Water: to boil or not?

JesseMcG · Post by **JesseMcG** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:53 pm

I have a question about water.... my tap water tastes fine so I'm not concerned so much about adjusting water levels in any way...but for my first two batches I boiled enough tap water to get my wort level up to 5 gallons... but because I don't have any good way to get the temp down quickly, it takes FOREVER to get to a pitchable temperature. This concerns me. It's been fine the first 2 batches, but it just seems like a matter of time until I forget to sanitize something or whatever... and I get an infection while waiting for the wort to sufficiently cool...

My question is this: How bad is it to just use un-boiled tap water, if the tap water tastes fine? I can't detect ANY chlorine or anything else in our water... but you never know I guess.

I'm thinking about buying a couple big-ass jugs of distilled water and putting them in the fridge, and using that to help cool the wort more quickly. Rather than using tap...

What do you think?

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:17 pm

Our tap water is pretty hard, so blending that with distilled would probably be a good thing for a soft pilsen style.

But you could boil water ahead of time so that it has plenty of time to cool!

cannondale · Post by **cannondale** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:45 pm

JesseMcG wrote:My question is this: How bad is it to just use un-boiled tap water, if the tap water tastes fine? I can't detect ANY chlorine or anything else in our water... but you never know I guess.

I personally don't think it's that bad at all.

If the only reason to boil the water is to try to remove chlorine, and you don't think that there is an excessive amount of chlorine in your tap water, then why boil?

The concerns with chlorine are its' potential to inhibit yeast growth, and the potential for formation of chlorophenols. Have these created an issue with any of your past brews?

In terms of microorganisms, there is no need for concern.