Distilled water... not good enough?

[jrakich87]

I've been using distilled water for my first two batches and was wondering if I should use any sort of additive to increase the amounts of minerals in the water. Local tap water is GROSS, smells of chlorine and other chemicals, often sulfur, so I stay away from it. Albertson's "drinking water" is just local tap I suspect.

Is there a specific mineral treatment in a pill to boil or something?

 

[boyurboy]

I'd recommend filtered tap water or bottled water before distilled. Some brewers do use various mineral salts in distilled water to recreate a particular water profile for a particular style of beer...I just think that's too much trouble. My tap water is pretty chlorinated, but with a cheap filter hooked up to my garden hose, its plenty good for brewing.

 

[Loweface]

If you leave a bottle or jug or water in the fridge how does it taste the next day? Depending on the additives used in you're local treatment centre a lot of them will vanish after a day out of the tap... And if it tastes good then perhaps it'll work brewing...

If not +1 on the plain bottled spring/mineral/filtered water over the distilled, and i reckon its your best option.

 

[DaleJ]

You really need some minerals in the water.

If you don't want to get in to the "creating your own" by adding salts, etc. then I'd suggest getting bottles of spring water from your grocery.

When I buy water, I just get spring water from Wal*Mart and it works great.

You can also try to clean up your tap water by boiling it the night before and pouring it from the kettle so as to leave the sediment in the pot.
Some people also use a filter and/or campden tablets (this removes the chlorine type compounds).

 

[CBBaron]

I've been using distilled water for my first two batches and was wondering if I should use any sort of additive to increase the amounts of minerals in the water. Local tap water is GROSS, smells of chlorine and other chemicals, often sulfur, so I stay away from it. Albertson's "drinking water" is just local tap I suspect.

Is there a specific mineral treatment in a pill to boil or something?

If you are doing extract brewing then distilled water is fine, although bottled spring water will work as well or better and be cheaper.
For all-grain you need the buffering provided by the minerals in the water. So there your best bet is filtered or bottled water, not distilled.
A good charcoal filter will remove alot of organic impurities and chlorine, however if you have a bad sulfur problem, then it probably wont help.

Craig

 

[sterling214]

A lot of the city additives in your water will settle out in the boiling process.
How to Brew - By John Palmer - Home Water Treatment
When in doubt, go to the bible.
I use a R.O. filter for drinking water because my city's water taste like anus, but the straight tap water makes damn good beer.
Edit: I forgot to mention that yeast LOVE some of that stuff in tap water also.

 

[jrakich87]

My water's got a ton of sulphur and chlorine smell to it, the pipes and really old too so I think filtered tap it out. For my last extract with specialty grains Dunkelweizen, I used about 3 gal distilled water and 2.5-3 gal spring water ("with minerals added for taste"). ...the water tastes good and I figured it's fine for that brew.

Just to clarify, the mineral content of the water doesn't really matter until I take the step up to partial mash or AG?

 

[Pelikan]

When you're using extracts, distilled is not only okay, it's preferred. Makers of extract, whether dried or "wet," use a balanced mineral profile that is ideal for brewing. Thus, when the extract is reconstituted, the mineral profile is preserved. Dried extract is generally better for distilled or RO/DI water, but both forms are acceptable. I did quite a bit of math to arrive at this conclusion, so I'm not going to repeat it all here, but trust me on this one.

However, if you're going all-grain, minerals will need to be added. Somewhere between 3-5 tsp of Burton salts will do the trick. Ideally, you'd be using a TDS meter along with profiles of notable brew waters. If you really want to drive in with both feet, you'd need the powdered forms of all chemicals present in given brew waters, adding minute amounts of each until that profile is exactly duplicated. Some brew places actually sell the powder mixed precisely, one for Burton, one for Dublin, one for Edinburgh, etc.

I like distilled or RO/DI water for brewing because of the control it affords. A lot of folks use tap with the "eh, whatever" mentality, and I'm not saying that's wrong, but it's not for me.

 

[giligson]

Really? 3-5 teaspoons. So If I boiled off 5 gallons of the local water there I would wind up with 5 teaspoons of precipitated stuff?

 

[Pelikan]

Really? 3-5 teaspoons. So If I boiled off 5 gallons of the local water there I would wind up with 5 teaspoons of precipitated stuff?

Yes, if you do boil down all that water, then scrape the scale off your pot, you'll end up with something around that much -- assuming you have hard or very hard water.

Brew water generally has anywhere from 200 to nearly 1000 parts per million of total dissolved solids, excluding the stuff from specialty grains, hops, additions like maltodextrine, etc etc. That's hard water, super-hard toward the latter end of the spectrum. Burton's is somewhere around 800 ppm if memory serves.

Our well water is about 140 ppm, which is at about the threshold of hard water, and we still get deposits in the tub, in pipes, etc. So your mileage will vary depending upon the source water, in terms of what you're left with after boiling.