Adding water to wort to lower OG safely?

Northern Brewer General
1

This is probably a no-no, but is it too risky adding fresh water to chilled wort to lower the OG right before pitching? I’m not talking about chlorinated municipal tap water, but filtered or distilled water.

The reason I’m asking is because i want to split a wort between two FV’s, but have one FV be a lower OG than the other, to create two different styles using two diff yeasts and FV additions.

As long as you don’t incorporate any bugs by adding fresh water to cold wort, all should be good, yes?

2

You can do this with little risk if using bottled water.

3

No reason not to and not a bad idea. When you brew an extract beer it gets topped up to the desired amount. As long as the water is good and any municipal supply should be then go ahead. There might be chlorine or chloramines in the water supply so you can buy distilled water if you want.

4

We have good NYC water here and I’ve topped off fermenters straight from the tap countless numbers of times and never had contamination.