Bottled Water for Extract Brewing

[WhineinAlbany]

I realize in extract brewing it's debatable whether spring water is even necessary since the process of creating malt extract imparts some minerals and there's a double water profile as a result.
Since I haven't had a problem with Wal-mart's spring water, I've continued to use it. Being it's $0.88 a gallon here in NY, I'm looking for any ways to save a little bit of $$. The last time I went shopping, I saw Wal-Mart "drinking water." It was price a little cheaper (I think around 20 cents less per gallon). Has anyone used this stuff? I'm guessing it's municipal water that's filtered?

Unfortunately, my water at home is unusable. It's not only tastes clorinated, but the hardness is extreme. My pans and faucets are always covered with calcium build up. Culligan sent in a water hardness test strip and it was in the red for very high.

 

[Redneck82]

Haven't used either, however I have a couple of (hopefully) simple suggestions that may help.

1) get your water report. See what is actually in the water. A lot of beer styles (particularly one from England) require very hard water. Once you know what you have, you can use your tap water (boiling before you mash/brew is a great way to dechlorinate) as your main source and dilute it with distilled water or bottled water to get the characteristics you would like.

2) wing it with a mini, Mr. Beer size 1/2 -1 gal batch to test it.

3) as long as there isn't a ton of iron, salt (NaCl), or sulphur in your water, it is still suitable for brewing. There is a great book called 'New Brewing Lager Beer' by G. Noonan that has a great (simplified!) chapter on water chemistry. Pull out your mad scientist hat, put on a lab coat and start chucking chemicals! Mwahahahaha....

Good luck. My water sucks too. City water report says it's practically distilled, but I think the water had to REALLY study in order to pass that test...PH of 4.3 using nothing but 2row, 1 minute after dough in.

 

[Jakemo]

Being it's $0.88 a gallon here in NY, I'm looking for any ways to a little bit of $$.

Did you accidentally the whole thing?

 

[IffyG]

My local grocery store sells gallon jugs of spring water for 94 cents a gallon or 2.5 gallons for a little over 2 bucks. It's not much but it's a savings nonetheless.

 

[WhineinAlbany]

guess the typo police are here . . .

 

[WhineinAlbany]

1) get your water report. See what is actually in the water. A lot of beer styles (particularly one from England) require very hard water. Once you know what you have, you can use your tap water (boiling before you mash/brew is a great way to dechlorinate) as your main source and dilute it with distilled water or bottled water to get the characteristics you would like.

Thanks for mentioning that. Actually, I just found my water report online looks like it contains high amounts of salt - 50 mg/l I've thought about using campden tablets before for the chorine, but that knocks that idea out the window.

 

[JJL]

To answer your question, no it shouldn't make any difference for extract brewing. Just check the label quick to make sure there isn't anything odd about the way it's treated or purified. IIRC, the drinking water is either just purified through reverse osmosis alone, or they do an RO treatment, and then add some minerals back into it for taste. Either way it's fine.

 

[WhineinAlbany]

ah okay basically it's the generic of aquafina. Trying to figure out what this "drinking water" with this green labeling meant. I was imagining some Walmart worker filling water in the back and bringing it out (of course, I wouldn't put it past them . . .)