sake, I am neither questioning nor supporting that claim, merely relaying it.

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thanks for the info. I just had never heard that. I typically use dry yeast and have always tried to aerate as best as possible.

cincybrewer said:

thanks for the info. I just had never heard that. I typically use dry yeast and have always tried to aerate as best as possible.

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Danstar says their yeast can double about 3 times with no additional O2 and that this is sufficient for ~5% ABV beers.

http://www.danstaryeast.com/articles/aeration-and-starter-versus-wort

Fermentis doesn't seem to address the issue as directly. At one point in their homebrewing FAQ, they recommend aerating to mix the wort, which implies its not necessary for O2 purposes, but doesn't directly state it.

"7/ Does the wort need Oxygenation/ aeration?
As the yeast is grown aerobically, the yeast is less sensitive on first pitch. Aeration is recommended to ensure full mixing of the wort and yeast.

brewit2it said:

You don't need to areate when using dry yeast but still want to mix things up well. You can add cold tap water with very little risk of infection, but nearly all city water supplies will have chloramines in it to prevent microbial growth and you don't really want chloramine in your beer. So one benefit of boiling it then cooling it is you will remove some (not all) chloramine. A better way, and what many of us do is always prep all brew water with sodium metabisulfite which removes basically all chloramine instantly.

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Many Municipal and City Water treatment plants still use chlorine and not chloramine, generally if your water is treated with chloramine it will lend a greener color vs a bluer color with chlorine.

You can look up a water safety or analysis report for your municipality online and quickly see whether or not they use chloramine. (though I wouldn't use any of the ion levels for liquor calculations as these may differ and likely will differ some with what actually comes out of your tap)

I wouldn't use Campden tablets or the like unless you know it has been treated with chloramine, even then from my knowledge of chemistry I would use Ascorbic Acid. It doesn't take as much Vitamin C, and a bit extra won't kill or stunt your yeast like excess sulfites.

I wouldn't worry about conditioning it at all until you know what is in it. Or else you end up doing a bunch of "good practices" that apply to others and don't to you.

You may not need to aerate for proper reproduction with most dry yeast, my only experience is in that when I use dry yeast and don't aerate it takes a good bit longer for a vigorous fermentation to start.

my kits are for 5 gallons of brew. Can I cut in half, use my 2 gallon Mr. Beer keg, then after fermentation is complete add another 1/2 gallon of water?