Talking About Water

[ScrewyBrewer]

Tomorrow night I'll be talking about brewing water at our homebrew club meeting. I'm really not too sure where to begin or in what order my talking points will be in yet. Going in I do know that not many, if any at all, of the brewers have tinkered with their brewing water profiles before. I've modified the brewing water profiles of the past six brews I've done and will bring along three bottles each of my Screwer In The Rye, 420 Special Wheat and Hazy Daze Dark Ale to give out as examples.

I figure once we've been plied with beer it'll be much easier to ask and answer questions as they come up. The wheat is 5%, the dark ale is 6% and the rye is 7% alcohol all fermented with East Coast Yeast's ECY-10 Old Newark Ale yeast and hopped with plenty of Cascade and Citra hops. Using EZwatercalculator I entered my grain bills for each style separately. I used it's recommendations, and my digital pH meter to verify the results, to modify my water profiles using the distilled water I started off with.

What I noticed was common in all the beers I brewed this way was an increase in the intensity of the beer's clarity, colors, aromas and flavors. The recipes used I've brewed many times before using tap water but soon learned that the amounts of grain and spice additions had to be scaled back. For instance the dark ale was really dark and coffee flavored, the wheat beer had too much coriander even though I added half as much as I had been using. The spice from the grains of paradise were even a bit more perceivable than in past batches and the head was soft and foamy. The rye beer has only been carbonating a week but the sample I drank this morning, yep I couldn't wait to try it, even at 7% alcohol had a nice clean taste with plenty of flavor and aroma.

[Beer-lord]

Vince, you've done a great job discussing water. So much so that when I go to my first local homebrew club, I'm going to ask questions about the water in my area and try some things.....baby steps....to see how my beer improves. I'm happy with my beers but if I can improve of good, maybe I can brew great.
Good luck on the talk.

[MadBrewer]

Water is that thing that can take good beers to next level of being great beers. But don't forget, water additions are one thing but getting that mash ph in the "zone" is where what it's really about. My latest beer is a Scottish Ale I just kegged. Samples tasted amazing. I used Distilled water with 1 tsp of Calcium Chloride, 3/4 tsp of Baking Soda and 1/4 tsp of Chalk. This is a darker, malty beer so the idea was to get some Alkalinity back into the water for the right ph and then be sure of at least 50 ppm Calcium in the mash. The Cal Chloride also brings some Chloride for a full malt character and the Baking Soda brings some Sodium which goes along with the Chloride to enhance a maltier beer.

To gather some thoughts for the talk I would just go over 1) What each component of of the water additions can do for your beer. 2) Mash ph. 3) What you could be doing to your beers or missing out on when using bad water (chlorinated tap water, high alkalinity water, alkaline sparge water)...etc.

Things I would avoid jumping into overloading your listeners with water profiles and all the techy, science behind it. You may enjoy the science behind it, a lot of other brewers are turned off or intimidated with brewing water and playing around with it. Water treatment can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, just like brewing itself. If you want to make an memorable impact, that's the route I would go. Keep it simple to understand but informative.

[Crazy Climber]

Water treatment can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, just like brewing itself.

That right there is an excellent opening statement for the discussion!

[ScrewyBrewer]

Thanks for all the valuable feedback folks! Tonight I'll keep it high level, fun and it interesting for them all. Today I'll put together an outline and print some handouts for the folks to take home, with links to EZwatercalculator, BeerBorg.com and my website. Who knew Monday night's could be so much fun! I may even have some pictures to post afterwards.

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From left to right are the beers we'll be sampling. Screwer In The Rye, 420 Special Wheat and Hazy Daze Dark Ale.

[Rebel_B]

How'd it go? Monday night club meetings? Seems like a challenge to get people to show up.

[John Sand]

Our local beer meetings are on Tuesdays, other clubs on LI hold them on Thursdays. I actually think that weekdays are better. People are busy on weekend nights.

[ScrewyBrewer]

Well it seems like Uno's, the bar we have our meetings in, gave us the boot once again. Something about a lot of parties and graduations and paying customers. So my talk has been postponed to Thursday June 19 at 7:00pm now. I'm not upset in the least it'll give me more time to print out the handouts and for my latest batch of rye beer to bottle carbonate too. I have to admit if they cancel again there won't be as many samples to hand out as there could have been, but I really don't mind that either.

[ScrewyBrewer]

We had our homebrew club meeting Thursday night and it went really well, I guess they liked my style of promoting the positive effects modified brewing water makes on beer. The turnout was good especially for a weeknight, about 15-20 members attended. I introduced myself as Vince aka Screwy Brewer and passed around handouts containing a rough agenda of the night's subject matter and everyone got some vinyl stickers to take with them as well.

The members also liked the three different styles of beer they got to taste starting with a 5% wheat followed by a 6% dark ale and ending with a 7% rye beer. Everyone seemed to agree on three important points the colors of each beer were bright, the taste of the beer was enhanced and each beer was clear and clean tasting. The purpose for choosing these three beer styles was to explain how important it is to use the right water profile for very light, medium and very dark beer styles.

We ended up talking for a little over an hour, sipping and sampling the half a case of beer I brought with me, it was a good way to win over the crowd and encourage participation especially when it came to question and answer time. People rolled in from about 7-7:30 and ordered something to eat, Unos Chicago Grill by us has a huge selection of craft beer on tap and in bottles too. Around a quarter after 8 the club president gave the attendees an introduction and my talk got under way.

Below I've posted the talking points I put together and handed out to the club members but in the end I found myself having a free flowing conversation with the group and having a great time doing it. I think I earned a special place in their hearts and minds the other night, they clearly got to learn a lot about brewing water profiles, asked a lot of good questions and seemed to enjoy the samples I gave them. All in all I found it to be a very positive experience and something I'm glad I got to do.

• Understanding and modifying your brewing water profiles, just like brewing beer, can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. The most obvious benefits of brewing a recipe using the right water profile is a clearer, more colorful better tasting beer.

• Clearer wort clarity, improved color and flavor, better conversion rates and yeast health are all benefits of mashing with a good water profile.

• The preferred pH range for mashing grains is 5.4 to 5.6 at room temperature. Adding small amounts of Lactic Acid is an easy way to lower your brewing water pH, adding small amounts of Baking Soda is an easy way to raise your brewing water pH.

• The lower end of the pH range gives more fermentable lighter bodied beer, the higher end give less fermentable fuller bodied beer, similar in effect as with lower or higher temperature mashing.

• The seasonings of the brewing water are Gypsum for crisper cleaner hop flavor, Calcium Chloride for a fuller sweeter maltier flavor and Epsom Salt to increase yeast flocculation while accentuating flavors for a slightly sour bitterness.

• Mashing within the recommended pH range efficiently converts starch into sugars, the grain bed develops finer particles that increase its filtering capacity which makes the wort extremely clear and colorful

• City Water: pH 6.5 - 8.5 Human Body: pH 7.3 -7.4 Beer: pH 4 - 4.5 Mash: pH 5.4 - 5.6 Distilled/RO: pH 7 (exposure to air lowers the pH) De-ionized: 7

• Alkalinity is a measure of the 'buffering' capacity of a solution and its ability to neutralize strong acid and resist pH change. Distilled and/or reverse osmosis water have weak buffers, it's pH is easily changed because salts and minerals have been removed from and there are equal numbers of hydrogen (H+) and hydroxide (OH-) ions.

• Grains when mashed want to settle in the 5.5 pH range higher than the recommended value for optimum conversion. The best way to confirm your water's pH value is to use a digital pH meter to test your samples. Calibrate the meter using buffer solutions before each reading and allow 15 minutes to take each reading, this will give the meter time to display the most accurate values.

Recommended Sources For Additional Information

http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/
https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/water-knowledge
http://www.wetnewf.org
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?ti ... view_of_pH

[Rebel_B]

I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with the brewing communities; truly helpful and generous.

[ScrewyBrewer]

I was reading through the Blichmann Kettle RIMS system manual and something caught my eye that I wanted to share with other brewers using BIAB.

"Important: Since all of your brewing liquor (water) is added at the start of the brew day it is important to recognize that the water will have a greater buffering power (resists a change in pH) than the concentrated mash used in a fly sparge system. All grain brewing requires basic knowledge of water chemistry to ensure that your mash pH will land in the 5.2-5.6 pH range at room temperature for proper mash chemistry. This is more important in thinner mashes. Depending on your water source and the style of beer you wish to brew, acidification of your liquor may be required.

Important: We highly recommend the purchase of a digital pH meter for monitoring pH. Test strips, while inexpensive, do not provide adequate precision for brewing. Most pH meters today are automatically temperature compensated (ATC) so that readings can be taken at mash temperatures. If you are reading the meter at mash temperatures you should shoot for a mash pH between 5.1 and 5.4 pH as the pH of wort increases as it cools. This will result in a room temperature pH at the recommended range of 5.2-5.6 pH."

I started out learning about brewing water properties when looking at the High Gravity Electric BIAB system, they recommended using 5.2 Stabilizer which I quickly learned doesn't really work. Now looking into the Blichmann K-RIMS system they call for adjusting your water profile before brewing too, it seems any brewing process that uses a high volume of water produces a much much thinner mash and thinner mashes are more sensitive to brewing water pH and properties.

[MadBrewer]

So with ATC whater the meter reads is the actual ph I would assume. Mine does not have ATC so I need to cool my sample to room temp.