Brewing with distilled water....

[grndslm]

Someone asked in the yeast washing/rinsing thread... "The book, Yeast, states that we should only store in distilled water."

I had to look it up, but distilled water is essentially evaporated water, that not only kills germs but leaves behind minerals, as well.

So my question is... what is the effect of brewing with distilled water versus boiled tap water? I'm sure the latter is just fine, but don't the yeasties need some minerals?? Or would the typical ingredients (hops, grains) suffice??

Does anybody swear up and down that their beer tastes better with distilled water?

 

[helibrewer]

I need to check my book but using distilled water with live yeast is generally very bad...without minerals (ions) in the water the osmotic pressure will cause the yeast cells to explode. I know you are never suppose to use distilled water for rehydration.

I brew with RO (reverse osmosis) water and treat it with my own salts because my house water is on a conditioner and that doesn't bode well for brewing.

 

[wolfman_48442]

If you're using malt extract, distilled water is fine because the extract has all the minerals your yeast will need.
If you're building a specific water profile like helibrewer, starting with distilled works fine as well, since it's lower TDS (should be 0 or darn near) than RO.

As for storing yeast, I seem to think that the important part was storing in water that had as little dissolved oxygen as possible, whether distilled, RO, tap, whatever.
For us this pretty much means boiling the water, wherever it started from.