Boil bottled water for top off?

[HopHead73]

So in my new house my first batch didn't come out as expected and all signs point to the crappy city water, even when running through a carbon filter. So I'm going to use Poland Natural Spring Water for the first time on my Celebration Ale Clone this week.
I do a partial boil of 3.5 gallons and top off to 5 gallons. I usually boil the top off water before hand when it was out of the tap.
Is there a need to boil the top off water if its bottled water or is it good to go right from the bottle to the cooled wort?

 

[Teromous]

It depends on how much of a conspiracy theorist you are

I've used bottled water straight from the jug with no problem. You'll be fine.

 

[TipsyDragon]

I use Arrowhead bottled water straight out of the bottle with no issues.

 

[Hammy71]

As long as your not bottling it from the local creek. Dump it in.

 

[Jwood]

i have really crappy city water as well and a carbon filter pretty much does the job. What were your off flavors and what type of carbon filter do you have? Some of them are only guaranteed to remove 50% or so of chlorine/chloramine. I now use the carbon filter as well as half a campden tablet per 5 gallons and i have not seen any water issues.

 

[HopHead73]

Its not so much the amount of chlorine in the water. Our city water is extremely hard and at times has a sulfur smell to it. I'm guessing our water has a lot of hydrogen sulfide in it then. We are only .5 mile from the Long Island sound, which is one of the most polluted water ways, so that could explain it. I was running it through a Brita filter.
My pale ale wasn't bad, but it tasted a bit like how hard water tastes and the flavor was just slightly "off", which is the only way I can really describe it. Needless to say it could have been better.
Now my Pumpkin Ale was a complete disaster. I'm not sure if it was the spices reacting with the water or what, but I boiled in 3 large cans of Libby's pumpkin, used lots of ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground cloves and liquid vanilla and it smelled great after fermenting. But after bottle conditioning the beer is super fizzy and has a really sharp flavor and it doesn't really retain a head at all. Not really sure what went wrong with that.

I've had friends use it and I've read decent things online, so I'm switching to Natural Spring Water now (Poland Spring).
I may also try my in-law's water sometime. They have very nice well water up in the back woods of Massachusetts.

 

[unionrdr]

I've used natural spring water right from the jug with no problems. The beer actually tasted better.