Water top-off

[JJack887]

I'm doing a partial BIAB mash in a small kettle (not full wort volume) and will be topping off to 5gal in the bucket fermentor. Should I add the top-off water in the fermentor after the wort has been dumped in, or should I fill the fermentor with top-off water and add the wort to it then? And, just to be safe, is distilled water fine for topping off? Thanks!

 

[kh54s10]

I don't think it makes any difference whether you add the wort to the water or the water to the wort? I don't know about distilled water. It is stripped of all minerals. I just use tap water filtered with a Brita filter.

 

[BradleyBrew]

Yeah, I don't think it makes a difference when you add it.... I would be more concerned as previously mentioned about the fact that distilled water has no minerals... this could be good or bad depending on your brewing water. If you have topped off with regular water I would probably use spring water by the gallon.

 

[dmashl]

I do 4 gallon partial boils, I cool the 3.5 gallons of wort remaining to about 85 degrees, then pour it through a strainer into the fermenting bucket, then top off with 2 gallons of refrigerated water, which usually results in a 66ish temp. Mix it up then take your gravity reading, aerate, then pitch, letting the yeast sit for at least 10 minutes. While your waiting, clean up your equipment. Then mix in your yeast. Works every time. BTW I use bottled spring water.

 

[Calder]

I don't think it matters when you add it. The old books recommended adding it first to prevent cracking glass fermenters when you poured in the hot wort.

If you cool your wort, it doesn't matter. I add mine after the wort is in the fermenter. I use tap water, filtered through a carbon filter to remove chlorine.

 

[Yooper]

I would add distilled or reverse osmosis water to the cooled wort. That way, you can see your volume and exactly how much you need to add to get to 5 gallons.

 

[JJack887]

Thank you all for the replies! Should the top-off water be preboiled, or is straight spring water good to go as is?

 

[eko]

I just added some top-off water to my wort. First time I've done that in quite a while. Since switching to all grain. I'm paranoid, so I boiled it first. But I never had a problem when I was topping off my extract brews with tap water. Risk from the water should be low, much lower than other potential sources of infection.

 

[Yooper]

Thank you all for the replies! Should the top-off water be preboiled, or is straight spring water good to go as is?

If you are using tap water, make sure it's free of chlorine or chloramines. I'd prefer distilled or reverse osmosis water (I'm not a fan of "spring water" which can be anything) but if you have good chlorine free water that isn't too hard, it would be ok.