So Yeah, Dood…

It should seem pretty obvious that water profiles have a significant effect on a brewer’s final product. The mineral content of the water used to brew beer can affect mouthfeel, flavor, aroma, and appearance. Every sensation we experience when drinking a beer can be changed and even improved with an altered water profile. It’s between 85% and 97% of your beer! Oddly — as you may have noted in one of my questions with Les — a lot of brewers don’t even think about it until they’ve reached a certain level of experience. Why not?

The answer? Because a lot of effort, science, and money goes into controlling this aspect of your final product. Keep reading and you’ll see what I mean.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand what the chemical salts, ions, and minerals dissolved in water do to your beer, it’s also important to note what NOT having them present does to your beer. Using pure water is not only almost unheard of in beermaking — due to the cost of distilled water — it actually doesn’t really make good beer. More on that later. Water as we know it out of the tap, out of the spring, out of the well, out of anywhere but a still is not just water — it’s a solution that contains minerals, salts, and metals that all have an effect on what we use it for, and how it tastes.

What we have to remember when thinking about water profile amendments comes down to the specifics of water’s role in each part of the process of making beer.

For instance: in mashing, we’re particularly concerned with the water’s pH — it’s level of acidity or base — and this level is determined by the chemical makeup of the solution. Water that is too basic during the mash will lead to high levels of tannin extraction and produce an astringent, and unpleasant beer.

In the boil, the wort chemistry — and thus water chemistry — has an effect on hop utilization. In the ferment, wort chemistry — and thus water chemistry — has an effect on yeast health. The residual mineral content has a powerful effect on how the beer smells, tastes, and feels in your mouth. You get the picture — it’s important!

So how do you figure out what’s in your water?

If you’re a chemist you test it yourself; if not, you get it professionally tested. The advice I’ve heard says doing so yearly would not be overkill. Doing it every month would probably indicate that you’re a bit obsessive assuming you’re not brewing professionally and VERY concerned about quality control.

Baltimore City provides an annual water quality report, but it’s far from what you call comprehensive. By request, you can get a more complete report that isn’t posted online, but I’m hosting 2008’s here for you in .pdf format. Oddly enough, the City also runs the water business in Baltimore County. If you Google “municipal water report” with your city’s name in front, you’ll probably find at least some information. You may have to do some digging— like I did, and actually call or email your local department of public works. A number of people I know who live on well water use Ward Laboratories to test their supply, and they report receiving fairly comprehensive reports for not that much money.

What do you do once you have the report?

You figure out what style of beer you want to brew. The thing about the water profiles of classic beers is that they are largely the result of circumstance, not engineering. When you drink a Bass Ale, you’re tasting the result of the natural water supply of Burton on Trent, and how it’s exceedingly high sulfate content affects and amplifies hop flavor. When you drink a Pilsener Urquel, you’re tasting the effects of Pilsen’s very clean, and very soft water profile and how that affects the balance of a Czech Pilsener. The water is pretty important in terms of how the locality of specific historically geographical styles happened to fall into place. You don’t try to brew a Pilsener with Burton water, and you don’t try to brew a hoppy pale ale with soft water. The beer styles that exist around the world were the result of a series of natural conclusions about what kind of breiwng worked best where you were at.

The water profiles of the more famous beer cities shake out like this:

Water Chemistry for Famous Brewing Cities
	Pilsen	Dortmund	Munich	Vienna	London	Burton	Dublin
Calcium	7	225	75	200	52	268	118
Magnesium	2	40	18	60	16	62	4
Sodium	2	60	7	8	99	54	12
Chloride	5	60	10	12	60	36	19
Sulfate	5	120	10	125	77	638	54
Alkalinity	14	180	152	120	156	200	319

I’m quoting Ray Daniels below:

Pilsen: Very soft water allows pale color and clean bitterness of Pilsner.

Dortmund: Very hard water, with high levels of nearly all the water minerals. Used for making the medium-bitter, pale style known as “Export” lager.

Munich: High carbonate content leads to low hopping rates and darker color as found in Dunkel and Bock.

Vienna: Low sodium and chloride levels surrounded by high overall hardness. This city is famous for the production of well-balanced amber-style lagers.

London: Carbonate plus high levels of sodium and chloride encourage balanced, smooth dark beers such as porter and mild.

Burton-on-Trent: High sulfate content contributes to sharp, clean bitterness of classic pale ale, India pale ale.

Dublin: Extremely high carbonate content requires the use of acidic dark malts to achieve a more neutral pH. Thus, Dublin stouts like Guinness, include 10 percent roast barley in their grists.

It’s only after we discovered what the regional mineral content of our water did to specific beers, and the materials required to make changes to that water became readily available that people  started modifying their local water profiles for brewing.

All that said, the items you should concern yourselves with on your report are the following — with notes snaked from beer-brewing.com (1, 2) and Ray Daniels:

• Alkalinity — Alkalinity is a measure of the buffering capacity of the bicarbonate ions and, to some extent, the carbonate and hydroxide ions of water. These three ions all react with hydrogen ions to reduce acidity and raise pH. Alkalinity is normally given in mg/l as calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) for all three ions. Alkalinity might be listed as CaCO3, CO3 or “carbonate” content.
  • Residual Alkalinity — The result of the competition between the pH increasing and lowering properties of water is determined by the residual alkalinity (RA). The residual alkalinity is the difference between carbonate (carbonate + bicarbonate) hardness and non-carbonate hardness.
• pH — When water molecules are ionized, they produce hydrogen (H⁺) and hydroxyl (OH^-) ions, which carry an electrical charge. These ions in the water determine its fundamental character-whether it is acid (excess H⁺) or alkaline (excess OH^-). pH is shorthand for “Potential Hyrdogen” or “Power of Hydrogen.” The scale ranges from 0 to 14 with a pH of 7 being neutral. Higher pH values denote alkalinity, lower pH values acidity.
• Hardness — Total water hardness is the measure of the bicarbonate, calcium, and magnesium ions present in the water. Total hardness is expressed as mg/l of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), which determines the degree of softness or hardness. A measurement of fewer than 50 mg/l is considered very soft water, 50 to 100 mg/l is considered soft water, 100 to 200 mg/l is considered medium-soft water, 200 to 400 mg/l is considered moderately hard water, 400 to 600 mg/l is considered hard water, and greater than 600 mg/l is considered very hard water.
• Calcium — The calcium ion is by far the most influential mineral in the brewing process. Calcium reacts with phosphates, forming precipitates that involve the release of hydrogen ions and in turn lowering the pH of the mash. This lowering of the pH is critical in that it provides a suitable environment for the starch conversion enzymes — Alpha and Beta Amylase.
• Iron — Iron in large amounts can give a metallic taste to beer. Iron salts have a negative action at concentrations above 0.2 mg/l during wort production, preventing complete starch conversion, resulting in hazy worts, and reducing yeast activity. This usually affects people using well water the most.
• Magnesium — Magnesium ions react similarly to calcium ions, but since magnesium salts are much more soluble, the effect on wort pH is not as great. Magnesium is most important for its benefit to yeast metabolism during fermentation. Magnesium carbonate reportedly gives a more astringent bitterness than does calcium carbonate. Necessary mineral for yeast health.
• Chloride — Calcium and magnesium chlorides give body, palate fullness, and soft-sweet flavor to beer. The certain roundness on the palate given by sodium chloride (common table salt) makes this salt eminently suited for all types of sweet beers – for both dark beers and stouts.
• Sodium — Sodium has no chemical effect; it contributes to the perceived flavor of beer by enhancing its sweetness. Levels from 75 to 150 ppm give a round smoothness and accentuate sweetness, which is most pleasant when paired with chloride ions than when associated with sulfate ions. In the presence of sulfate, sodium creates an unpleasant harshness, so the rule of thumb is that the more sulfate in the water, the less sodium there should be (and vice versa).
• Sulfate — Sulfates positively affects protein and starch degradation, which favors mash filtration and trub sedimentation. However, its use may result in poor hop utilization (bitterness will not easily be extracted) if the levels are too high. It can lend a dry, crisp palate to the finished beer; but if used in excess, the finished beer will have a harsh, salty, and laxative character.

Your report will list most of these as parts per million (ppm) values. If you get this from your city as an annual report, it will likely be an average, so it won’t be 100% accurate every time you brew, but it should be close enough to make fairly good modifications.

By looking at your own report, and doing a little research into the water profile used for the style of beer you’re making — I would suggest Designing Great Beers as a start — you can add mineral ions, or salts to your water to formulate the correct water profile to get the beer you want.

Common Brewer’s Additives

• Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) — more commonly known as Chalk raises the pH.
• Calcium Sulfate (CaSO4 + Two H2O) — Gypsum. Lowers pH. Adds calcium if the water is also low in sulfate. Also helps add “hop crispness” to the flavor profile.
• Calcium Chloride (CaCl2 + Two H2O) — Lowers pH. Adds calcium if the water is low in chlorides.
• Magnesium Sulfate (MgSO4 + SEVEN H2O) — Epsom Salt. Lowers pH by a small amount. Adds Magnesium and sulfate “hop crispness” to the flavor profile.
• Sodium Bicarbonate (NAHCO3) — Raises pH by adding alkalinity.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of exactly how you’d go about making these additions to specific styles. Talk to your homebrew shop guru, I’m sure he or she will be able to help you make the kind of modifications you need to for an individual style. I WILL however provide you with the below:

Bare minimums

1. Recognize that your water will probably contain some chloramine in it if you’re getting it out of the tap. Not chlorine, chloramine. This is basically chlorine that remains in the water bonded to larger molecules after the water has been treated and considered pure. High chloramine levels in your beer can lead to the production of polyphenol compounds that can give your beer a burnt rubber, or band aid aroma. Not a good thing. Get rid of it by using a carbon filter, or a Camden Tablet — which you can generally get at your local homebrew shop.
2. Know what’s in your water. Spend the money on a professional evaluation of your water, or take the time to contact your local department of public works and ask them for an annual water quality report like the one linked above. Just knowing what’s in your water will allow you to make informed decisions about what you might want to brew. You don’t HAVE to modify your water profile every time you brew, and for those times you don’t want to, it makes sense to brew a style that suits the profile you naturally have. If you know what’s going on with your water, you can very easily decide what you can brew well with little effort.
3. Read more about what you want to brew. Knowing as much as you can about the style of beer you want in terms of ingredients, water profiles, yeast selections, etc. gives you much more understanding with regard to what you can expect to get out of your water profile.
4. Remember that modifying your water profile is a balancing act. When you add something to counteract one factor, you’re adding another factor to be considered as well. It’s difficult to get the perfect water profile without starting from scratch with purified water, and more to the point it’s expensive! You don’t have to modify your water profile every brew, and it doesn’t have to exactly match the profile of the city your chosen style originates from.
5. Water Softeners are not necessarily good for brewing! You may think that using a water softener at home and building your own water profile would offer you an opportunity to start from scratch, but that’s not exactly true. If you have one, make sure you can bypass it when you’re making up a batch for brewing. Softeners replace calcium ions with sodium ions. If you have particularly hard water — and why else would you have a softener? — you’ll be replacing so much calcium you’ll end up with salty beer in the final product. Check this article from Brew Your Own out on the subject.

Resources

Here are a few handy spreadsheets that should help you start taking control of your water profiles.

• BYO’s hosted version of the Vermont Brewery water profile spreadsheet.
• John Palmer’s Mash water profile spreadsheet.
• Podcasts: Brew Strong Water Adjustment series
  • Brew Strong: Why Adjust Your Water
  • Brew Strong: How to Adjust Your Water
  • Brew Strong: Adjusting Water to Styles

  *These are iTunes links, they’ll also help get you subscribed to Brew Strong, which rules, by the way.

Tags: beer chemistry, Brewing salts, water chemistry for brewing, Water Profiles

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Brewing, How do I do that?, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.