I was wondering what opinions people have regarding whether to use tap water or spring water when brewing? I know that some people feel that tap water can effect the outcome of your beer dependent on the quality of tap water.
I strictly use Reverse Osmosis but I am going to be doing a batch or 2 with my city water to see what, if any difference there is. I WILL be removing the chlorine with a basic carbon filter, but nothing else.
I do soft water and RO for a living so to me you HAVE to use only the best water to get the best beer(sounds logical). But, after reading more and more about different waters used throughout the world I need to do my own little test if nothing, for "just to see".
If you normally use your water for drinking/cooking, then it should be OK for brewing.
Well I just got my water report with the details and determined that I have fairly hard water as I expected. This is not a bad thing being that I love stouts and porters it is the perfect type of water for it. I used some of tools in John Palmer's "How to Brew" book to help calculate the necessary numbers to determine what type of beers are appropriate. It was pretty easy especially using the Excel calculator on the website to determine all the numbers. I think from now on I will just decide to use my tap water. If decide to make a clearer beer like a Pale Ale or Pilsner I may either use calcium sulfate or calcium chloride to lower the pH or just use spring water instead.
I confirmed that I do not have chloramines in my water looking at the water report. Plus based upon the chloride level only being 120 (well within the 0-250 range) I don't see that as an issue. So I would say I will start to just use my tap water going forward and if it is really a concern depending on the style of beer I am brewing I will just use spring water for that batch.
Chloride should be under 100, but I was talking about chlorine and not chloride in that post.
Okay, gotcha. From what I see regarding Chloramines the levels were at 1.3 ppm and the chlorine was 2 ppm. From what I can tell that is well below the standard of 4 ppm. My understanding is that nowadys almost all tap water has some chlorine in it in order to keep it clean from various contaminants.
I used palin distilled water in my 1st partial mash pale. Someone said that wouldn't be good for the flavor & body. I think so far it's fine. But I am a month away from tasting the final product. They also said spring water in a pm wouldn't be much better than distilled. I'm thinking otherwise. Who's right??
Yeah I have started looking at options on how to filter out the chloramine, but it is looking like it might just be easier to get distilled water from my local home brew store.
If the only issue with your tap water is chloramine, then using campden tablets will fix it. If there are other issues (high alkalinity, for example), then using reverse osmosis water from the grocery store's big "water machine" would be a cheap and easy way to go.
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