do you have to boil for rehydrating?

[jwalk4]

In a world where brewers use tap water by the gallon to top off volumes, is it necessary for one to boil 100ml just to rehydrate 11g of dry yeast?

discuss.

 

[brewmeister13]

Necessary, probably not. The amount of chlorine in that much water would most likely be diluted enough not to matter, but I personally wouldn't do it. I also hope that the people who are topping off their brew with gallons of tap water are treating it to get rid of the chlorine.

 

[flars]

Tap water shouldn't be used for rehydrating dry yeast, when your water is from a municipal supply, unless it is treated for chlorine and chloramines. Using bottled drinking water is much simpler.
RO or distilled water should not be used. The lack of minerals in the water causes damage to the cell wall structure of the yeast from osmotic shock.

 

[ZebulonBrewer]

Water out of your faucet is generally very clean, from a bacterial point of view. Unless you know better from experience with your water source, I wouldn't worry about it.

Boiling water also removes a lot oxygen from it (hence why it's better to wash yeast with boiled water....along with the sterilization), which could dampen its ability to 'wake up' when rehydrating (this last point I am way less sure about)

I will add that my apartment I hate my faucet water, and anything that I need to use for brewing after I run out of Meijer Spring Water (only the best!) is after running it through a Brita filter.

 

[poptarts]

Pro tip, take a cheapo water bottle dump half of it out dump the dry yeast in, shake, let sit, then dump.

 

[soccerdad]

I think on the safety side (safe from bacteria, etc) when you nuke the (filtered) water and vessel the water is in you sanitize both. As you see, some folks bypass that step with no ill effect.

 

[BrewerinBR]

Agreed, any type of municipal water will have some type of chlorination in it so you will need to treat for that, then sterilize by boiling. Bottled drinking water is good alternative as it has already been sterilized (unless you just drank from the bottle - so do do that). I use my tap water for it, (private well) as part of the process of preheating my mash tun I boil about 3 gallons of water with my re hydration jars and lids in the pan. Once I get a good boil I use some tongs and pull out the jars and lids retaining some of the boiling water in the jar and cover then set aside to cool. After the water cools a bit I pour it into the mash to tun for the preheat. Boiling is necessary for re hydration water and sterilizing the re hydration containers as you have a package of brewers yeast that needs to be at its very best to do its work to make the beer from the wort you worked had to make.

 

[unionrdr]

Since I started brewing with spring water, I put some in my flask & nuke it to about 90F. Then pour in the dry yeast & cover with something sanitized for 15 minutes. Sanitize a skewer & stir the yeast in & cover for about another 15 minutes. The stir & pitch into topped off wort after taking hydrometer sample.

 

[mrgrimm101]

RO water ftw! I can fill up jugs at the Meijer grocery store by my house for about $0.60/gallon. The city water where I live is not the greatest.