Many homebrewers spend large sums of money on fine brewing equipment: the finest malt, large quantities of fresh hops and fresh yeast. But the biggest part of beer is often somewhat forgotten in all of this. Namely the water! Here you get a simple introduction to water adjustment.
Water is not just water
Water, however, is not just water. It contains both salts and minerals. These differ from brewery to brewery, and from country to country. Yes, your water can even be slightly different from your neighbour's. That is why adjusting it can provide the final little twist that sets your beer apart from the aforementioned neighbour.
Some countries have such impure or chlorinated water that bottled water or filtered (reverse osmosis) water is often used for brewing. In Norway we are lucky that most places have naturally clean and relatively neutral water that is not heavily chlorinated. This gives us a unique starting point for brewing, and not least the opportunity to adjust it in any direction.
Why adjust water when brewing beer?
Well-known brands around the world have their expertise in their beers thanks to the water profile in that particular place. In the Czech Republic much of the water is “soft”, and this is reflected in crisp, easy-drinking Czech pilsner. In the same way, the British perfect their stouts and bitters with a harder water profile. Different beer styles have different water profiles, and this is exactly what we can recreate with water adjustments.
The right water profile can affect both flavour and body, but also highlight specific aspects of the beer. Adjusting the water profile can make the bitterness from the hops less harsh, or make the malt base really shine. The water profile also plays a part in the fermentation process, as yeast likes to have 50mg (50ppm) of calcium per litre or more to thrive as well as possible.
What do I need to adjust water?
There are mainly six additions we use for water adjustment:
- Calcium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium sulphate, which lower the pH of the mash.
- Sodium bicarbonate and calcium carbonate, which raise the pH.
- In addition, Lactol (lactic acid) can be useful for direct adjustments of pH.
It can also be a good idea to invest in a pH meter and a precise scale that can weigh small amounts. To make it easy, there are packages such as the water adjustment starter kit, which contains what you need to get started with water adjustment.
The pH of the mash
To get the best possible yield from the mash, the pH is important. It affects how well the enzymes work and convert starch into fermentable sugar. Ideally it should be somewhere between 5.2 and 5.6. The water from your tap has a certain pH to begin with. For each type of malt you add, the pH will drop. Calcium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium sulphate will pull the pH further down for you.
In the palest beer styles you can use Lactol (lactic acid) to bring it down even further, without adding more salts than necessary. Darker malt also pulls the pH down. For big dark beers it may therefore be necessary to add sodium bicarbonate and calcium carbonate to bring the pH back up to the right level.
When should I add the salts?
To get the salts mixed in as well as possible, it is recommended to mix them in with the malt. When the mash is stirred in, they will dissolve. For the sparge water, it is recommended to dissolve the salts separately in a little water before adding them. This is to avoid them settling as a lump at the bottom. Note that calcium carbonate needs an acidic environment to dissolve, so it has no place in sparge water.
Adjust flavour to your liking
Now we get to the really fine adjustments you can make with salts, apart from the pH. Here we are talking about the balance between chloride and sulphate. Sulphate accentuates hop aroma, while chloride accentuates sweetness. Although there is no single answer telling you how much is right, there is still a range you can aim for. Otherwise it is largely up to the brewer which direction to take. Whether you choose chloride (calcium chloride) or sulphate (calcium sulphate), you will get calcium that the yeast will benefit from.
The addition is particularly important in big American beer styles, which in most cases will be heavily hopped. If we take NEIPA as an example, you will want to accentuate both sweetness and hop aroma to give the beer its silky-smooth mouthfeel, while the hops dominate the picture. A generous addition of both calcium chloride and calcium sulphate will therefore be positive in a beer like this.
How do I find my water profile?
In Norway much of the water is similar. If you find the water profile of someone else in your area, you are within range. Feel free to contact your local waterworks, or perhaps there is a homebrewer or professional brewery nearby that can tell you what is in your water?
For those who really want to dig deep into water profiles, there are also various test kits on the market. They give you the opportunity to check your water as often as you like. Some breweries are so thorough that they check the water for every brew: in case it has changed due to, for example, a lot or little rain, acid rain, the seasons, snowmelt or the like.
To give an example, this is a water profile from Trondheim. You can safely use it as a good starting point for most places in Norway.
How much salt should I add?
As mentioned earlier, there is no single right answer to this. You can still look at the ranges others have settled on. To work out amounts, it is recommended to use a calculator that does this for you. For those who want to do it manually, there is a popular spreadsheet, Bru'n Water, which is a great aid.
For those who want to make it even easier, we recommend one of the most widely used tools for building recipes: Brewfather. Once you have built a recipe in Brewfather, the software takes your malt base, water volumes and of course the water profile you already have from your tap as its starting point. It tells you exactly which salts and how much you need to add for the style you have chosen.
Water adjustment in Brewfather
We will not go too deep into how this is done in Brewfather, but will instead refer to the documentation from the software directly: water calculator.
- Once you have created your fantastic recipe, select “water” at the very bottom. This takes you into the water calculator.
- From here, select “source”, which is your water profile, i.e. the water you have from your tap.
- “Target profile” lets you choose a specific water profile if you want to experiment a little yourself. There are already some general and some popular profiles included that are safe choices.
- If you do not have any specific preferences, but would rather see what is best for the particular beer style you are brewing, you can look at the list under “style” instead.
- Under “style” there are water profiles aimed specifically at the individual beer styles. These are also safe choices if you are unsure, or do not want to dig too deeply into water adjustments.
- Once the profile is selected, you can press “auto” below, and Brewfather will calculate exactly how much of each type you need to add.
If you need to adjust the pH further down with lactic acid, there are also tools to help you with this. Under “Acid (mash)” you can enter millilitre by millilitre until you hit the pH exactly as you want it. Today's software is very accurate at this, but to be completely correct, a pH meter can help you on brew day.
For more in-depth information, we can recommend the book Water – A comprehensive guide for brewers.
