Perspective The community (and I) have learned a few things about brewing water since 1996 (when I last gave this class)
{"Image DocumentName": "PerspectiveThe community (and I) have learned a few things about brewing water since 1996 (when I last gave this class)", "Image ImageDescription": "Then: Slavish attention to reproducing brewing cities\u2019 ion profiles. A lot of people did a lot of hard work based on bogus data (published ion profiles) Now: Emphasis on getting proper mash pH with brewing liquor that more or less matches traditional profile. Recognition of Residual Alkalinity as a powerful tool for evaluating and comparing brewing water samples. Tweaking stylistic ions to taste (and authenticity). Why put it in if you are just going to take it out (e.g. Munich Helles)? Often no information whatsoever on type of water required for a particular style - this is starting to change. Most modern water supplies are generally good for brewing most beers. Big Exception: Chloramine!! When I first began studying brewing water chemistry there was a lot of talk on HBD about what the particular characteristics of the ion content of water associated with large brewing cities such as Munich, London, Plzen, Dublin etc. In particular a gentleman named Dave Draper published an extensive list of these profiles on HBD and I took it upon myself to come up with a recipe for each of these by which I mean a list of salts one could add to distilled water resulting in something close to the published profile. It was a simple matter to compute the amounts of each element contributed by neutral salts i.e. salts of a strong acid and a strong base such as sodium chloride (sodium hydroxide/hyrochloric acid) and calcium sulfate (calcium hydroxide/sulfuric acid) but the salts of carbonic acid (calcium and sodium bicarbonates and calcium carbonate) were more difficult because carbonic acid is a weak acid. A review of freshman college chemistry and the dreaded equilibrium problems we had to solve by the dozen got me pointed in the right direction and before long I had a FORTRAN program implementing the simulated annealing algorithm which would do the best it could to match a given profile with common salts. I soon discovered that many of the published profiles were impossible in the sense that they couldn\u2019t exist at any reasonable pH and selected profiles for implementation on that basis. Today brewers aren\u2019t so concerned about exact replication of the water associated with a particular style as they are about treating the water as necessary to get a proper mash tun pH. This requires control of bicarbonate and Kohlbach\u2019s Residual Alkalinity is a good tool for getting a handle on how much tweaking must be done. Note: Red font denotes key concepts - take special note of these.", "Image XResolution": "37", "Image YResolution": "37", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "SlidePlayer", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}