Water beer style cheat sheet?

[Thomas Fransson]

Hi

Im kinda new with watertreatment and ive only brewed a couple of APA and IPA's
with treated water, think i used numbers in "the classic beer styles" book on Pale Ale.

But I cant find any good source for suitable waterprofiles for other types of beers.
I have the profiles for Burton, London, Dublin and so on but what i would like is a sheet
with suitable water profiles for various kinds of beer. Like a decent water for belgians, and so on...

Some brewers finds the Burton water to "extreme" and there might be a better profile for IPA's
than straight Burton?

Do you guys know if theres any Brewing water profile sheet out on the internet?

[ajdelange]

I'm sure that there are several such out there such as popular home brewing texts but you are invited to look at the collection of 54 water recipes at www.wetnewf.org. They cover many of the best known cities and each is for a profile from that city taken from a book, a magazine article or a web posting. Each has not only the profile but the salts that must be added to low ion (technically distilled but RO should get you close enough) water to formulate the water that "best" matches the profile. "Best" measn minmum root mean square percentage error in each considered ion's concentration i.e. it is the percentage error that was controlled for not the error in mg/L concentration for each ion. A word of warning: most published profiles are not valid in the sense that their ion concentrations do not balance electrically (measurement error, sample collection methods, transposition of digits, misquotation... all contribute to this) and certainly many in this set suffer from this problem.

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

Hi

Im kinda new with watertreatment and ive only brewed a couple of APA and IPA's
with treated water, think i used numbers in "the classic beer styles" book on Pale Ale.

But I cant find any good source for suitable waterprofiles for other types of beers.
I have the profiles for Burton, London, Dublin and so on but what i would like is a sheet
with suitable water profiles for various kinds of beer. Like a decent water for belgians, and so on...

Some brewers finds the Burton water to "extreme" and there might be a better profile for IPA's
than straight Burton?

Do you guys know if theres any Brewing water profile sheet out on the internet?

ProMash and BrewSmith include water profiles in the programs.

[Thomas Fransson]

Thanks guys
Downloaded the recipe pdf and bookmarked the page.

I use Beer Smith and it does have "all" the city water profiles.
But that wasnt what i was looking for.

Im sure that not all breweries that makes a good IPA uses the Burton profile 100%.
But a profile based on the burton profile in some degree. So more a general list
of calcium, chloride and sulfide levels for brewing different beer styles.

Like if im brewing an IPA, do i have to have a sulfate level of "725ppm" or will lets say 300ppm get me there?
Might not be a Bass clone, but on other hand that might not be what im targeting using american hops...

[ajdelange]

You are sniffing around the edges of one of the most important concepts in brewing: the most authentic beer isn't necessarily the best beer. IOW just because Bass is (or was) brewed with water with incredibly high sulfate doesn't mean that you can't brew a better one with appreciably less - or more. It depends on your materials (hops especially in this case) and what you are after.

I've done comparison Burton ales for classes using "authentic" (tailored to closely resemble classical) Burton water and the water straight out of my well (much less sulfate). Almost everyone who tasted it agreed that the high sulfate water beer was more authentic but that the relatively low sulfate one was a better beer. I even had a commercial guy ask me how I got that "quality" in my ale. I'd seen the bags of "terra alba" (gypsum) lying around his brewery and simply suggested that he leave that out or cut it way back which I think he did on a test batch or 2.

So this puts me in a position to give what I consider to be the best advice I can ever offer: Experiment! Try the beer with untreated water first. Then brew it again and again with sucessively more gypsum until you get the result you like. There is more to it than just the sulfate question, course. How much bicarbonate goes in there will have a significant effect, though an indirect one, on the result.

Clearly, when thinking of Burton ale you wouldn't consider brewing it with very soft water no more than you would think of brewing a Bohemian Pils with Burton water. IOW, as you have pretty much figured out for yourself, Burton ales are brewed with water with high permanent and relatively low temporary hardness, Bohemian Pilsners with water of low mineral content overall, Munich beers with water of high temporary hardness but few other minerals and so on. The waters have definite characteristics but no 2 wells in Dublin (or Burton or Munich...) give exactly the same water no do/did the brewers treat the water in the same way. You do have flexibility here.

[dunleav1]

You are sniffing around the edges of one of the most important concepts in brewing: the most authentic beer isn't necessarily the best beer. IOW just because Bass is (or was) brewed with water with incredibly high sulfate doesn't mean that you can't brew a better one with appreciably less - or more. It depends on your materials (hops especially in this case) and what you are after.

I've done comparison Burton ales for classes using "authentic" (tailored to closely resemble classical) Burton water and the water straight out of my well (much less sulfate). Almost everyone who tasted it agreed that the high sulfate water beer was more authentic but that the relatively low sulfate one was a better beer. I even had a commercial guy ask me how I got that "quality" in my ale. I'd seen the bags of "terra alba" (gypsum) lying around his brewery and simply suggested that he leave that out or cut it way back which I think he did on a test batch or 2.

So this puts me in a position to give what I consider to be the best advice I can ever offer: Experiment! Try the beer with untreated water first. Then brew it again and again with sucessively more gypsum until you get the result you like. There is more to it than just the sulfate question, course. How much bicarbonate goes in there will have a significant effect, though an indirect one, on the result.

Clearly, when thinking of Burton ale you wouldn't consider brewing it with very soft water no more than you would think of brewing a Bohemian Pils with Burton water. IOW, as you have pretty much figured out for yourself, Burton ales are brewed with water with high permanent and relatively low temporary hardness, Bohemian Pilsners with water of low mineral content overall, Munich beers with water of high temporary hardness but few other minerals and so on. The waters have definite characteristics but no 2 wells in Dublin (or Burton or Munich...) give exactly the same water no do/did the brewers treat the water in the same way. You do have flexibility here.

What I would love to see is a good target water profile for each beer style not by beer town.

(ie) Jamil should add that for each recipe in his BCS book.

[Thomas Fransson]

You are sniffing around the edges of one of the most important concepts in brewing: the most authentic beer isn't necessarily the best beer. IOW just because Bass is (or was) brewed with water with incredibly high sulfate doesn't mean that you can't brew a better one with appreciably less - or more. It depends on your materials (hops especially in this case) and what you are after.

I've done comparison Burton ales for classes using "authentic" (tailored to closely resemble classical) Burton water and the water straight out of my well (much less sulfate). Almost everyone who tasted it agreed that the high sulfate water beer was more authentic but that the relatively low sulfate one was a better beer. I even had a commercial guy ask me how I got that "quality" in my ale. I'd seen the bags of "terra alba" (gypsum) lying around his brewery and simply suggested that he leave that out or cut it way back which I think he did on a test batch or 2.

So this puts me in a position to give what I consider to be the best advice I can ever offer: Experiment! Try the beer with untreated water first. Then brew it again and again with sucessively more gypsum until you get the result you like. There is more to it than just the sulfate question, course. How much bicarbonate goes in there will have a significant effect, though an indirect one, on the result.

Clearly, when thinking of Burton ale you wouldn't consider brewing it with very soft water no more than you would think of brewing a Bohemian Pils with Burton water. IOW, as you have pretty much figured out for yourself, Burton ales are brewed with water with high permanent and relatively low temporary hardness, Bohemian Pilsners with water of low mineral content overall, Munich beers with water of high temporary hardness but few other minerals and so on. The waters have definite characteristics but no 2 wells in Dublin (or Burton or Munich...) give exactly the same water no do/did the brewers treat the water in the same way. You do have flexibility here.

My point to.
And I guess you are right, its a trial and error thing, brewing the recipe over and over and adjusting your salt additions either up or down until youre spot on as of what you prefer.
And then you might have a good cataloge for brewingwaters for various IBUS within the same style and so on.
I think i have to put some more thought and efford in to this.

(Sorry, i'd written a good answer with some more questions but managed to close the wrong tab)

Another thing JD, when you mention hops, do you think the overall "ideal" waterprofile change now when brewing
with newer low cohumulone hop varieties in comparison to those with a higher level of cohumulone?
To me it seems that you would get a broader palette to paint with?


Dunleav1 -
Thats the one thing i miss in Brewing Classic Styles.
I think it's the Book "Pale Ale" by Terry Foster that have a suggested water profile for every? recipe.
That would be a great addition to an all ready great book (brewing classic styles).