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Good day and welcome to my channel. Beer is about 95% water.
But here's the crazy part. Most brewers know way more about their hops and grains than their water.
And that's a mistake. Because water chemistry isn't just science.
It's
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flavor chemistry. Get it right and your beer sings.
Get it wrong and your beer's going to taste like [Music]
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The minerals in your brewing water can make all the difference between a crisp Pilsner, a multistout, and a punchy West Coast IPA. This is one of those topics that can feel overwhelming, but stick with me through this series of videos.
I'll keep it short, simple, and
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practical so you can brew your best beer. What is brewing liquor?
When brewers say brewing liquor, we don't mean the booze, the finished beer.
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We're just talking about our water prepared with the right minerals for brewing. Tap water varies wildly depending on where you live.
Some areas have soft water with very few minerals. Others have hard water packed with minerals like calcium and bicarbonates.
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By treating our water, we can adjust mash pH into the ideal range. We can enhance malt or hop character, improve yeast health and stability, and really importantly, we can completely change the mouth feel and flavor of a beer.
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Now, if you Google brewing water chemistry, it's easy to be overwhelmed with different advice, a jungle of equations, and scary looking spreadsheets. But don't worry, I'm going to walk you through this step by step.
By the end, you'll have a process you can use for life. Whether you're brewing in your
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garage or at a full scale brewery, before you change anything, you need to ask yourself why. What why are you doing it?
What are you trying to achieve?
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Because a hazy pale needs a very different water profile to something like a crisp piler. Too many brewers just throw in salts and hope for the best.
Even when using brewing software or AI tools, even if you don't understand what you're looking at, the answers it's giving you, you're still
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just guessing and hoping it's right. So, pick the style you're going to brew, and know your target.
Here's a big mistake I see people do all the time. People try to copy regional water profiles, like the famous Burton
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on Trent water, often used for English ales. Sounds authentic, right?
But here's the truth. Even centuries ago, those brewers were changing their water.
They didn't love what came out of the ground, and they changed their water to make a better beer. So, take inspiration
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from history, but don't chase their water, chase their flavor. Design your water for the beer style, not the post code.
Know your starting water. You need to
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know what you're starting with. What's in your water at home?
One way is to pay for a test. You send a sample off to be analyzed and they send you a detailed report back, but quite expensive.
It's at least a couple of hundred the last time I looked. Another way is to obtain
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a water report from your local water authority. They're also self- test kits, but they can be a little inaccurate and again sometimes expensive.
And then there's Ror water. RORO water is reverse osmosis water.
It's a highly
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filtered water and there is next to nothing left in it. There's still a little bit of stuff but not much.
The trouble with all these methods though is water can vary from week to week and season to season. For instance, where I live, they can access at least three
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different dams for my water supply. And while the water authorities monitor and treat it all, it's not always the same.
And of course, that just changed that expensive water analysis you paid for. Even when it comes to RORO water, the age or quality of the filters change
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over time. If you own a commercial working brewery, you might be able to afford to test and change your filters all the time, but as home brewers, that's just another cost.
Keeping diaries of usage by time and liters or gallons can help with knowing when to change them. What I suggest at the
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start, if you don't filter, is to use the water authority report averages. It's the closest numbers you're going to get.
But still, things like old piping in your neighborhood can throw those numbers out, too. You can get cheap TDS meters.
They test for total dissolved
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solids in your water, and then you can regularly check your water and maybe pick up any unexpected changes. TDS meters can't give you the full details, but it will let you know if something is wrong.
We'll discuss test equipment further in another video. So, starting
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with your water authorities's average numbers gives you the best baseline. If that info isn't online, send them an email.
Be clear about what you need. I'll drop a link to a list of what you should ask for in the description.
If you don't get the answers you want straight up, ring them, ask them who you
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need to speak to that will know. You may have a local brewery or a homebrew shop or even a homebrew club that might be able to help you with the numbers.
And here's a bonus tip. If you have to, go and ask your local aquarium store or garden center.
The good ones know their
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water profiles inside and out. So, to wrap this section up, know what you're trying to achieve and know your starting water.
That's your foundation. Before we finish, here's a quick bit of
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science that will make the next videos a little bit easier to understand. I think most people will know that water is H2O and its polarity makes it one of nature's best solvents.
That just means it's really good at dissolving things.
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It's why water can pull sugars, proteins, and flavors out of your molten hops. It's also how it carries the minerals we add to shape our beer's taste and texture.
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As a chemical compound, a water molecule contains one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms connected by convealent bonds. In chemistry, polar means that a molecule has an uneven distribution of electric charge.
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One end is slightly positive, the other slightly negative. In water, the oxygen atom carries a partial negative charge and the two hydrogen atoms carry partial positive charges.
So when we add something like calcium
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chloride written as Ca2 and give it a good mix. The salt dissociates.
It breaks apart. It's ionic
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bounds break and it splits into three ions. One calcium ion which is positive and two chloride ions which is negative.
Opposites attract. The water helps them to break apart.
And that's why in a very
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simplified way, water is so good at dissolving salts. And that'll help you understand some future videos.
That's the chemistry behind the flavor. Thanks for watching.
If you found this helpful, hit like, subscribe, and grab your pH meter cuz next time we're getting into
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the good stuff. Cheers, and I'll see you then.
Keep on brewing. Makes you happy.
makes everybody happy. Cheers.
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Know your water and you'll brew your best beer. Just a reminder, you can go and download the letter.
Now, what I've done is set up a very small and simple website with the letter on it. You can either copy and paste it from the text there or
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click the link on the right where it says download the PDF and you can download the PDF. There's also a section at the bottom of each page where you can put in your email.
And this will be the new way I'll be running giveaways in competitions in the future. That's a lot easier if I have a email database than
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going through YouTube comments all the time to find out who wants to enter. There's a couple of new shirt designs on the website.
If you click through the links, you'll find some more designs. I'll be adding several more shirts in the leadup to Christmas.
If you would like a personalized shirt, I can print
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them at home. It's a little bit more muckaround, but if you want it personalized in any way, we can talk.
Also, a reminder about my Patreon. There are over 500 videos on my Patreon.
There's usually one video a week, sometimes two. I want to thank all the current patrons for their support as
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without them, I couldn't continue to do this. Cheers.
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