Ever wondered why your homebrew doesn't quite match up to your favorite craft beer? The secret might be in the water! Water is the most significant ingredient in beer, yet it's often overlooked by home brewers. This post aims to break down some of the daunting and overwhelming concepts of water chemistry, making them easier to understand and giving you the confidence to begin adjusting your own brewing water.
Introduction
Adjusting water chemistry makes an incredible difference to your beer. It can turn a good beer, or even a really good beer, into a great beer. For many, it’s the missing piece of the puzzle as to why their beers never quite taste or have the same mouthfeel as commercially available craft beer.
We're certainly not scientists ourselves and weren't particularly good at it science or chemistry in high school, and perhaps this is why most home brewers shy away from getting involved in water chemistry. It's difficult to understand, and most people probably think, "How can I implement something into my brewing that I don't understand?" Thankfully, there is some excellent, free brewing software available that takes the guesswork and technical aspect out of adjusting brewing water chemistry. With a little bit of research into what is already in the water you use to brew, you can simply enter some numbers into an app, select a desired beer style, and the software will tell you what you need to add to your brewing water. Simple!
Finding Out What's in Your Brewing Water
Understanding Your Water Profile
Before we begin, you need to find out what's contained in the water you're using to brew. You can use reverse-osmosis water and start with a blank slate (pure water with no other minerals/salts present), or if you're using town water, your supplier will hopefully have water reports available.
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| An example water report showing key components of drinking water |
If your brewing water is good enough to drink out of the tap without tasting horrible, then that is a pretty good start, and you can build your water profile from there, which is what we do. We're fortunate that where we live in Sydney Australia, our water supplier, Sydney Water, posts the results of their water analysis every quarter which includes a breakdown of the key components of water necessary for home brewing. This is specific to our address and is displayed after searching for it on their website.
It's important you know what is contained in your water in order to make the correct adjustments to it. It's not a good idea to make adjustments if you don't have a baseline to start from by knowing what the mineral composition of your brewing water already is.
Key Components of Water Reports
Here are the key elements you should be looking for in a water report:
- Total Chlorine: Chlorine is used to disinfect water supplies to kill microbes that may cause disease. For the purpose of home brewing, it is bad and not required. Thankfully, it can be easily removed using Campden tablets, which are cheap, fast-acting, and effective.
- pH: pH is a scale used to determine how acidic or non-acidic (alkaline/basic) water is. The scale runs from 0-14, with 7 considered neutral. Anything less than 7 is considered acidic, and anything greater than 7 is considered basic/alkaline or non-acidic. Generally, in terms of beer and brewing, we want slightly acidic water, generally in the range of 5-6. Water needs to be slightly acidic in brewing to help break down the sugars from grains and malts during mashing.
- Calcium: Correct levels of calcium in brewing water can lower pH (i.e., make it more acidic), help preserve mash enzymes, increase the amount of sugars extracted from grains during mashing (the yield), and improve yeast health.
- Sodium: Sodium is generally referred to as salt. It has no chemical effect in brewing water but can contribute to the flavor of beer by enhancing its sweetness. It is not generally added unless the particular style you are brewing calls for it.
- Sulphate: Used to increase the perceived hop character of your beer and can help accentuate bitterness. Increased levels can lead to a perception of a drier and cleaner finish.
- Iron: Not required for brewing—low levels less than 1mg/L are fine.
- Magnesium: Small amounts are required for mashing. It helps to decrease mash pH.
- Chloride: This is different from chlorine or chloramine. It helps to accentuate a fullness or roundness of flavor in beer and especially enhances malt sweetness. Concentrations in excess of 200 ppm can give a full malty taste and can help to enhance mouthfeel.
- Alkalinity: A measure of the ability of a solution to resist (buffer) a change to its pH value when acids are added.
Target Water Profiles
Mineral Composition
Any decent homebrewing software application (like Brewfather) will have a water calculator built into it, and will typically have some example target profiles that you can use to make most popular beer styles, like Pale Ales, IPA's, Porters and Lagers.
Chloride to Sulfate Ratio
The chloride to sulfate ratio is an important element that can significantly impact the perceived bitterness and maltiness of your beer.
- Balanced (1:1): Neither malt nor hop character is enhanced, often used for styles like Amber Ale or some lagers.
- Chloride Heavy: Enhances malt character and can provide a smoother, more rounded mouth feel. Still type of ratio is typically used for styles like Hazy IPA or New England IPA (NEIPA)
- Sulfate Heavy: Enhances hop character. Ratios above 1 tend to accentuate hop flavors and bitterness and are common in beer styles like Pale Ale and IPA.
Remember that the ratio is only one part of the equation, and the total amounts of each mineral still matter. For example, a chloride to sulfate ratio of 300:100 and 30:10 are both 3:1, but will taste very different to one another because of the large difference in total amount of minerals added.
pH Range
The pH of your brewing water is crucial for proper enzymatic action during the mash, affecting sugar conversion, fermentability, and the flavor profile of the wort and beer. The ideal pH range for brewing beer is between 5.2 and 5.6. Maintaining this range ensures optimal conditions for brewing, resulting in better-tasting, clearer, and more stable beer.
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| pH meters are a must have to adjust the acidity of your brewing water |
pH meters are cheap and accurate enough to use to adjust your brewing water if they are well maintained and calibrated before use.
What to Use to Adjust Your Water Chemistry
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| Brew day water chemistry adjustments |
When starting out, we recommend using the following five items to adjust your brewing water. Just using these will make a huge difference to the taste of your brewed beer. They are also cheap to buy, and you generally won't need to use a lot in each brew, so what you do buy will likely last a long time.
- Campden Tablets: Also known as potassium or sodium metabisulfite, a half tablet can be used to treat an entire batch of brewing water and will almost instantly remove chlorine or chloramine from your water. Crush it up before adding to make it more easily dissolved. I use a half tablet in mash water and another half tablet in sparge water.
- Calcium Chloride: Calcium adds to water hardness, and chloride accentuates maltiness, sweetness, and fullness. This is added to reduce mash pH to make it more acidic.
- Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom Salt): Similar to calcium sulphate but is not as effective as calcium in reducing mash pH. Can be used to add sulphate crispness to hop bitterness. Too much can have a laxative effect.
- Calcium Sulphate (Gypsum): Adds permanent hardness to brewing water. Helps accentuate hop flavor.
- Phosphoric or Lactic Acid: This is added to the mash and sparge water to get the pH into the ideal range of 5.2 - 5.6
Conclusion
Adjusting your brewing water chemistry can seem daunting at first, but with the right tools and a bit of knowledge, it can significantly improve the quality of your homebrew. Start with the basics, experiment with different adjustments, and soon you'll be brewing beer that rivals your favorite commercial craft brews. Have you tried adjusting your brewing water? Share your experiences in the comments!
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