Water...

How can it be dry?

It's a book about water!!

Cheers!

 

I love your dedication, but I keep having visions of a 50+ pound carboy strapped to your back as you negotiate your way down the steep talus

 

I never got that close. Just as high up as I could reach in my car via the forest road system, which in some areas was still probably within about a mile of the toe of the glacier (back then anyway; today is probably a different story).

 

I agree. New Belgium is a bigger brewery. I would assume that they start with a RO water and treat it to make sure it matches the same profile that all their other breweries use.

 

I'm guessing (I don't know) that water is the fourth most prominent ingredient in beer, after malt, hops and yeast. Well unless it's swamp water or there is fruit added.

 

No one wants skunked water, bro. It's all about fresh water.

 

My favorite mineral water is Gerolsteiner. I would be curious to see how a local home bt rewears recipe changes When they use their tap water vs a mineral water such as gerolsteiner. Or, as an extreme, zero water filtration systems remove EVERYTHING from the water ( fluoride, chlorine, heavy metals, etc.). Curious how that would taste

 

Gerolsteiner is one of my favorites too, love the mineral bite that it has. It would suck as a brewing water.

Here is the Gerolsteiner Profile. Note that mg/liter is ppm for our purposes. The point in the bicarbonate is like a comma in the US, so over 1,800 ppm bicarbonate!

https://www.gerolsteiner.de/en/water-knowledge/the-mineral-calculator/

This is from How to Brew by John Palmer. Scroll down, different ions are listed, along with maximum for brewing. Max for a stout is 250 ppm or less. Ca and Mg are out of range too.

http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3/understanding-the-mash-ph/reading-a-water-report

Then there is the cost. I wouldn't try it.

 

The closest major brewery to Gerolsteiner is Bitburger about 24 miles away . They claim to use the highest quality water, if it’s on the internet it must be true!

https://www.bitburger.de/geschmack/

“Gutes Bier braucht gutes Wasser......”

“
Good beer needs good water. In Bitburg we extract this from the approximately 200 million year old Triassic Mulde, which with its rock layers forms a natural filter system and enables us to obtain the purest water with the best mineral composition for the brewing process.”

 

Yes, water can be different from different wells in the same town, due to depth or differing geology layers. Bitburg talks of Wells 300 Meters deep. Gerolstein is from a Mineral Spring.

The water at Spangdahlem AFB east of Bitburg looks to be fairly good.

 

Tangentially, pizza is affected greatly by the water. Come to Buffalo for some slices at almost any mom n pop or big local staple and I bet it beats most anything out there. Ok, new thread... back to my Prairie Paradise. Drinking so perfectly for this weather.

 

That might be the line of the week...

 

I would think water from different sources would taste different. Have you ever gone to someones house in an other part of the state or a different state and drank the tap water? It usually tastes milky or dankish. I imagine if you drank it enough eventually you wouldn't notice. I feel the same goes for water used in beer making. Mineral content and ground filter material plays a big part of it.
There is or was a pizza shop some where that used to import NY water because the pizza tasted different from what he was used to make in NY even though he used his same formula.

 

According to the Pizza University website you want medium hardness water for the pizza dough:

“Water hardness describes the amount of calcium and magnesium ions in waters. This is expressed in ppm, or parts per million. Soft water has less than 50ppm, while hard water has over 200ppm. A water of medium hardness – 100 to 150ppm works best for dough preparation. The mineral content of water needs to be enough to feed the yeast and assist in the fermentation (otherwise the dough will be slack). If the water is too hard, however, the fermentation rate will be reduced and there will be a tightening effect on the fermentation. This will cause the dough to be tougher than is often desired.”

https://www.pizzauniversity.org/dont-underestimate-the-role-of-water-in-pizza-making/

Cheers!