Bottled vs Tap Water

[nman13]

As some background, I've been brewing for several years now and have been using tap water from at least 5 different municipalities. I always remove chlorine/chloramine with campden tablets, and adjust water profiles with brewing salts and phosphoric acid for mash ph when needed.

I'm not a water snob, but whenever I do drink bottled water it really does taste a lot better than tap water. Is there a reason that bottled water tastes better? And if so, can this mean using using bottled water will result in a better tasting beer when compared to properly treated tap water?

I know its cheaper to use tap, but if there is any truth to my logic above, then to me it would be worth it to use bottled water when brewing. But maybe the fact that bottled water tastes better has no true impact on the finished beer when compared to appropriately treated tap water.

 

[jack13]

It's very hard to apply a general rule to this question. It depends on the nature of your tap water. But try doing a blind taste test of your tap water vs bottled water. This would include drinking them both at the same temp. Room temp would probably be best. Also consider an experiment, brewing a beer with tap vs. a beer with bottled.