With all the fanfare surrounding beer, it’s often easy to forget the beverage is made mostly from water, and that the profile of the water being used greatly determines the profile of the beer. To most of us, the attributes that characterize our favorite beers are both tangible and intangible. You may like the features of the subtle, balanced, or extreme malt or hop profiles, the clean or ester laden aroma supplied by the yeast, the session or imperial alcoholic strength, or the long sweet or quick crisp dry finish. Underneath these perceivable descriptors, however, is the understated flavor of the water used to brew the beer.
Throughout history, sources for clean drinking water in urban settings have been difficult to maintain. Before the scientific and industrial revolutions and subsequent upgrade of health standards, one simply did not know if the water was safe to drink. Back then, people drank a lot more beer, wine, cider and distilled beverages, not out choice, but necessity. For beer, the full flavor brews collected from the first rinse of the grain bed were reserved for special seasonal occasions. The second runnings made the common, everyday beer and the diluted third rinse was fermented into small beer for children. Fermentation of the varying levels of malt sugar in the water into alcohol, a natural preservative, protected the beverage from spoilage; and as any home brewer quickly learns, beer will only make you sick if you drink too much! Louis Pasteur’s discovery of bacterium has since negated beer as a basic need, and beer in our country is now not as often consumed solely out of necessity.
Nonetheless, beer is mostly water, and the varying sources of water used across the globe for brewing beer has played a major role in the formation of contemporary beer styles. Not out of coincidence, major centers of brewing formed around good sources for water. Brewing beer takes clean water, and lots of it; gallons are necessary for each pint you sip. As outlined by home brewer extraordinaire John Palmer in his ineffaceable book How to Brew, the two most famous sources for brewing water are the Pilsen region of the Czech Republic and Dublin in Ireland, where clean, hoppy, golden pilsners and dark, malty stouts are brewed, respectively.
In examining why Ireland’s water favors stouts and the Czech Republic’s pilsners, one begins to understand the dynamic evolutionary formation, based on varying water profiles, of the world’s beer styles. To brew beer, warm water is added to milled malted barley and allowed to rest together for a short period of time. This process is termed mashing. (Barley that has been malted was momentarily allowed to sprout, then quickly dried, capturing the plump starch inside the husk). The added warm water activates enzymes on the husk of the malt kernels which in turn convert the starch into malt sugar - which is soon drained off, boiled with hops and fermented by yeast into alcohol. However, if the mixture of malt and water is too alkaline or acidic, unwanted flavors will also be extracted, along with the malt sugar, into the eventual beer. Therefore, two factors determine rather or not the sweet sugar water will make a good product: malt and water composition.
Let’s first take a look at malt. Since the advent of Porter during the industrial revolution, beer is brewed from both plain malted barley and also malted barley that has additionally been kilned at varying temperatures and humidity. (Non-malted barley that has simply been roasted black is also used, especially in stout, along with other adjunctions such as sugar, wheat, rye, corn and oats). The pale colored malt yields a golden beer while the addition of other malts to the recipe changes the colors and aromas. For this discussion however, what is most important to understand is that beyond color and flavor, varying degrees of malt color and kilning impact the pH of the mash rest, which impacts the flavor of the sweet sugary wort run off from the mash. The darker the grain, the higher its acidity; therefore, adding a very dark grain, like roasted barley, to pale malt will have the effect of increasing acidity and therefore reducing the pH of the mash rest, as pH and acidity have an inverse relationship. Add no colored malts and the pH contribution of the grains remains on the high end.
The alkaline or acid contribution of water in the mash rest is determined by the water’s content of dissolved salts or minerals. In Palmer’s classic water profile examples, Czech water is remarkably low in calcium, magnesium, bicarbonates and sulfates: minerals which define “hard water,” and is therefore exemplarily termed “soft”. These “salts,” as brewers often refer to them, harbor pH buffering traits which, in relation to the recipe’s malt, can help reach the threshold necessary for a desirable mash pH. The soft Pilsen water mixes well with the lower acidity of pale malt, producing a perfect mash environment and yielding a soft, bready, golden beer whose subtle hopping clearly comes through. Higher acid malt, like roasted, black or brown, would reduce the pH below the range, negatively impacting the flavor profile of this famous beer style. Therefore, without the addition of brewing salts such as calcium, gypsum (sulfate), or magnesium, good beers of color are simply not made in the Czech.
The example and history of Dublin’s water and famous beer Guinness is then revealed: the extremely high levels of brewing salts dissolved in Dublin’s water, such as bicarbonate from the island’s underlying gypsum, are far too alkaline to achieve a proper mash pH, and pale beers brewed here without dilution of water hardness are overly harsh and unpleasant. Arthur Guinness used the highly acidic non-malted roasted barley to counter the astringent flavors of pale beers brewed in this region and in turn created the single most renowned beer in the world. Major brewing centers such as Burton-on-Trent (IPAs), Vienna (Red Lagers) and Edinburgh (Malty Ales) fall in between the extreme examples of Dublin and Pilsen and established themselves by honing in the proper malt and hop combinations in accordance with what their water had to offer. Organically, beer brewed in harmony with the water tasted best and such breweries stayed in business.
Beyond pH of the mash, brewing salts dissolved in varying water profiles contribute directly to the flavor of beer. In Michigan, municipal water was ounce drawn from below our cities, and was especially hard in Grand Rapids in particular. Now however, most water is drawn at near surface level from Lake Michigan, giving us our current low levels of calcium, bicarbonates and sulfate – and high chlorine. Regional breweries deal with this situation differently. In general, Michigan breweries heat the water to remove the excess chlorine, and add the necessary salts to buffer the desired mash pH. The impact of calcium sulfate (gypsum) and calcium chloride on the flavor profile of a beer, however, does not go unnoticed. These two indelible brewing salts are the key to honing a beer’s intangible characteristics. Sulfates contribute to a beer’s dry, crisp, fast finish, drastically enhancing the hop profile of a pale or IPA. Calcium chloride enhances the malty characteristics of a beer, rounding out sweet aromas and visceral residual sugars with a specific poignancy. The proper balance of these brewing salts can turn a muddled, confused, impotent mess into a complex, purposeful fermented statement.
So next time you sip a beer, try tasting on a new level. Pick a simpler pale ale style from the board. Swirl the carbonation from solution and allow the sample to warm. Smell and taste the malt and hops first, but then continue to focus attention. Swallow, and as the structure washes down, taste at the front of your mouth. You should taste either a predominately sweet or salty aftertaste. If the finish was especially dry and the hops more present than the malt body, chances are your perception will trend salty, as gypsum was used to enhance these characteristics. If the malt body just can’t be beat and the hops are always fighting for recognition, chances are the gypsum levels are lower than the calcium chloride. Within this realm, I believe, truly lie the reasons behind beer preference - if you’re honest with yourself, that is.
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