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I saw an interview with a brewmaster and he said whether a beer is made of spring water or anything else is kind of BS because they can make water with whatever
by chpatrick 3y ago
I saw an interview with a brewmaster and he said whether a beer is made of spring water or anything else is kind of BS because they can make water with whatever properties they want, it's not rocket science.
- fastball 3y agoDistilling/deionizing water is indeed quite trivial. But I personally know a beer brewer that was "remineralizing" water to a certain specification, and at some point they stopped because it was far too expensive. So I'm not so sure about the claim that people can make water with whatever properties they want, at least not in a way that is broadly economically viable.
- wil421 3y agoIf you can’t build your brewery or distillery near natural source of mineralized water then you should probably brew something else. Re-mineralizing sounds more expensive than trucking in water.
- bjacokes 3y agoAdjusting water chemistry is extremely prevalent in brewing. For example, if you've ever had a hazy IPA, part of the softer bitterness comes from high levels of chloride in the water. The cost of common brewing salts (gypsum, calcium chloride, etc) is a small fraction of a penny per beer. I'm guessing that the beer brewer you spoke with was talking about the cost of buying distilled or RO water, as opposed to the cost of the water adjustment itself. It's probably a lot more economical if you're cleaning and reusing graywater, vs. trucking in distilled water, or running municipal water through an RO filter and essentially paying twice for water treatment.
- jerrysievert 3y agowater adjustment is quite cheap - I keep "mineral water" on tap at home. it's a mixture of gypsum, calcium carbonate and epsom salt, conveniently pre-packaged as Burton salts. I use 1/4tsp per gallon of distilled water. the expensive part is the distilled water (even more-so than the co2 used to carbonate it).