Brewing-Water Guide for Beginners

Water is 95% of your beer and it can have a huge impact on it's taste

Generally speaking, about 90 to 95% of your beer is water. If your water is suitable for brewing, good chance, your beer will turn out good too. There is a few things you should do to prepare your water for brewing though. The method varies for both All-grain and Extract style brewing. So keep reading or scroll to your desired style.

ALL GRAIN BREWING

Adding strike water to a Mash Tun

We always advice against using RO water for brewing. There are few reasons for that;

1. RO water contains no minerals, and Yeasts need minerals to survive and multiply.

2. You can't get a proper saccharification while mashing if water has no minerals in it.

3. RO water is bad for your health also, prolonged usage can make your bones weak and contribute to other ailments.

4. It's a crime against nature to waste the amount of water Reverse Osmosis takes.

You can get away using just normal tap water as long as it tastes good and once you have de-chlorinated it (dechlorination is explained further in the article). If it doesn't taste palatable or your local water TDS report is notoriously high, use store bought mineral water from a trusty brand.

EXTRACT STYLE BREWING

DME being added directly into a boil kettle

When it comes to malt extracts (DME or LME) brewing water treatment kind of inverts. That's because extracts are manufactured using water that already has minerals in it, either naturally or carefully added. When you use them for brewing, you likely mix it with new water that also has minerals in it.

Now this could result in a very mineraly tasting beer. If your Sulfates to Chloride ratio is too high you will observe increase in pH, resulting in higher extraction of tannins from malt husks and an astringent taste. Higher pH can also increase SRM, giving you a darker beer and still less perceived malty-ness. We will discuss more about sulfates and chloride in our next water article for more advanced brewers.

Anyway, so apparently you should use demineralized water when performing Extract brewing. Evidently I am against RO purifiers but if you have one installed at home you can use it. Or perhaps you can take help from a friend or a neighbor who have them.

I personally purchase distilled/deionised water from a water vendor who produces it for auto garage guys for use with batteries. It costs me Rs. 5 a liter, so 40 liter water for Rs. 200, which is a fair deal. If you have a source in your city, I'll suggest you doing the same.

Malt Extraction setup in a Malt House

Water De-Chlorination Process

If you live in a city and your water comes from a municipality, big chance they have added chlorine in it. It's a common practice by health authorities around the world, to keep water free of harmful contagions.

Chlorine is a big enemy of all microbes including the brewing yeasts you are going to use. Even if it doesn't manage to kill them all, it will definitely cripple the overall quality of fermentation to some degree. Important to note for those who might argue; boiling doesn't seem to completely remove chloramines (another form of chlorine additive popularly used).

De-chlorination can be performed in two ways:

1. You can collect desired amount of water in open containers and leave it under sunlight for 2 days. Depending on the amount and type of chlorine additive used by your municipality, (chloramines take longer), the chlorine will slowly dissipate in the mentioned time frame. Stirring the water once in a while helps quicken the process.

2. If you have Campden Powder, you can use 0.5gm of it to treat 40 liters of water. Yes, the amount is really tiny. For smaller batches just use a pinch. It removes chlorine and chloramines in a minute, literally.

We'll discuss about various naturally present or additive water salts and how they effect your beer, adjusting wort pH and it's impact on brewing and all that in depth, in my next article on water.