To Boil or Not To Boil.............Filtered Water.

[shaunous]

This is based around extract and partial brewers (Teaching a mate to brew at my house). Obviously in a perfect world you would boil all the water that is going to be fermented.

I cannot do this here, without taking a damn long time anyway, or fuking around with my 3v rig, just to boil water.....Naaaah!

I have an under-sink particle and carbon filter.

Would it be totally outrageous to top the fermenter up with this water without being boiled? My thinking would be yeh, but there is that chance of infection, but then most of the K&K brewers do this anyway, its right there in the instructions.

Thoughts...

 

[Nibbo]

We're on tank water at home. We run a 25 mic filter after the pump and that's it. Fair enough, I do brew all grain and it gets boiled in the end but honestly I would not even think twice about using it to brew up a kit without boiling the water first.
I brew up kits at the shop and top up straight from the tap at our brewing area. No filtering or additional disinfection. This water is mains and does have a residual chlorine dose in it.

The filters under your sink won't keep anything nasty out. They will just clean up any solids coming through. If you were that worried about nasties in the water, you would run a small UV system after the filters to nuke the bugs.
If you're brewing extract or partials, you probably are doing a boil anyway so I don't think you would have anything to worry about.

I'm assuming your water source is clean and drinkable when writing this.

 

[manticle]

Would be more paranoid now if I were to do an extract or any brew that wasn't a full volume boil (also have the equipment now) but when I was doing them, I topped up without boiling. You are pitching straight away and if you pitch enough healthy yeast, theoretically the population should dominate.

If I were in your shoes I'd show old matey how to do it easily but explain the hypothetical potential issues. That way, if he ever does get an infection, he'll be able to relate to a possible cause and a possible solution, making him a better brewer.

As long as you boil the grain based wort (grain is full of bacteria) and you are using potable water and pitching as suggested above, you are minimising risks. Sanitation is about minimising risks - you can't operate in a vacuum.

 

[shaunous]

As always Man-Tickles, you put me at ease

Cheers Nibbo.

I thought the carbon part of the 2 stage filtration system removed bugs, chemicals and what not, its only the first part that removes the foreign matter/dust, dirt and solids. But I dunno.

Yeh we're boiling the wort, but un-boiled water makes up probably 60% of whats going into the fermenter. (My water comes from the towns water supply, although it comes to me before the treatment of chlorine and what not, so basically im getting damn water thats partly filtered at the dams pump station)

Threw 2 packs of US-05 yeast in on Sunday arvo's brew, did not hydrate (Hi Stu :lol, will hydrate 2 packs of US-05 for tonights IPA we're doing.

Then hopefully this weekend I get a chance to do an All-Grain batch for myself were I dont have to worry about the water :super:

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

The filters under your sink won't keep anything nasty out. They will just clean up any solids coming through.

All depends on what sort of filter. You can go down to 1micron. I had a a 1micron under the sink and a 5micron at the house pump.

Charcoal will filter the nasties out.

 

[shaunous]

Charcoal will filter the nasties out.

Thats what I thought.

 

[Nibbo]

After running several water treatment plants over the years, I wouldn't be relying on filters to remove the nasties when they can get through a 0.1 mic filter after going through charcoal.
As I said above, I run a 25 mic so I'm not that worried.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Mmm.......my filter bloke must have bent the truth