water, hard or soft?

also, this is one of about four different set of instructions i'll probably be reading. first was from "first steps to winemaking" book, the above is from "wallys info packet" that was added to the winemaking kit, I'll assume the wine kit will also have instructions and the recipie for (the eventual) plum wine that i found online.

so far, no real contradictions, but it appears to be some ommisions, like the hard vs soft, and upgrades from different types of sanitizers

Yeast require many trace elements and minerals to do well. These are found in most hard water. But then there is HARD water. You can overdo anything. I have been some places where you could not drink coffee made from the local water. Be sensible about a rule like that.

Ray

In addition to what Ray said, soft water contains sodium, which can stop yeast dead in its tracks. There's probably not enough in softened water to kill the yeast, but why take the chance?

I live in Pittsburgh and our water is hard and seriously chlorinated. I have used plain tap water, filtered water and RO water to hydrate yeast and all worked pretty much the same. I don't have a water softener so can't speak to it. I would probably avoid using softened water for making up the water in a kit though; I might just go buy a few gallons of spring water at the grocery store.

Joe

for cleaning and sanitizing, should i use the softened water or not?

water tastes the same to me either way, enough that we are not sure if the water softener is shot(just bought the house in july, softener wasnt an issue)

Sure, if it's good enough to clean people it's good enough to clean equipment.

Joe