Water usage? Spring vs. Distilled

[CountrysHomeBrewing]

All,
I have been purchasing bottled water for my brewing, to avoid the city water and chlorine. However, I have seen some recipes showing distilled water as an ingredient. So which do you guys think is better to use spring or distilled?

 

[Yooper]

It's hard to say what's in "spring" water. We have a bottling plant in our county where the Crystal Spring Water is right out of the city tap.

Some spring water would be alkaline, with minerals and bicarbonate, and some without.

I'd get Reverse Osmosis water (cheaper than distilled usually) that is available in the big water machines at grocery stores and places like Wal-mart or distilled water.

 

[CastleHollow]

If you're brewing with extract, water composition is not as important as when you are an AG brewer. RO or distilled is still your best bet, as Yooper points out.

A cheaper alternative in the long run might be to get your water tested for ~$30. City water is not always bad, even for AG--in fact, I use straight tap water with a campden tablet to offset chloramines, and adjust as necessary with mineral additions. My water is pretty much the same as the Pilsen profile straight from the faucet.

 

[FarmerTed]

You can probably download the water report for whatever spring water you use. I use Crystal Geyser, and they have reports for all of their water sources.

 

[CountrysHomeBrewing]

Thank you all for your feedback. I did figure that my bottled spring water is fine for my extracts now, was wondering for later when I start all grain, so looks like if I'm still on city water then I will go with distilled or the filtered drinking water from the machines. I appreciate the advise. Thank you

 

[Toilet Rocker]

I have always used bottled water and never had an issue. I add a bit of gypsum but that may be extraneous. Still, my beers have always come out fine.

 

[Skarekrough]

The problem with distilled is that it lacks anything but just the water; were talking calcium, etc. Those are components that will lend themselves to the flavor in some cases and mash pH, etc.

If you're using distilled then you need to be certain to be adding those other components.

Learning your water profile is a fun weekend project. It's an aspect of homebrewing alot of folks don't delve into.

With Spring water you don't know what's there. I've never heard of a manufacturer handing over a water profile.

Honestly for 98% of homebrewing, unless there is a known issue with the water, then from the tap is fine.

 

[unionrdr]

I use local spring water from White House Artisian Springs. It's worked fine for AE to pb/pm biab so far. Here's the [age that describes what they do to it...
http://whitehousesprings.com/OurWater.php

 

[quincy07]

I have been using store bought "purified drinking water" for my last few extract batches. When I go to BIAB AG on my next batch I'll probably just use my tap water.

 

[FarmerTed]

These are the crystal geyser water reports (it says on the bottles where the source is). I would guess that most of the brand-name spring waters out there have water reports you can look up.

Here's Eldorhttps://www.eldoradosprings.com/eldorado-spring-natural-water-analysisado Springs as well.