Ok to brew with tap water?

[smchenry75]

Okay, now that I've made the switch to AG, I'm trying to reduce the cost and hassle of purchasing and lugging home 8-10 gallons of spring water from the store. I'd like to simply use water straight from our tap. Here are my questions.

1. I'll get the water from my outside hose spigot (to bypass the water softener). Any issues with that?
2. Do I need to filter the water in any way to eliminate nasties or will the boiling process take care of this?
3. Indiana water tends to be very hard due to all of the limestone in the ground. Any issues with this? I think I've heard the hard vs. soft water is better?

Answers to these questions and any general advice on using tapwater for brewing would be much appreciated!

 

[stratslinger]

In general, if the water tastes OK, it's going to be OK to brew with. If you can get a water report from your local water company, that could go a long way towards helping you to understand what's in your water and how good or bad that water will be for brewing. If you check out one of the more recent issue of BYO magazine (I forget if it's the one on the shelves now, or the issue immediately prior to that), there's a good primer in there on how to read and decipher a water report.

 

[makomachine]

Okay, now that I've made the switch to AG, I'm trying to reduce the cost and hassle of purchasing and lugging home 8-10 gallons of spring water from the store. I'd like to simply use water straight from our tap. Here are my questions.

1. I'll get the water from my outside hose spigot (to bypass the water softener). Any issues with that?
2. Do I need to filter the water in any way to eliminate nasties or will the boiling process take care of this?
3. Indiana water tends to be very hard due to all of the limestone in the ground. Any issues with this? I think I've heard the hard vs. soft water is better?

Answers to these questions and any general advice on using tapwater for brewing would be much appreciated!

Getting a water profile from your water supply source, or better yet, a water analysis from Ward Labs will allow us to better advise you. It's not that expensive to get the beer test from Ward Labs and it allows you to dial in exactly the suitability of your water for brewing and a treatment strategy.

 

[neosapien]

shouldn't be a problem. can you get a water report? that will help the chemistry boffins answer better. a pretty commonly touted rule of thumb is that if your water is safe to drink, it's safe to brew with. one of the things to be aware of is the presence of chloramine in your water. that might need some treatment to get out (metabisulfite and such).

boiling kills the bugs. i seem to recall reading that hard is better than soft somewhere as well.


/edit: Funny. All 3 of us said pretty much the same thing at the same time.

 

[Gameface]

I use tap water from an outside faucet. I did buy an RV drinking water house as normal garden hoses can leach toxins into your water. I also have a block water filter at the end of the hose just for piece of mind, not sure if it's essentail.

I also add a campden tablet to the water to eliminate chlorine and chloramine.

It's been working for me.

 

[kh54s10]

Okay, now that I've made the switch to AG, I'm trying to reduce the cost and hassle of purchasing and lugging home 8-10 gallons of spring water from the store. I'd like to simply use water straight from our tap. Here are my questions.

1. I'll get the water from my outside hose spigot (to bypass the water softener). Any issues with that?
2. Do I need to filter the water in any way to eliminate nasties or will the boiling process take care of this?
3. Indiana water tends to be very hard due to all of the limestone in the ground. Any issues with this? I think I've heard the hard vs. soft water is better?

Answers to these questions and any general advice on using tapwater for brewing would be much appreciated!

I've read a lot that if the water tastes good you can brew with it. I have also read a lot that if you have off tastes check your water or use RO or bottled water?

I don't know what my water profile is or even hard or soft. It tastes good and I have done 30 batches. My friends like my beer a lot.

I filter using a Brita.

I think that getting the water from your sillcock would be fine. Maybe run it for a little to clear any water that might have been sitting in the plumbing for a while.

Filtering will take out sediment and other stuff. Boiling will kill the bacteria.

I plan to get a water analysis and look at making adjustments. I want to make beer the best that I can without getting too crazy about it.

 

[pcollins]

All of the above advice is excellent but I will add my own twist on it.

Even easier than getting a water report and trying to decipher it is just brewing a batch with the water you have and see how it turns out. If the beer is good, the water is good. Could you tweak it to make the beer better? Yes, but if you want to keep things as simple and as cheap as you say you do, why bother?

I use tap water for ALL my brewing. I go straight from my kitchen faucet with soft water and it works just fine.

Soft vs hard? Depends on the style. I brew mostly pale ales and IPA so, in theory, hard water should be best but soft water in my case works just fine. I used to bypass the water softener and then one brew day I forgot and couldn't tell the difference in the beer. One step eliminated in my brew day!

As always, YMMV.

 

[makomachine]

All of the above advice is excellent but I will add my own twist on it.

Even easier than getting a water report and trying to decipher it is just brewing a batch with the water you have and see how it turns out. If the beer is good, the water is good. Could you tweak it to make the beer better? Yes, but if you want to keep things as simple and as cheap as you say you do, why bother?

I use tap water for ALL my brewing. I go straight from my kitchen faucet with soft water and it works just fine.

Soft vs hard? Depends on the style. I brew mostly pale ales and IPA so, in theory, hard water should be best but soft water in my case works just fine. I used to bypass the water softener and then one brew day I forgot and couldn't tell the difference in the beer. One step eliminated in my brew day!

As always, YMMV.

I don't disagree with this approach in general - if you are fine with brewing beers that aren't their best in trial. Water is the largest ingredient in your beer and I just can't justify buying specialty malts online, paying shipping to insure I get the best quality ingredients for the recipe, and then SWAG the item that can make or break my beer when you can buy it by the gallon for less than $1. Not being snarky, because you are right - a given style with a given ingredient profile might make his water perfect. Just not a gambler with all the work that goes into making my best beer. I much prefer paying an additional ~$7.50 a brew and buying RO water and building up from there using AJ's water primer if you have no additional intel on your water profile.

 

[medusa1066]

Addin Campden Tablets to tap water is said to remove chloramines and/or chlorine. Add these; it is a cheap insurance to avoid band aid beer.

 

[pcollins]

I don't disagree with this approach in general - if you are fine with brewing beers that aren't their best in trial. Water is the largest ingredient in your beer and I just can't justify buying specialty malts online, paying shipping to insure I get the best quality ingredients for the recipe, and then SWAG the item that can make or break my beer when you can buy it by the gallon for less than $1. Not being snarky, because you are right - a given style with a given ingredient profile might make his water perfect. Just not a gambler with all the work that goes into making my best beer. I much prefer paying an additional ~$7.50 a brew and buying RO water and building up from there using AJ's water primer if you have no additional intel on your water profile.

Agreed except that the OP said this:

"I'm trying to reduce the cost and hassle of purchasing and lugging home 8-10 gallons of spring water from the store. I'd like to simply use water straight from our tap."

I think, in theory, RO water and building a profile as you suggest is the best way to go. For sure. Absolutely not disagreeing with that. But the OP does want to reduce hassle and cost and tap water is what he's looking for. A water report will tell you many things but your taste buds will tell you what is most important: Does it actually work and make decent beer?

My advice to anyone who is trying to use tap water and is unsuccessful is to definitely switch to RO and build a profile. BUT if you have decent tap water and you want to make decent beer with the lowest cost and least hassle, that's definitely the way to go.

 

[JeepDiver]

CO water is hard as well. Like GameFace I use a RV hose (2 actually becuase of distance) and I put a filter between them, but not sure if I really need it. When I was doing partial boils in VA, I just used water straight out of the kitchen faucet

 

[JJL]

You might be ok to just go at it with your tap water, but unless you know the composition of the water you will be flying blind. Maybe you'll get lucky and the beer will be fine without knowing what's in it. But if it turns out bad, you'll have no recourse for determining the cause other than trial and error. I know the composition of my water. I also know how I could go about treating it to use it. For me it's not much cheaper to treat my tap water than to buy RO for about $3.00 from the store. It's definitely less hassle to buy than to treat. And for some beers, my treated tap water would still need to be mixed with RO. Point is - Knowing is half the battle.

 

[makomachine]

Agreed except that the OP said this:

"I'm trying to reduce the cost and hassle of purchasing and lugging home 8-10 gallons of spring water from the store. I'd like to simply use water straight from our tap."

I think, in theory, RO water and building a profile as you suggest is the best way to go. For sure. Absolutely not disagreeing with that. But the OP does want to reduce hassle and cost and tap water is what he's looking for. A water report will tell you many things but your taste buds will tell you what is most important: Does it actually work and make decent beer?

My advice to anyone who is trying to use tap water and is unsuccessful is to definitely switch to RO and build a profile. BUT if you have decent tap water and you want to make decent beer with the lowest cost and least hassle, that's definitely the way to go.

Understand your post and again, not being snarky. I'm just trying to keep the OP from being the next thread titled:

"Astringent bite to my beer"
"Really low efficiency"
"My beer won't clear"
"Missing hop character"

Prost!

 

[scottab]

Last month brew mag had a great diy filter build in it. I would def filter to remove chlorine over adding campden tabs. That way you cut down on sulfites.

 

[medusa1066]

Last month brew mag had a great diy filter build in it. I would def filter to remove chlorine over adding campden tabs. That way you cut down on sulfites.

Good filters will, more importantly, remove chloramines. However, not all filters are created equally. I need to check out the DIY filter build. thanks!

 

[theDeutscher]

smchenry,

Do you know the mineral content of the spring water you are getting? I agree with most of replies here, but will add my thoughts since I'm in a similar boat as you. I live about 2 hours northeast of you. I knew I had hard water, too, but my local report didn't give me enough information to know exactly the right adjustments to make with my water until I sent it off the Ward Labs. Until I did that, I usually would just dilute my water 50/50 with tap and RO, running the tap through a Brita filter before I used it. What I found was that my darker beers always turned out better, even with the 50% dilution. It turned out my water was high in bicarbonate, or alkaline, and not so hard in minerals like Calcium and Magnesium. I'm betting your's is in a close vicinity of my mineral content. If you aren't able to get a report right away, you'll get a really good idea of how hard your water is with this method. Try diluting it in half and see how your beer turns out. If your beer turns out quite a bit darker than you planned, I'm betting you have highly bicarbonate water because the ph is so high. If it looks about the color you wanted, you'll be to get a better idea of high much more/less you can dilute depending on your beer style and how to bitterness and maltiness lines up with your intended recipe. However, when you dilute too much, you probably need to add back some minerals. They are dirt cheap, though. You just need to get a water calculator once you get your report.

 

[pcollins]

Understand your post and again, not being snarky. I'm just trying to keep the OP from being the next thread titled:

"Astringent bite to my beer"
"Really low efficiency"
"My beer won't clear"
"Missing hop character"

Prost!

Oh, agreed, for sure!

I think for the OP and the direction he wants to go it's relatively simple: Try brewing a batch of beer with the water you have. If it works, great! If not, try a different route, e.g., water report, RO + profile building, 50/50 tap/RO.

I'm much more on the side of keeping things super simple. I'm not disagreeing with any of the quality advice given, just providing input on the simpler side of things.

I'm one of the very lucky brewers here who has very decent brewing water that comes straight from my tap. There's really only one foolproof way to find that out: brew with it.