Which Water To Use??

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bigm789

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So i am just getting started and was curious, what's the best water to use? i live in the city, but i have access to well water in the country. would that be better then buying purified water or purifying my own? any help would be greatly appreciated.

matt
 
Any water you want really, if it tastes alright, use it. You can add things to water to give it mineral profile you want/need for different styles or mashing. At this point I wouldn't worry about any of that.......if you would drink the water, it will be fine for making beer.
 
If the water doesn't have a bad taste then use it.
Go for the cheapest most convenient. If the beer tastes good then stick with it.

If not see if you can treat it, if not change.
If the worst comes to the worst, buy bottled.
 
I live in the city and just use my tap water through an inline Brita faucet filter. I did my first few brews without the filter and as much as I may want to justify the expense by saying I could taste a difference, I couldn't. :)
 
well that's good to know! thanks a lot guys, i really appreciate the help. any other worth knowing tips or good threads i should know about??
 
I use the Glacier reverse osmosis processed water I can get at the local grocery store. I can refill jugs for only 39 cents a gallon, so it's worth my while to do it. The water is filtered and bacteria free, so I don't need to boil it. The time saved not having to boil all my water (I do partial boils and top up) is worth the $2 I pay for six gallons.
 
Up here in Vermont, we use regular old water out of the tap, and it makes mighty fine beer. I find it hard to believe that people really go to the expense of using bottled water. Hey whatever floats your boat eh?
Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?
 
glibbidy said:
Up here in Vermont, we use regular old water out of the tap, and it makes mighty fine beer. I find it hard to believe that people really go to the expense of using bottled water. Hey whatever floats your boat eh?
Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?

Well I guess not everyone has fine municipal water like we do. Having said that, my father also has municipal water in the town he lives in and he has a water bottle cooler. He fills the bottle from the tap and everyone raves about his great tasting water, "better than that chlorine water from the tap". We laugh silently to ourselves.:cross:
 
Yeah, tap water is just fine. If it has a chlorine smell to it, boil it and let it sit overnight.
 
Boiling or letting water stand will remove chlorine but not chloramines which are added by some companys.

You can remove chlorine and chloramines by adding 1/2 a crushed campden tablet to 5 gallons of water. The effect is almost instantaneous.
 
DAAB said:
...You can remove chlorine and chloramines by adding 1/2 a crushed campden tablet to 5 gallons of water. The effect is almost instantaneous.

I bought a small bottle of the Potassium Metabisuphite powder the other day and was wondering how much to use for five gal of water.

I was thinking around 1/8 teaspoon/5 gal ?

Has anyone used this powder? If so how much?

TIA,
drinker
 
Dudes, I'm here to tell you that if your living in an approved public drinking water area, your water is tested, tested and tested some more by law under the Safe Drinking Water Act. If any of those test parameters fail, they legally have to notify you, the consumer. Keeping drinking water within regulatory limits is very hard to achieve and municipalities spend literally millions of dollars trying to stay in compliance. This whole bottled water thing is just simply amazing to me. Just look back 15 years ago...bottled water???? What the hell?
In the labs I've worked at in the past, we have done taste tests akin to what boo-boo is eluding to, 90% of the consumers can't even tell the difference. All you need is great media production, and that introduces hysteria into the masses. Result: A umpteen ka-billion dollar industry. Funny, you ever looked at the labels and see exactly who owns which water company? Pepsi and Coke have a lot of them, same water they use for making their soft drinks. If the water taste good, USE IT and save your money for brewing supplies.
 
I dont have a problem with tap water, it meets higher standards of purity than bottled spring water, the problem with it is the chlorine and or chloramines that are added to it to keep it fresh.

drinker Campden tabs weigh between 1 and 2 grams (my scales arent accurate enough to be any more precise).

1/8 of a tsp seems reasonable, some brewers will add 1 or 2 tablets to the mash to combat hot side oxidation so I wouldnt worry about adding too much (within reason), it takes around 1 tablet per imperial gallon to kill off brewers yeast, although it takes less to kill of wild yeasts.
 

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