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. (more…)