Adding tap water to wort...is this acceptable

[southsidebrewingco]

My question is how many of you do it? If everything that comes in contact with the cooled wort is supposed to be sanitized is it ok to top off to 5 gallons in my primary with ordinary cold tap water. I have just finished my second batch and never even gave this a thought until now. Sure hope i didn't ruin both batches.

 

[Hammy71]

Some boil the water first and let cool. Some top off with cold spring water. And some use good ole tap water. Just make sure it isn't 'city' water. The chlorine and what not can be harmful to your yeast. But if it's from a well and it doesn't taste bad or stink. Go for it.

 

[Queequeg]

Any top up water I plan on using I sterilize by boiling the day before and cooling overnight.

Tap water is usually quite high in gram negative bacteria, being that the FDA suggested specification for purified water is 100cfu/ml. Tap water won't be anywhere as low as this even though water reports will make claims to the contrary.

At the pharma manufacture site where I used to work, I think (if I recall correctly) the mains unprocessed water limit was set in-house at 100cfu/0.1ml

Although a high pitch rate, will mean the yeast will out compete this bacteria even that this level (since you will be pitching millions per mL) personally given the small amount of extra effort I like to make the challenge to the yeast as little as possible and so I pre boil.

 

[southsidebrewingco]

Its city water but we do have a large ro facility that's supposed to purify the water before it gets to us. One more bone headed mistake i probably made was to wash my new bottles in dish detergent before bottling. I did rinse and sanitize in starsan but i have since learned not to use the soap. Lets hope that don't affect my beer!

 

[Yooper]

Its city water but we do have a large ro facility that's supposed to purify the water before it gets to us. One more bone headed mistake i probably made was to wash my new bottles in dish detergent before bottling. I did rinse and sanitize in starsan but i have since learned not to use the soap. Lets hope that don't affect my beer!

I never boiled my top off water (and still don't). We even drink our water.

Anyway, with many water supplies the issue isn't that it's unsanitary. It's that chlorine and chloramines (which don't boil off) cause off flavors in beer when the chlorine reacts with the yeast during fermentation (or malt during the mash). This produces "chlorophenols" and is a band-aid or clove type of taste. If you've ever used chloroseptic for a sore throat, you'll recognize that flavor.

If you use water that has chlorine or chloramines in it, you'll want to pretreat the water with campden tablets (which gets rid of it), or use purchased water that is chlorine-free.

 

[BigFloyd]

I never boiled my top off water (and still don't). We even drink our water.

Anyway, with many water supplies the issue isn't that it's unsanitary. It's that chlorine and chloramines (which don't boil off) cause off flavors in beer when the chlorine reacts with the yeast during fermentation (or malt during the mash). This produces "chlorophenols" and is a band-aid or clove type of taste. If you've ever used chloroseptic for a sore throat, you'll recognize that flavor.

If you use water that has chlorine or chloramines in it, you'll want to pretreat the water with campden tablets (which gets rid of it), or use purchased water that is chlorine-free.

+1. Sometimes it's easier and better to just go pick up a few gallon jugs of spring/drinking water at the store for topping off a partial boil batch. It also allows you to gain a benefit for pitch temp. Chill the heck out of the jugs before you brew, get the wort in the pot down to about 85*F or so (via ice bath), add the cold top off water to hopefully get it all down to about 60-62*F which is a good temp to pitch most ale yeast.

 

[southsidebrewingco]

Sounds like in the future i might just purchase 3 gallons of spring water. I don't notice chlorine in the water, and we do drink it, but that don't mean its not in there.

 

[E_Marquez]

I ruined 2 batches using city water, due to chloramines.
Never again, either treat with campden or use spring or RO water.

Ive done both now and had great results..
The spring water is nice, as I chill (let it just start to ice up) a gal of it, and then dump that in post boil / wort chiller ... Takes a nice cool (68 deg f) wort and takes it several deg cooler very quickly.. and as one way or the other im adding top off water,, why not do it with very cold (frozen) water to get wort down to pitch temps.

 

[Queequeg]

Spring water isn't necessarily any lower in bacteria than mains water. Campden tablets are cheaper than bottled water.

 

[skuhn2004]

Wouldn't distilled water be better than spring water?

 

[Queequeg]

well yeah, both still and RO would have a neglible bioburdern. But then you might need to treat them with some mineral additions depending on how much they would be used as a top up.

Honestly the simplest and cheapest thing is just to treat some tap water with campden and then sterilize by boiling. Or alternatively just risk it by foregoing the boiling and pitch high.

Also it depends how much you topping up by, just a couple of litres the challenge level would be pretty low, but for an extract batch where you migh be topping up by over 10 litres than that posses more risk.

 

[JohnSand]

You can probably find your water report online. I've used tapwater many times with no problem. If you are worried, top it off while it is still warm, or fill a pot and let it sit uncovered. The chlorine evaporates very quickly.

 

[Yooper]

You can probably find your water report online. I've used tapwater many times with no problem. If you are worried, top it off while it is still warm, or fill a pot and let it sit uncovered. The chlorine evaporates very quickly.

Yes, chlorine evaporates rapidly. Chloramines (which is a stable way to chlorinate the water) do not evaporate, or even boil off in a reasonable amount of time. That's why it's important to find out which your water provider uses, and treat for it if they use chloramine.

I don't worry about bacteria or other things- I drink my tap water and use it for mixing up my grandson's bottles of formula when he visits. Our water supply is safe and good tasting.

 

[E_Marquez]

Yes, chlorine evaporates rapidly. Chloramines (which is a stable way to chlorinate the water) do not evaporate, or even boil off in a reasonable amount of time. That's why it's important to find out which your water provider uses, and treat for it if they use chloramine.

I don't worry about bacteria or other things- I drink my tap water and use it for mixing up my grandson's bottles of formula when he visits. Our water supply is safe and good tasting.

:rockin:

Exactly.. it's not my concern for bacteria in tap water... I drink it, I cook with it, and in 20 or so batches of beer using it, not had an infection.

BUT I know from my local tap water supplier, the water has chloramine... yes it can be treated for... I changed to packaged spring water (which I also have a water report from) as a test.. I have stayed with it because it's easy, pre measured, and comes in a container I can freeze (or chill) .. and then dump right into my wort. (a 1 gal chunk of ice or ice slurry does great things for wort temp cooling in a Texas Summer)

 

[EarlyAmateurZymurgist]

Honestly the simplest and cheapest thing is just to treat some tap water with campden and then sterilize by boiling.

The word "sterile" has a distinct meaning in science. It's means devoid of life. Boiled water is not sterile. It's more like hyper-sanitary because 212F moist heat does not kill spores. One has to raise the temperature of water to 121C/250F and hold it there for 15 minutes in order to kill spores. The minimum temperature at which spores are killed is at least 40 degrees Celsius above the temperate at which live bacteria are killed. Most bacteria strains are killed at 70C, which makes the minimum temperature at which spores are killed is 110C/230F (autoclaving at 110C/230F extends the sterilization period). Boiled water should be consider to be hyper-sanitary.

 

[E_Marquez]

The word "sterile" has a distinct meaning in science. It's means devoid of life. Boiled water is not sterile. It's more like hyper-sanitary because 212F moist heat does not kill spores. One has to raise the temperature of water to 121C/250F and hold it there for 15 minutes in order to kill spores. The minimum temperature at which spores are killed is at least 40 degrees Celsius above the temperate at which live bacteria are killed. Most bacteria strains are killed at 70C, which makes the minimum temperature at which spores are killed 110C/230F (autoclaving at 110C/230F extends the sterilization period). Boiled water should be consider to be hyper-sanitary.

The word most often use is "Sanitized"
san·i·tize transitive verb \ˈsa-nə-ˌtīz\
: to make (something) free from dirt, infection, disease, etc., by cleaning it : to make (something) sanitary

: to make (something) more pleasant and acceptable by taking things that are unpleasant or offensive out of it

Brewers sanitize their equipment, as pointed out, much different then sterilizing.

 

[Queequeg]

The word "sterile" has a distinct meaning in science. It's means devoid of life. Boiled water is not sterile. It's more like hyper-sanitary because 212F moist heat does not kill spores. One has to raise the temperature of water to 121C/250F and hold it there for 15 minutes in order to kill spores. The minimum temperature at which spores are killed is at least 40 degrees Celsius above the temperate at which live bacteria are killed. Most bacteria strains are killed at 70C, which makes the minimum temperature at which spores are killed 110C/230F (autoclaving at 110C/230F extends the sterilization period). Boiled water should be consider to be hyper-sanitary.

Sorry to be a super geek about this but thats not entirely true. The 121C for 15mins is a value developed based on Geobacillus stearothermophilus as a biological indicator in autoclaves. It is based on the stastical inference that of a a negative result from a carrier inoculated with a population equal to or inexcess of 10E6 of G.Stearo is equivilant to a positive rate of 1 in 1million units sterilized. That is the measure of what is refered to as sterility assurance.

The fact of the matter is the defintion you are providing for sterility still assumes and set contamination rate, being that sterility can not actually be tested for unless all articles are consummed by the test.

The FDA alternatively also promote that sterility can be affirmed based on the typical biobudern of the article being sterilized and not exclusively on spores of resist stains. Stearo was originally proposed because it is one of the most thermally resistant species in the world and was originally recovered near hot water spring and sulphur vents.

Instead you could use bacillus subtilis which is much more common in the environment, such as soil. The resistant of which is siginificantly lower, its D value ( resistance measure) could be perhapes a factor of 10 or even more lower than spores of G. stearo. A temp of 110C is typically used to sterilize material by wet sterilization for such strains. That said the D-vlaue as a artifact of the sterilization cycle can actually be increased by increasing the time. A hour at 110 will kill a siginificantly more resistant spore than 15mins, likewise so will a 90C conditions for a further increased time frame. The only time this isn't true is if you are looking at thermophilies like the strains mentioned which can actually live at temperatures around 90C.

But all this aside, spore forming organism are typically absence from water supply as are thermophiles, perhapes with the exception of actinomyces. Water is too low nutrient for most microbes. Most water born organism do not form spores and are extremely intorlerant to heat treatment. The bioburden is likely to be exclusively gram negative rods, which have very low D -values.

Though as I have pointed out, sterility is assured and never factual, I would suggest given the nature of ground water microflora that 10mins boiling would provide you will siginificantly high levels of sterility assurance. Being that all gram negative rods would be killed within a few mins at around 60C.

As soon as you open your brew kettle, its not sterile, but before then the sterility assurance level is pretty high.

 

[Queequeg]

The word most often use is "Sanitized"
san·i·tize transitive verb \ˈsa-nə-ˌtīz\
: to make (something) free from dirt, infection, disease, etc., by cleaning it : to make (something) sanitary

: to make (something) more pleasant and acceptable by taking things that are unpleasant or offensive out of it

Brewers sanitize their equipment, as pointed out, much different then sterilizing.

The boiling of your wort is sterilizing, there is virtually no bacteria spores that will survive 60-90 mins at 100C. If there are some strains that can you won't find them in your kitchen or garage. So the boil of wort is sterilization.

Chemical treatments are sanitizing not because they don't have the power to sterilize but because their mode of action is non-penetrative. You can with biological indicators demonstrate the same levels of sterility assurance as you can with heat treatment but because the chemical agent can not penetrate the surface of a material (unlike say steam) the result can not be considered consistant.

The other reason in brewing the term sanitized is used is because the process is open to the room as so is immediately recontaminated. If you can a sealed vessel and used a wet heat you could theroretical demonstrate the interior to have a sterility assurance level to meet the defintion that EarlyAmateurZymurgist suggests without going to 121C.

 

[E_Marquez]

The boiling of your wort is sterilizing,

Yes, thats why I said equipment

 

[EarlyAmateurZymurgist]

The boiling of your wort is sterilizing, there is virtually no bacteria spores that will survive 60-90 mins at 100C.

That's not true. One must subject a liquid to 2.52 F-values in order to kill Clostridium botulinum spores and 2.58 F-values in order to kill Clostridium sporogenes, where an F-value is equal to one minute at 121C/250F at 15 psi above normal sea level. One minute at 100C is equal to 0.0077 F-values, which means that it would take 2.52 / 0.0077 = 327.27 minutes and 2.58 / 0.0077 = 335.07 minutes in order to accomplish the same goals at 100C. Tyndallization was created to handle the problems encountered when attempting to kill spores with unpressurized 100C moist heat.

Spores do survive a 60 to 90 minute wort boil. Most spores do not germinate because the pH of boiled wort is around 5.2 and most bacteria are pH sensitive. Add in the fact that one pitches a mass of yeast cells that is large enough to rapidly "own" a batch of wort by consuming all the dissolved oxygen, lowering the pH of the solution to around 4.1, and producing ethanol because the dissolved glucose level is higher than the Crabtree threshold, and it's fairly difficult for all, but the hardiest microflora to gain a foothold in a properly pitched wort.

Beginning amateur brewers are often told that pathogens do not grow in wort. However, it's the pH of fermenting wort that prevents pathogen spores from germinating, not the fact that wort is boiled. For example, the deadly pathogen Clostridium botulinum will not grow below pH 4.6, and as mentioned above, the yeast culture rapidly lowers the pH of the solution to around 4.1.

Boiled water is not wort. Most public utilities buffer the pH of the water running through their pipes to at least a pH of 7.0 in order to prevent corrosion (public water is usually buffered above 7.0 at a water treatment plant in order to allow for precipitation in the supply network). Most water supplies also contain colloidal matter. The only thing that keeps a public water supply safe to drink is the addition of chlorine and/or chloramine.

In closing, for those who want to know if their home pressure cookers produce enough heat and pressure to sterilize media. I use autoclave tape when I prepare blank slants, plate media, and the 40ml sterile starter worts that I use when propagating yeast from slants in my home pressure cooker (yeast management at this level requires one to practice aseptic technique). While autoclave tape does not guarantee sterilization, it does indicate if one processed media at heat and pressure levels that are high enough to achieve sterilization. Autoclave tape basically looks like masking tape before it is placed into an autoclave or a pressure cooker. Black diagonal stripes appear on the tape when sterilization heat and pressure levels are obtained.

Here's strip of autoclave tape that I had on one of the 100ml media bottles that I use for my 40ml sterile starters:

 

[Queequeg]

I'll take your word for it, I'm not familar with F values and so I can really dispute how you are using them. It would be intresting to see if you had an paper on it.

But Botulinum spores from what I remember generally have a D value in the region of up to 30mins at 100C as there is a lot of variation in thermal resistance between strains. Of course the time required to sterilize would be dependant on the initial population and resistance of the strain. But 90 mins you could expect a 3 Log reduction of the most reistant Botulinum spores at atmospheric pressure. If they where less resistant strains like non-protolytic spores then they could even have a D-value of less than 1min at 100C. Consequently you could do a 12 log reduction in less than 10mins.

I think I had a paper somewhere from ASM that investigated the kill of some of the more resistant botulinum at different temperature and pressure profiles. I think though but I can't be certain that the result concluded 100C at atmospheric pressure got several log kill. If your interested I will see if I can find it, although you might be able to do a websearch.

Typically though both sporogenes and botulinum will not be in drinking water at any concentration as they are pefer nutirent rich conditions and are obligate anaerobes. They are an issue in to food canning because of soil contamination from the food items. For all intents and purposes they should be nothing that can survive a boil in tap water, kill will occur well before 100C. So the assurance level for tap water being sterile after 1 hour boil is pretty high imo. But yeah we are talking about assurance levels as opposed to matter of fact, being that you would have to test the whole container to varify sterility. Sterility is an ideal, which you can only suppport via stastical inference.

Good info about the pH, I think that was something I had forgotten about. It been a while since I did any seriously microbiology. About 6 months since I was made redundant in fact.