First Home Brew (Extract) - Tap vs. Distilled

Distilled is preferred as you are simply adding back the pure water that was removed when the extract was made. However, if your tap water tastes good, then there is little downside to using it, as long as you remove the chlorine/chloramines before boiling. This can be achieved by dissolving 1/4 campden table per 5 gallons of brewing water.

 

If your tap water is decent it will be fine to brew with (though most municipal water will benefit from simple carbon filtering or campden tabs to remove chlorine/chloramine taint).
I've been brewing for 43 years (the last 30 years from all grain) and have never used anything but tap water...although I've been fortunate that everywhere I've lived, the municipal water was well suited to the styles of beer I like to make. Where I live presently has water that is fairly close to the profile of London water.

edit: I was writing my post when the previous response came in; utahbeerdude has it exactly right: distilled is fine for extract brewing, particularly if you are uncertain about your local water quality.

 

I would use RO (reverse osmosis) water. For one thing, it is cheaper. RO water can usually be bought in bulk from supermarkets for about 35 cents a gallon (around here, anyway). It is similar to distilled, but has slightly higher mineral content, which is not a bad thing for brewing. Tap water can usually be used, but you will want to know what the mineral content is like, and you will want to get rid of the chlorine.

 

Our Nashville area water is pretty darn good, but I filter out whatever can be filtered out with a dual-carbon filter that removes all of the usual suspects like lead, copper, etc, but also the chlorines.

 

I always recommend distilled or RO water for extract brewers because otherwise with tap water you can get some harshness and twang from the extract due to effective doubling of salts in your finished beer. Certain English styles actually benefit from extra hardness so you can use tap water for those. But for most styles, distilled/RO is best for extract brewing.

This guidance does not apply for all-grain brewing when you get to that point. At that point you will want to get water tests to use with software to add salts to get the specific water profile that you're going for. Or alternatively, "if it tastes good, use it". But that's for all-grain.

 

distilled or gallon jugs of spring water. wouldn't recommend tap unless its been filtered via activated charcoal or RO.

 

As others have posted it is prudent to eliminate chlorine/chloramine from tap water. This can be done via carbon block filtering or campden tablets. The other option is RO water or distilled water but frankly the filtering route will work just as good.

Cheers!