Adding water to carboy

[Nate88237]

Is it ok if I add tap water to carboy and wort to bring up to 5 gallons or is it a must that I boil the water first? Not boiling would be more convenient so I dont have to cool it. My tap water is fairly clean and I also have a brita filter.

 

[amandabab]

I never boil my top up water.

 

[SmoothSmoke]

I didn't boil my top off water. Hope I didn't fock it up.

 

[tre9er]

I didn't boil my top-off water on my first extract batch, but I recommend you do. It's like not washing your hands after going to a gas-station bathroom...will you get sick every time? No. Most of the time? Probably not. That one time though? Definitely.

 

[JonK331]

Only thing is tap water might have chlorine and/or chloramine but it's usually just fine to add as far as infection is concerned. I wouldn't use the brita because it very well may have more bacteria than the actual tap water from sitting in your fridge.

 

[Gear101]

never have and never had a problem.

 

[HopHeaven]

Only brewed 1 beer so far but I boiled 2 gallons of water before I started anything and let it cool down. used this water to top off my boil to 5 gallons. Pretty easy to do and not all that time consuming if you do it while you are preping to brew

 

[Klickmania]

I've never boiled my top off water and everything has come out fine. If you don't want to boil and cool, you can always go with bottled water like some people on here do.

 

[SmoothSmoke]

I've never boiled my top off water and everything has come out fine. If you don't want to boil and cool, you can always go with bottled water like some people on here do.

That's what I went with. I did a 3 gallon boil, then added 2 gallons of bottled water. However I didn't account for evaporation. (total f'n newbie) So I used about 1/3 of a gallon of fresh tap water to get it to 5 gallons.

 

[Andrew5329]

As long as you did everything else right with your sanitation it wont be an issue. Sanitation is not the same as Sterilization so there is already a small amount of bacteria in your wort just from the air.

As long as your tapwater is teated/safe to drink your fine, though I'm not 100% sure about well-water.