How Good Is The Water?
----------------------

Brent Newman

Most of you know that the quality of your brewing water can have a dramatic
effect on the taste and quality of your beer. Many beer recipes call for
additions of salts such as gypsum (CaSO4) or calcium chloride (CaCl2).
The trouble is that you probably don't have the same water chemistry as the
person who wrote the recipe. So, you are flying blind as far as matching
the water chemistry of the beer you want to make.

I have obtained recent water analyses from Los Alamos and White Rock and the
table below compares the Los Alamos and White Rock major ion chemistries to
those of famous European brewing cities. An interesting result is that our
waters are very dilute and closely resemble the water of Bohemia (Pilzen,
Czech Republic).  This similarity is a fortunate thing for Atom Mashers
because we can brew a Czech pilsner, and with various additions of salt, we
can make any other style of beer. The information in the table can be used to
calculate how much gypsum you need to add to make a Burton pale ale, or how
much gypsum and calcium chloride you would need to add to make a Dortmunder
style pilsner for example. The standard brewing books usually show how to
calculate the quantity of the various salts you need to add given your water
analysis and one of the European analyses.

There is one problem with our local water that can have a dramatic adverse
effect on all grain mashes and can also affect the quality of extract
brews. The problem is that Los Alamos and White Rock waters have a high pH. In
order to compensate for the high pH we need to add acid or at least provide
an excess of calcium. The details of the pH problem will be discussed at an
Atom Mashers meeting this Fall, but I wanted to point out the problem here.

To conclude this article, I would like to point out a few things about water
chemistry and style. If you compare the different waters in the table, you
will notice that Burton water is loaded with salts, in particular calcium and
sulfate. It is the high salt content, particularly the sulfur that makes the
hoppy bitterness of Burton ales so unique. If you compare the Pilzen water
with Dortmunder you can see why Bohemian (e.g., Pilsner Urquell) and Export
(Dortmunder Union) are distinctive substyles of pilsner. One final note is that
I will have copies of the complete White Rock and Los Alamos water analyses
available for interested brewers to take home at one of the Fall meetings.

Table 1. Comparison of Los Alamos Area and European Water Chemistries

           White Rock  Los Alamos  Pilzen  Munich  Edinburgh  Dortmund  Burton
  Ca2+         11          14        7        75      120        250     295
  Mg2+          1           5        2        20       25         25      45
  Na+          24          14        2        10       55         70      55
  Cl+           4           4        5         2       20        100      25
  SO4(-2)       5           4        5        10      140        280     725
  Hardness     30          56       30       200      350        750     850
    
  Analyses are in mg/L 
  European water chemistries are from Papazian (1994)