Brewing 20%ABV alcohol

[twinturbo]

Hot water from the tap that's not a good idea.

I would be using boiled water.

TT

[alga]

Why? Risk of infection, or, vice versa, chlorine harmful to yeast?

[twinturbo]

If it's come from a hot water storage tank then there will be bactira already breading in it, give them a nice warm mid 20's vat full of suggar and the bacteria will grow.

From a combi hot water supply would not be as bad as it has not sat arround.

The whole point of steralising the equipment is to kill of bacteria and if you put them back in with the hot water then your steralising efforts are a bit of a waste of time.

hot water also disolves contaminents easier than cold so your water will have other things in that you don't want.

It's not recomended to even drink hot tap water.

Ideally we would do it with distilled water, but that's an expensive option when making cheap booze!

TT

[Stot]

You can buy 25l of RO water at most aquarium shops for ~£2.50 and is much cleaner even than distilled water. You need a 25l container to buy it in but from what I understand its the purity of ingredients that makes the best booze.

Cheers
Stot

[twinturbo]

Originally Posted by Stot

You can buy 25l of RO water at most aquarium shops for ~£2.50 and is much cleaner even than distilled water. You need a 25l container to buy it in but from what I understand its the purity of ingredients that makes the best booze.

Cheers
Stot

My freind kept recomending building a RO for the pond, my fish don't seem to mind tap water but they are not £££££ Koi

[twinturbo]

And yes boiling will help the dechlorination process.

TT

[Stot]

Originally Posted by twinturbo

My freind kept recomending building a RO for the pond, my fish don't seem to mind tap water but they are not £££££ Koi

I keep tropicals and being lazy I have setup a syphon system with a zone valve that empties ~50l of water each night and then an RO system drip feeds directly back into the tank and its full again by morning.

So I basically do a 15% water change daily, while asleep.

Cheers
Stot

[Davidbolam]

Won't the alcohol in the water kill any of the bacteria?

[twinturbo]

Originally Posted by Davidbolam

Won't the alcohol in the water kill any of the bacteria?

No, although your more likly to end up with a horrid low % skeg than a potentail viable looking biohazzard.

The steralising kills most bacteria in the equipment, the air lock keeps out air to reduce ingestion of 02 and other contaminents.

TT

[K4KEV]

All of the alcotec yeasts are very high tolerance and develop a strong alcohol in a very short period of time 14% in 48hrs... in the past spoilage organisms took time to "spoil" and end with vinegar ....spoilage organisms do not have time to reproduce before being rendered inert by the high alcohol content.
I have made this brew in the same way for about 2yrs now and I have never had one fail, they all follow the same pattern apart from once when I used ordinary granulated sugar and the result was drinkable but not of the same quality as with brewing sugar....my water does come from a combi boiler and the only difference there is it goes through a heat exchanger heated by gas that would be the same as putting it into a pan on a gas stove, I have brewed for many years and many a time I have made blackberry wine by letting the fruit go mouldy in a tub then add water and sugar and let the natural yeasts do their bit, again I have never ended up with vinegar. I have never met or heard of anyone ever using anything other than tapwater for home brewing, sorry guys but I will be sticking with what I know works, I would never chance £30 quids worth of ingredients if I thought there was a chance of losing it.