When looking at a recipe I have noticed that people show their water profile in several ways…some show nothing… some show what citie’s water they use (Munich, Dublin Ireland, etc.)which I think is useless… and some show what salts they used which is nice of them but still useless. But none of these will show what they really did. To make the recipe wouldn’t we need to know what their water profile is and what salts they use.
This leads me to thinking if some one showed the sulfate/chloride balance (0.8-1.5 for balanced…0.4-0.6 for Very malty etc.)and the Bitterness ratio
of the recipe wouldn’t that be better so we would be able to use our water and adjust it to what they used. Both of these are in Beer Smith on the design page under select fields.
Many of us have found water profiles hard for us even though there are books about it. The ones I have read get too complicated and don’t simplify things like they are trying to show how smart they are…(and I do think they are smart but I am not smart I guess)
water confuses me.
You and me both.
Agree that recipes stating a tsp of this and a tbs of that is worthless…unless the assumption is that the starting point is RO water. Which I doubt is a correct assumption.
All we can do is know what we are starting with, know what we are targeting, and trust the software to get us there. Take notes and measurements and learn what works for our systems.
Same with me BrewBama. Especially the part about water being confusing.
I use RO water and plug my grains into Bru’n Water and go from there.
The way I’ve used the water calculator in Beersmith 3 is this… I first had my water tested (Ward Labs Brewers test) I then created a water profile using the information returned from the test and I named that profile “My Water”. This is my base water profile.
When designing a recipe, after I have all the ingredients entered, I open the water tab and start with my base water profile. In the next box I choose a target profile… Yellow Balanced or Brown Balanced depending on what style of beer I am making. Once you’ve told Beersmith what your base water is and selected a target it will calculate the water agents you need to add so you can match that target profile and add them to your recipe design tab.
I have been using Brewfather and I love the way they do water. It also exports the profile and the added salts when you beerxml the recipes. That being said I just use distilled water and build from there.
You are on the right track, but the sulfate/chloride ratio by itself is not enough. You could have 40 ppm sulfate and 20 ppm chloride, which would be very different from having 400 ppm sulfate and 200 ppm chloride even if the ratio is the same. The solution is for recipe posters to include the FINAL salt/ion content of their water, not just the additions. Then you could figure out (or try to figure out) how to make your water match that final content.
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The “ratio” is more meaningless than the actual amounts of salts in ppm.
If salt additions confuse you or are complicated for you, and your beer is fine anyway, then it’s usually safe to ignore water altogether and not worry about it at all. When you see fancy water specifications or salt additions in a recipe, just ignore them. Millions of homebrewers make great beer without much if any thought about water. A lot of folks hate hearing this but it’s the honest truth. Now, if you’re experiencing problems with your beer, then it’s something to look into. But otherwise… there are way more important things.
Here is our water profile - City tap water, filtered. Nothing added. Nothing at all.
I have made a believer out of another local brewer, who always added chemicals to his water. He could not believe how good our beers are with straight filtered city tap water.
I am so jealous of all of you who are blessed to get usable water directly from the tap. Mine is RO water, because of high iron and other high concentrations. After RO, I am in good shape to build from for most styles that I brew…if I didn’t add some salts back, my RO would be questionable for using without further treatments. I use CaCl2 and CaSO4 in light touches (3 g of each in a 5 gallon batch typically) and some acid malt to dial in for pH.
I must ask, however, have you ever had the municipal water tested (post-filter) or do they publish the water profile so you can know where you are at with your starting point?
This is pretty much my process too. After the first time brewing that recipe I will play with the CaSO4 and CL to change the ratio for either more or less malty/bitter influence.
While I agree the least additions as possible to meet the need is advised when dealing with brewing liquor, Calcium Chloride, Magnesium Sulfate, and Calcium Sulfate are “chemicals” just like Sodium Chloride (aka common table salt) or Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda).
They are salts …inorganic compounds, rocks, common minerals in geological environments, extracted by open-cast quarrying or by deep mining or found in evaporated lake basins and shouldn’t being given any more negative connotations than any other “chemical” that is commonly used in most everything ingested natural or man made.
[Edit: Dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) [emoji3] —aka water— which is itself a ‘chemical’ from your tap is chock full of the very ‘chemicals’ mentioned above plus many others.]
To suggest brewing salts used in the tiny amounts found in brewhaus liquor is negative is a gross misrepresentation.
BTW, there are lots of natural foods that have chemicals that could kill us: tomatoes have methanol, pears have formaldehyde, apples have cyanide, and on and on.
Very well said
Do you only brew a narrow range of styles? Because in my experience you can’t make both a great stout and a great pale lager with the same water unless you at the very least adjust your pH.
Exactly! I did nothing with my water for years, and brewed very good beers within a narrow range of style/color. I would brew lighter and darker beers and they were OK, but there was always something not quite there with them. Once I began adjusting my water I was much happier with the beers at either end of the color range.
The beers I brew are primarily Euro style lagers. Plus we have brewed several APA’s, and London Porters. The beers have been extremely good. That’s not me saying this, it is a neighbor and new friend who is an avid brewer and worked for a craft brewery in Austin, Texas. And Dave is shocked with the flavor of my beer, as he has been big into the chemical treatment of his water.
He gets his water from the same source that I do…city tap.
The most amazing beer was our Fullers London Porter clone. It made the Fullers version taste like water.
But the base profile of our local water is not far off for making good beer.
I guess we are lucky to have a good supply of water that easily lends itself to brewing good beers right from the tap.
No single water will make outstanding examples of all beer styles.
It is better to not add too much in the way of minerals, less can be more.
Pros do adjust water. Some blend in RO water (Stone). Some add more minerals at one brewery vs their other one. (Sierra Nevada). Some just add Gypsum (Fuller’s). Some have 5 stacks of bags of different salts as their water is extremely soft (Jennings in the UK).
No doubt! But 150 years ago, did the brewers add chemicals to water? Or did a local brewery beer style obtain it’s character by using the indigenous water supply?
English and Czech beers come to mind.
You mention Fullers. I did a clone brew of a 19th century Fullers London Porter. Simple tap water is what we used, filtered. Our Porter absolutely blew the commercial version out of the water. The Fullers London Porter was weak, and watery tasting compared to ours. The recipe was obtained from BYO.
Perhaps this is not an apples-to-apples comparison…as today’s commercial Porter is not like the 19th century version. BTW, that recipe is awesome if you are a Porter fan!
Brewers brewed beers that worked for their water. Munich was known for Dunkel before water chemistry was understood. Helles became the favorite beer of Munich after water chemistry was understood.