The Brew is Out There! TECHNIQUE SHOW
Water is an important chemical - without it we wouldn’t have beer! And for something that comprises so much of our beer, the chemistry we need to know to brew our best beer is Daunting - with a capital D. Drew sits down with Martin Brungard, creator of Bru’n Water, to demystify water chemistry and realize the functionality of Martin’s mathmagical spreadsheet.
Hey! You’ll get to hear me say ‘exactly’ too many times. I hope that everyone enjoys a brief introduction to brewing water chemistry.
Is it just me, or has Drew developed a voice fit for radio?
He’s got the face for radio. 
Thank goodness one of us has!
There was the comment on Uraminum having a limit for drinking water. That is true. The Colorado River supplies water for much of the southwest. Much of it’s watershed is where Uranium was mined in CO and UT. There is an ongoing cleanup of the Atlas Minerals’ uranium tailing pile just north of Moab UT. The pile was right by the Colorado, and had leached uranium into the river for decades. So yes, it is a requirement for a reason.
Listened to this show while cooking supper. Excellent show guys.
Cheers,
Swampale
And how…
I know, just strikes me as one of those things that jumps out and wave a big scary flag in your perfect for radio face!
I rarely listen to these but this particular subject interests me.
I have used the trick of rescuing a sub standard beer with minerals and it worked quite well (prior to listening to this but based on recommendations on this forum).
There’s been a lot of ‘debate’ on the various forums concerning these sheets in general and Martin’s sheet in particular. The global reach discussed has positive and negative repercussions it seems. Internet forum inherent anonymity/proximity probably doesn’t help.
I never understood why Bru’n Water didn’t simply provide a solution but with Martin’s explanation it makes perfect sense. After some getting used to I find it fairly easy to use and, like Drew mentioned, it has become interesting to see what happens if I change a value.
I especially find it interesting that y’all said -/+ 20 ppm of a particular mineral was close enough/undetectable. That’s been my stumbling block with these things: in some of the color related profiles I’ve used with my (distilled) water, some of the minerals have a suggested value of 20 or less to begin with. Based on that comment, it follows that those minerals may not be required at all. To me, it’s like a recipe with a 15 lb grain bill requiring 1 oz of a specialty grain: though interesting, it’s probably undetectable in the finished product therefore most likely irrelevant. I dunno.
Depends
0ppm magnesium compared to 20ppm magnesium “might” be detectable, but ya… I would not notice a difference between 70ppm and 50ppm CaCl.
And 1 oz of carafoam will make less difference than 1 oz of roasted barley.
Oh… and thanks for paying part of the shipping cost on my latest Atlantic Brew Supply order. I like to order exactly the grain I need in fractions and Atlantic is one of the places I’ve found that will do that. They had a promo code on your experiment brewing site and I used it in my latest order. Thanks!
Cool!