Water Works Part Deux

When we last left the water on the table (“H2O” in issue #37), we were glancing at the basics of what makes brewing water tick. We now understand the evils and horrors of water softeners and the dangers of municipal water supplies (chlorine bad!). If you’ve been on the ball, you may have even secured an analysis of your water. Now let’s get to work actually using this stuff.

Brew What You Can With What You Got
Once brewers figured out the secret of good brewing barley, they ran into a problem. No matter what they did, they could only rock certain types of beer. Neighboring city had a newfangled flavor that was selling well? You, my friend, were out of luck. The secret lies in the water. We know now that the high-carbonate water found in Munich and Dublin beautifully buffers the acidity of dark malts. Unfortunately, brewers in those cities were doomed to make crap Pilsners until the advent of water chemistry.

Look online, and you’ll find wonderful H2O profiles of major brewing centers around the world. Aside from the fact that these are averages for the area across the year, know that wells in a city can vary widely. Some breweries draw from one well to make malty beers and from another to make hoppy beers. As we get into adjusting, realize you just need to be in the ballpark. Don’t forget that major brewers do everything in their power to strip their water to a bare-bones formulation.

The Most Basic Adjustment
Of course, that stripping is your first tool as a water manipulator. Grab a jug of distilled or reverse-osmosis water, and you can instantly cut your minerals. Just think of it like an average. If you have 2.5 gallons of water with 820 ppm sulfate (hello, Burton-on-Trent) and you blend in 2.5 gallons of distilled, you get 5 gallons with 410 ppm sulfate (820 x 2.5 + 0 x 2.5) / 5.0. This is really useful when you need to lower the amount of a mineral in your brewing liquor.

Salts—Not Just For the Fries
Spend some time roaming your local homebrew shop, and you’ll see little bottles or pouches of white powdery stuff that tastes awful. Those are the tools of our water-adjusting trade. (Well, that and food-grade lactic acid, but you really only need that to worry about pH.) Most of these salts can be added to the boil if that’s all you want to adjust, but make sure you have enough calcium (50ppm) for the mash enzymes. Have an accurate scale on hand, because your additions need to be in grams.

Here are your main salts:
Calcium carbonate | CaCO3
Add to your dark beer mashes to boost the alkalinity that buffers the acid from the dark grains. 1 gram in 5 gallons of water adds 21 ppm calcium and 32 ppm carbonate.

Calcium chloride | CaCL2*2H2
Lowers the pH and enriches malt characters (more on that later). 1 gram to 5 gallons yields 14 ppm calcium and 25ppm chloride.

Calcium sulfate (gypsum) | CaSO4*2H20
Lowers pH and pumps up the hop character. 12 ppm calcium and 29 ppm sulfate.

Magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt) | MgSO4*7H2O
Like gypsum, the sulfate bumps the hops character. Careful with magnesium—it tastes awful in quantities over 50 ppm. 5 ppm magnesium and 21 ppm sulfate.

Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) | NaHCO3
Raises pH by adding bicarbonate. Dissolves easier than calcium carbonate.

Sodium chloride (kosher salt) | NaCl
Adds sodium and chloride. Don’t use iodized salt unless you like awful flavors.

Chloride / Sulfate Ratio – Malty vs. Bitter
Hinted at it a few times, but a piece of water science that homebrewers are finally paying attention to is the chloride/sulfate ratio. Look at the ppm of the two minerals and you can predict some of the water’s effect on the final beer. A 1:1 (chloride/sulfate) ratio favors balanced beers—think Munich and the balance of a Märzen. A more chloride-heavy ratio can be found in, say, Dublin or the classic Pale Ale water of Burton-on-Trent, which has an outrageously hop-centric ratio of 1:55.

HOP CHAMELEON IPA*
For 5.5 gallons at 1.066, 12 SRM, 71 IBU, 6.5% ABV

Malt/Grain/Sugar
14.0 lb. domestic two-row
1.0 lb. Crystal 55L
0.5 lb.  CaraMunich malt
(Extract brewers: Substitute 8.5 lbs of Pale LME for the two-row)

Hops
0.35 oz. Columbus | 15.5%AA | 90 minutes
0.25 oz. Chinook | 15.7%AA | 60 minutes
0.25 oz. Columbus | 15.5%AA | 30 minutes
0.25 oz. Simcoe | 13.7%AA | 15 minutes
0.50 oz. Simcoe | 13.7% AA | 1 minute
0.50 oz. Columbus | 15.5%AA | 1 minute
2.00 oz. Columbus | 15.5%AA | Dry hop in secondary

Other Ingredients
1 tablet Whirlfloc
1 tbsp. yeast nutrient
Gypsum to 450 ppm sulfate

Yeast
WLP001 California Ale / Wyeast 1056 Chico Ale / US-05

Mash
Saccharification rest – 150˚F 60 minutes

*Hop Chameleon originally appeared in Chapter 5 of The Everything Homebrewing Book ■