I recently listened to an old podcast from Basic Brewing Radio and they did an experiment using water built from R.O. specifically for stouts (dark beers) and one specifically for pale ales (light colored beers). They also brewed the pale ale with the stout water and vice versa. The results were that these beers didn’t taste nearly as good when they were brewed with the wrong water.
My question is, where can I go to find help building a water from R.O. for a particular type of beer?
Are there published standard formulas for water additions for each style of beer?
+1 to dave - Martin’s sheet is so good (I build from RO) i feel like I am brewing the best beer of my life, and frankly i wonder why I have a pH meter anymore - but I check the pH from time to time just for posterity’s sake.
Not standard. Download Brunwater and Martin has done the homework for profiles that work with a given beer style. It is one the Water Adjustment page in a pull down. It is in the form of “Yellow Bitter” or “Dark Malty”, so you need to know what you want for your beer.
You see a lot of people trying to target the water profile of certain locations for certain styles (e.g. Burton, Pilsen) which isn’t always the right technique. Certainly the water of an area contributed to the selection of preferred style and ingredients in a given location (at least for European brewing) but you can’t just assume that the water profile is perfect for a given style. Often brewing water is adjusted by salt additions or techniques to make the water appropriate for the beers brewed in the area. It’s ok to use those geographically-based water profiles as long as you know what additional adjustments need to be made for the water.
The easier route is to use those standard profiles in brunwater and make adjustments from there once you have a good understanding of the brewing salts.
I’ve had the same question. Seems to me if R/O water is all the same , it would be easy to come up with standard additions for different beer styles ?
If two people use BrunWater to design a water for a stout using 100% R/O water, won’t they get the same results?
So why not just say make a list of additions to R/O water for different beer styles?
If the stout had the same grain bill then it would work with high accuracy. But there are different stouts, Dry to RIS, with different amounts of crystal malt and dark grain. Even in the same subcategory there can be differences in the grain bill. One could plug the stout recipes into Brunwater and see the difference in adjustments required. I could do it, you could do it.
Even with Brunwater I still check my mash pH. There are differences in malts. Martin has posted that Rahr 2-row gives a more acidic mash, and one needs to compensate for that.
+1 - The flavor of different components of my beer has really been able to shine through as a result of using Martin’s calculator. The beer has never tasted better.
With that said it has definitely helped me to learn about the reactions that take place when you add the different salts to your brewing liquor or mash. I learned a lot about these reactions from reading articles on Kai’s site, especially this one:
There are sort of recommendations for additions, but each brewer’s preference is likely different. That is the Brewer’s Art. I’ve included my interpretations of additions as part of Bru’n Water, but that is just a starting point. One point that is quite important is that brewers should avoid excessive additions since they tend to produce minerally or harsh flavor in beer. In most styles, let the malt and hops shine, not the water. I’m thinking of a parallel to the “children should be seen and not heard” for water…maybe 'water should be supporting and not overbearing"?
I am sure I am over simplifying this, but what I don’t understand
I look at the water profile adjustment tab in Bru’n Water
Select 100% R/O water.
Set the “Desired Water Profile” as Burton
Then I am supposed to input different mineral additions to hit that profile?
I am sure someone has done this already?
So just tell me what to add to hit that profile?
Seems like you have a grasp on how to manipulate the software. Start plugging in values.
What you need to understand is that you should be targeting a certain mash pH, not mineral additions. Once you add in the grain, which will vary, it is a whole different ball of wax. Anyone can make the numbers match up, or at least somewhat closely match up, to what a city water report says.
As a starting point, plug in the grain bill and the water you are starting with. Start adding stuff to get the mash pH where you need it. Then start checking out the Sulfate to Chloride ratio to give it a round or sharp edge flavor-wise.
what you are looking for is the missing piece in many beer recipes. Unless one is slightly obsessive about water one does not usually include all the nuances of their water report and additions with a recipe. So you could look specifically for recipes that DO specify water report data and copy those recipes. This would be the equivelant of going to the Joy of Cooking and following one of their recipes to the letter.
Or, if you are designing your own recipes, you can look on fiddling with the water as part of the development process. YOUR recipe will include the specific water information that makes it YOUR recipe.
As far as I’m concerned trying to target water profiles is a waste of time. First you want to dial in your mash pH(Bru’n water, Bru’n water, did I mention this thing called Bru’n water), then use gypsum/calcium sulfate (CaSO4) for a hoppy beer, calcium chloride (CaCL) for a malty beer and half and half for a beer in the middle. That’s all you need. The rest is a waste of time. And this is coming from one of the most analytic, detail oriented brewers you will ever meet.
For dark beers I do the Gordon thing, mash the lighter colored malts (base malts, crystal malts, victory, biscuit, etc.) and throw the dark/roasted malts into the sparge water (or steep them) so they don’t screw with your mash pH.
Did you come up with a solution? I’m with you. I just want a starting point for each style I want to brew and adjust from there. Pale Ale add these salts Stout add these salts Brown Ale add these salts. I think Northern Brewer or More Beer is starting to add salt additions in orders as an add on and they are based on the style of beer you are ordering. It would be great to go to a homebrew shop and say I’m brewing a heady topper clone, give me the salt addition pack for a 5 gallon batch. Or I’m brewing a sweet stout,…
the problem being that what I think it right on for a particular beer may not be to your taste. If you just toss in a little packet of salts you will never develop the understanding to troubleshoot and adapt recipes. If that’s okay with you than great. I see a lot of recipes that include specific salt additions but not everyone starts with distilled or RO. often times they are working from a different base. even then, the RO you use and the RO I use are not exactly the same. distilled is going to vary a lot less but RO is still a reflection of the source water.
My LHBS sells a packet of “Burtonizing Salts”. Will it be equal to Burton on Trent water? Not likely, unless the starting point is the same. The LHBS uses its local water profile, but the town that is a couple towns over has notoriously bad brewing water and the next town over has remarkably good brewing water to start with for most recipes (a small Belgian style microbrewery located there for this reason). I brew with RO as a starting point.
We are all assuming an all grain approach, also, because extract already has the minerals in it that were present in the water used to make it.
I agree with most comments above. If you guys are looking for a silver bullet of salts, there is none (despite a product that is sold to get your pH to be 5.2 “spot on” regardless of starting point.) Thankfully, the grain does most of the work here and the additions that are suggested are typically very minimal amounts (in the single digit gram level of weight for most of additions of salts and acids/alkalines for the beers I brew - and that is a ten gallon batch!)
Don’t fall victim to the 1 teaspoon of CaCl for malty beers and 1 teaspoon of CaSO4 for hoppy beers. It may be that those are correct for your water, but without knowing where you are starting, there is no way to predict where you will end up.
Martin has an advanced degree for a reason. The stuff just isn’t that simple.
