Partial boil procedural question

[fuzzybee]

I was working on a 5-gallon batch last night. I'd boiled about 3 gal of wort. When I started to cool it (by putting it in a sink of ice water), I decided to pour in a gallon of water from the fridge. I figured is was going in anyway, and it'd help cool down the wort to a pitching temperature. Is this a bad idea?

 

[ChshreCat]

That's what I do and it works great. Except I usually chill in the sink and then add my cooled top-up water from the fridge after putting the wort in the fermenter. That way I can chill down to about 90F or so and then my top-up water takes me the rest of the way.

 

[meddin]

I was working on a 5-gallon batch last night. I'd boiled about 3 gal of wort. When I started to cool it (by putting it in a sink of ice water), I decided to pour in a gallon of water from the fridge. I figured is was going in anyway, and it'd help cool down the wort to a pitching temperature. Is this a bad idea?

I think its fine...others may tell you to only add preboiled then cooled water, but I always have added straight cold tapwater for my partial boils, and the beer has been good

 

[fuzzybee]

Cool - I figured it wasn't a big deal, but thought it'd be good to ask anyway.

 

[ChshreCat]

I've even gone one step further than took brewing water and filled a sanitized container the night before and put it in the freezer. Then when I go to cool my partial boil in the sink, I plopped the big ice cube it made right into the cooling wort.

 

[kidsmakeyoucrazy]

I've only done 4 so far, but they've all been topped off with tap water so I don't see an issue. I don't pre-chill my water though, but it's about 58 deg out of the tap (out town taps a 600ft well). I do let it run for a minute or so before I top off, but other than that, I figure if there's enough bad stuff to kill my beer, I'd be dead by now. One caveat is that I usually end up with about 3 1/2 gallons after the boil. I'll dump tap water in the pot right at flameout to fill it about 3 inches below the rim, give it a gentle stir and then go grab a beer. I'm guessing I only add about 3/4 gallon of "unpure" water since the first topup is at boiling temp, and the 3/4 or so is after I've transferred to the fermenter. I like to get as diluted a wort out of my pot as I can so I don't lose as much fermentables when I try to keep the trub out....but sometimes I just dump it in if I'm lazy.