Hot tap water for mashing?
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OK, but I will take this as another "it's going to kill you" over-reactions. If it were that bad life expectancy would be down in the 40's and the population would be declining at an alarming rate!!!
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flanken
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flanken
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I'm kind of miffed at how quickly people are to judge someone by their water heater temps!
Do people actually sue their friends for turning only the hot water on and mindlessly shoving their booger hooks into the water?
In terms of water quality, considering mine has to run through 100ft of potable rv hose, only to be mildly filtered through a Home Depot whole house filter, and my beer turns out ok, I don't think that would be that much of an issue, however I would pour some, let it cool and taste it. I always run a little bit of water through before collecting, and it tastes just as good as right from the tap (I'm on well water in a rural area).
Lol "booger hooks" I'm using that...
applescrap
Be the ball!
I brewed off my old hot water heater for a long time. That hot water heater was really old. When tasting the water I didn't taste anything. My new hot water heater I think I taste a little something. I must admit you're getting off easy for your ideas. I was attacked and bombarded. There is a theory, likely plausible, that there are unhealthy things that are in the hot water. Funny my new hot water heater taste a little weird I think. I went cold and it took I want to say 20 minutes instead of 10 minutes to come to strike. So the extra 10 minutes I can live with. My thing is brewing quick and I try to keep it under 3 hours. If it's going to cost you only 10 minutes I don't see why using the cold water is a bad idea. And that's coming from somebody who has only used cold water once in 50+ all grain batches. If the water tastes fine and Brewing Quick is your thing then use the hot water heater. Some of it depends on what your heating with. Most importantly be sure to taste the water. Do a blind triangle test. Taste it again. Taste it throughout the day. The bottom line is if it tastes fine using it will somewhat speed up your day. That being said if you're somebody who doesn't care about how long you take to brew then use cold.
I don't use hot water. Cold only for cooking. The hot has a potential leaching problem with heavy metals. It may not kill you but it isn't necessarily healthy.
RTL
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Another thought alongside chlorine presence is hot side aeration beyond what you're used to. The high pressure in residential water lines can cause higher dissolved oxygen levels than usual even on the hot side. Some HSA is unavoidable on the home brew scale but this might push it beyond the usual levels. I'm not sure how high it is maybe it's not a concern but is something to think about.
RTL
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Boiling will remove oxygen that got into the wort during the mash but oxidation is occurring as long as there is oxygen in the wort, boiling will not reverse the chemical reaction. Again I don't know how much DO there is in hot tap water but personally I boil my strike water then treat it with K-meta then cool it to strike temp and under let the mash. Then put the lid on for the duration of the mash.
If you aren't already taking HSA precautions you might not notice much difference. Or maybe it's not a concern. I can't seem to find anything that says what levels of DO to expect in hot tap water. Maybe someone in the know will chime in. Or maybe someone with a DO meter could run some tests.
If you aren't already taking HSA precautions you might not notice much difference. Or maybe it's not a concern. I can't seem to find anything that says what levels of DO to expect in hot tap water. Maybe someone in the know will chime in. Or maybe someone with a DO meter could run some tests.
Water should ideally be degassed before being used as strike or sparge water
RTL
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Not really. Hot water sitting in a kettle will degas because it is hot and under atmospheric pressure, but is still never 100% degassed. Hot water in an enclosed tank will normalize the head pressure with the partial pressure of the liquid and dissolved gases. Yes it's better than cold tap water but not the same as heated in a kettle.
According to engineering toolbox the solubility of air in water at 60 psig and 120F is 0.0654. Since air is about 21% oxygen that means 0.013734 is oxygen. Which is a obviously 13734 ppm. At 0 psig you are a factor of 6 lower than this. At 0 psig and 210F you get 84 ppm oxygen. Not a trivial difference in my opinion, and some house pressures are quite a lot higher than this.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-solubility-water-d_639.html
According to the article linked below it only takes 1ppm of oxygen for 1 minute to spoil malt flavors. However most of us don't brew the way they recommend in that paper, so really what we want is a measure relative to what we normally brew with. Which is of course unique to each brewer. But if you don't already attempt to degas your strike and sparse water I would assume you won't notice much more HSA than you are already used to.
http://www.germanbrewing.net/docs/Brewing-Bavarian-Helles.pdf
MadJohnShaft
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I sparged the last 3 brews with hot tap water measured in a bucket, saves on a kettle and is effortless. There's 4 showers and a dishwasher cycling all the water in the hot water heater everyday if you ask me. I haven't noticed any drop in quality so I'm going to keep doing it. It's Lake Michigan water.
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