I was thinking about water this morning. Water is not just that clear, life-giving substance that comes from the faucet. It's actually pretty critical to brewing. In fact, sometimes the difference between an amazing beer and a terrible beer could be the water (I kid you not!). When I brew there are two different types of water I have access to:
Good 'ol Dracut, MA water.
Good 'ol Dracut, MA well water.
I haven't sent either out for any kind of real analysis, but I'm betting that the well water is quite soft, as compared with the stuff from Dracut (Town of). This can be important, as most of the enzymatic action that a brewer is looking for is somewhat lower on the PH scale (between 4.5 and 5.5). Truely pure water is a 7. Think about that.
Ok, why is this even that important? So what if the water is softer? What are these enzymes? What do they do? Why are you confusing me?
Let's back up a bit. The basic process of beer making is pretty straight-forward. We are looking to make alcohol. Alcohol is made by feeding yeast a bunch of sugar. Plain and simple. Ancient brewers got the yeast by just hoping they'd land in the sugar-water mix they had. But where did they get the sugar? Grain. Huh?! Grains are starchy, right?
Grains are seeds. They are the "next generation" of a stalk of wheat, barley, oats, or corn. In essence, they are self-contained baby plants. What do all living things need in order to grow from initial state to adult? Energy. How do seeds get this energy? It's locked away in large-chain starch molecules. The cells of the seed can't digest these molecules on their own, though. The chains are just too long. However, they CAN digest sugar to create energy. So, locked in there with the "baby" plant are enzymes which break long-chain starches into medium and short chain sugars.
Think of it like this:
You are building a shed and need a bunch of 10-ft and 5-ft length 2x4s. Instead, you have a pile of 100-ft planks. In order for you to get these planks the right size, you are given some power tools.
The power tools have some pretty specific rules though. If there's too much heat, they'll overload and break. If there's not enough heat, they won't turn on. If the environment is not absolutely correct, they'll work inefficiently and you'll have some pretty rough-cut planks.
This is why the water is so important. It's important to control the temperature so that the enzymatic actions you need can happen. It's important to control the PH because that action will be slow and inefficient (and possibly not even work) as compared to what it could be.
With me so far? Good. If not, drink less beer next time you read this post.
Adding salts and minerals to the water can have a nice buffering effect on the ph, and give those enzymes (power tools) the absolute best environment for production. With a larger supply of short-chain sugars to eat, the yeast will be less stressed. Less stressed yeast produce cleaner flavors, and attenuate better. Sometimes, you want to stress out the yeast a bit. Those off flavors can lend some interesting characteristics to a Belgian or a lambic. Otherwise, you generally want to avoid off-flavors. Esters, dme's, diacetyl, and phenols are generally not good in something like a lager, which wants clean and crisp malt and hop flavors.
This all goes back to the water I have access to. Ideally, distilled water allows me to buffer the water any way I want. Since I don't have access to a real production quality still (I do have a still that could process about 6 gallons of water, but I've only used it once - it's really for emergencies) I'd have to either buy distilled water (expensive) or more realistically, test all of the surrounding area water to figure out exactly what the chemical and mineral composition looks like.
oi vay.
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