Choice of Water?

[CaptainPurge]

So I was wondering what kind of water people have had good or bad experiences with.

Tap water?
Filtered tap water (AKA, Brita faucet filter or such)?
Bottled water?
Distilled?

Sound off!

 

[Nexus555]

Well I did my first batch 2 weeks ago and used distilled water. I then heard from some people that distilled isn't always the best to use because it lacks certain minerals that natural water has. I think next time I'm going with Spring water from Wal Mart.


Edit: Welcome to the community by the way!

 

[Rhoobarb]

Tap water with a faucet mounted PUR filter. Distilled water has no minerals, so it isn't good for brewing. Generally, if your water tastes good, it'll make good beer. I only use bottled spring water if I'm making a beer that needs soft water to be true to style (such as some German lagers), since I have very hard water.

Try and get a water profile of your local municipality to see what the compostion of it is.

 

[Bernie Brewer]

Straight outta the tap, baby! Well water, making sure not to get the stuff from the softener!

 

[Brewing Clamper]

Distilled water isn't a problem if you're brewing extract. According to Palmer's book, the extract has all the goodies the yeast is going to need; however, if your tap water tastes good then use it. Mine happens to be very hard & nasty tasting (the water) so I use water from my RO filter.

Is that the e-surance chick?!

 

[buddy]

Hi
I have been using 2 1/2 gallons of spring water in the fermenter and using 2 1/2 gallons of tap water to boil the wort.

works for me .

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I don't particularly like my tap water, so I usually opt for locally available RO water by the 5 gallon jug.

 

[buddy]

Michigan water from a drilled well ROCKS !!!!!!!!

 

[TheJadedDog]

I live in a city with suspect water so I use bottled.

 

[casebrew]

Depends on your particular water and particular style of beer. I've been using a charcoal filter for the tap water, and making brown, malty beers. I like them.

 

[CaptainPurge]

Good replies, I guess I chose a good topic for which to break my HomeBrewTalk cherry!

I used tap water w/ faucet filter last night and will probably stick with it. Although it seems like an efficient idea would be to use bottled water at near freezing....it's pre-measured and would be a shortcut method to cool the wort immediately.