Tap water?

[thrall]

Hello,

Im going to start a new brew tomorrow using a kit. I have my 25litre fermenting bin and my kit ready.

I was reading earlier about tap water and off tastes and was wondering if i should try and purify my water a bit.

I think Scotland has good water, its better than any other tap water I have tried anyway. It does however have a slight smell to it which i guess is chlorine.

Now I have read that using a campden tab will get rid of anything bad in the water but unfortunately I only have 1 fermenting vessel so I am unsure how i would go about sterilizing the water before starting the brew as the instructions say to pour the kit into the empty vessel then top off with 3 litres of boiled water.

Am i thinking too much into this or is this a necessary step?

 

[hopsalot]

first of all, i use tap water, use your water you live in Scotland!

 

[Yooper]

If you can actually smell the chlorine, that's not a good thing! You can boil your water the day before, to boil off any chlorine, or even just let it sit out overnight for the chlorine to disipate. If it's chloramine, though, it won't boil off or disipate without the campden.

 

[temptnmonkey]

Boiling water takes care of anything you need to be concerned about (sterilize and boils off chlorine tastes). So if you're doing a "full boil" I wouldn't worry.

If you are topping off with tap water, there is a little room for concern (chlorine off flavor and sterilizing). Probably not a big deal, but you never know. If you are nervous about it, you can boil the water ahead of time and put it in the fridge or freezer to cool by the time you need it (make sure to disinfect container after removing from fridge/freezer). Or you can buy spring water.

If you are worried about water flavor/profile, that is a whole other beast. Water chemistry is complicated. howtobrew.com has a good introduction to it.

It is ok to think about these things! But at the same time, don't stress about it too much!

Have fun

 

[thrall]

The problem I have with boiling is that I only have the 1 vessel, I have nowhere to store the pre boiled 25 litres.

Is a full boil using 25 litres of boiled water? If so wont that really soften the plastic bin or even ruin the beer kit?

normally I use like 4 litres of boiled to mix the kit into then top up to 25 litres with tap.

 

[LandoLincoln]

For extract brewing, there's not a lot to worry about with water. All grain brewing is when you start to worry about your water.

If you're extract brewing and your water tastes good to you, then it will most likely be fine to use with little or no problems.

Chlorine is a concern, but chlorine boils off, so if you do an extract that requires you to boil the water, then your chlorine will be dissipated. You can also dissipate chlorine by buying a couple of buckets, filling them with water, and then letting them sit with the lids off for 24 hours. No need to boil the water at all.

Chloramine is a concern as well, but moreso, since chloramine does not boil off. Chloramine needs to be reduced with campden tablets. I think about 1/4 of a tablet is enough to treat 5 gallons (~19L) of water, but people have various opinions about how much is enough or too much.

When they say "do you use a full boil?" people mean, "are you boiling all of your required water at once, adding in the ingredients, boiling that mixture and then dumping that into your fermentor, or are you only boiling a smaller amount of water and your ingredients, dumping that into your fermentor, and then adding a second batch of water to the fermentor to give you your desired amount of wort?"

People with smaller boil kettles usually do the second kind. Known as "partial boils." I highly recommend that you get a brew kettle that's big enough to boil all of your required water instead of adding it later. If you're brewing 5 gallon (~19L) batches, then I recommend having an 8 gallon (~30L) or larger pot, due to the fact that you'll probably boil off about 1 gallon (~4L) of water due to evaporation, you'll lose a half gallon (~2L) to trub and hydrometer tests, and it's a good idea to have about 1-2 extra gallons (~3-7L) worth of headspace on your kettle to avoid boilovers. It will make your life a lot easier and it will make your beers come out better as well.

 

[wwwdotcomdotnet]

Question about adding campden tablets ahead of the boil: How long before the boil should I add the tablets? When doing ciders, I add them to the cider 24 hours before pitching yeast. With beer, can I just toss the crushed tablet straight into the full AG boil and continue as usual, or should I also add the campden tablet to the brewing water a day ahead of brewing?

 

[RobWalker]

you should learn about the hardness of your water compared to other water too. you can soften and harden it to suit taste that way - soft for ales, hard for export style lagers, etc.

 

[wwwdotcomdotnet]

you should learn about the hardness of your water compared to other water too. you can soften and harden it to suit taste that way - soft for ales, hard for export style lagers, etc.

Good point. Do most homebrew shops have kits for this?

 

[wwwdotcomdotnet]

I looked up my town's water report. Looks like the pH is 9.3 (alkaline) and the water is considered fairly soft. What can I do to bring the pH down a bit. Soft water is probably preferred over hard water for brewing, I presume.

I stumbled across this thread while looking into building my own tap water filter system for brewing instead of buying 15 gallons of spring water every time I brew (AG).

 

[RobWalker]

you don't need a kit, it's a chemical. i forget which and what quantities etc. it's in a book somewhere.

somebody should have more info

 

[CidahMastah]

I looked up my town's water report. Looks like the pH is 9.3 (alkaline) and the water is considered fairly soft. What can I do to bring the pH down a bit. Soft water is probably preferred over hard water for brewing, I presume.

I stumbled across this thread while looking into building my own tap water filter system for brewing instead of buying 15 gallons of spring water every time I brew (AG).

Neither is prefered unless you are looking to do a certain style. For lagers and light ales you could argue softer would work better and porters and stouts you want a harder water. But it isn't just hard or soft. There are about several key things you need to look at if you want to dive into water:

CA
MG
SO4
HCO3

Na and Cl to a lesser extent

Get yourself a water report and check out br'un water and http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-1.html to start

to lower your alkaline water you would add an acid:
malic, lactic, citric etc. are commonly used. You can calculate how much in the brun water program (http://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/).

 

[LVBen]

The grains will help bring down the pH, but you'll still want to measure the ph of the mash while you are mashing. If you need to bring the pH down, then you can use phosphoric acid. There are also other options for bringing down the pH, like acid malt and an acid rest, but phosphoric acid tends to be recommended by many experts.

 

[ryukyudiver]

I have a pretty hardcore RO/DI filteration unit for my saltwater aquarium. I heard that you need the minerals for your beer, but you would think that the more filtered the water is, the better you can control the flavor of your beer. Here in Italy there is quite a bit of silt in the tap water. Anyone have any advice on water filtering?

Chris