Episode 8
What Brewers Put in Water to Make Beer Taste Better
Gary Arndt, Bobby Fleshman, and Allison McCoy dive deep into the importance of water in beer production. They explore the crucial role water plays in determining the taste and quality of beer, discussing the filtration process, water chemistry, and its impact on brewing various beer styles. From carbon filtering to adjusting pH levels, the team shares insights on how brewers manipulate water to create exceptional brews.
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Hosts:
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcript
Welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.
Gary Arndt:My name is Gary Arndt and with me as usual, are Bobby
Gary Arndt:Fleshman and Allison McCoy.
Gary Arndt:And today we're going to talk about the other ingredient in beer that kind
Gary Arndt:of makes up most of beer, water, and also maybe the effects of land and,
Gary Arndt:terrain on going into the end product.
Gary Arndt:So obviously beer is a liquid liquid.
Gary Arndt:It's made up mostly of water.
Gary Arndt:How important is the water that goes into it?
Gary Arndt:And I have, that's kind of a leading question because I'm
Gary Arndt:sure the answer is quite a bit.
Gary Arndt:But what do you do?
Gary Arndt:I mean, I'm, I'm sure you guys aren't just taking tap water out of the city.
Gary Arndt:Are you, or do you filter it?
Gary Arndt:Do you.
Gary Arndt:How does that work?
Gary Arndt:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:in a modern setting most municipalities water tastes pretty good.
Bobby Fleshman:And the things you want to think about when you're homebrewing, you want
Bobby Fleshman:to filter out the chloramine and the chlorine that's there to keep it from.
Bobby Fleshman:Becoming contaminated.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: So, direct to Gary's question.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yes.
Bobby Fleshman:We do filter.
Bobby Fleshman:Yes.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:We don't use it as is.
Bobby Fleshman:Of course.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:We run our water directly through, or, or through a, a carbon filter,
Bobby Fleshman:and we test that periodically.
Bobby Fleshman:It, it removes all of that chlorine, chlorine's a bad thing to put into beer.
Bobby Fleshman:It ends up in that Bandaid flavor downstream.
Bobby Fleshman:You wanna avoid that.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Mm, Bandaid
Gary Arndt:So what are you using to filter?
Bobby Fleshman:It's, it's, it's literally tap water that we're
Bobby Fleshman:running through a gigantic canister, a filter, carbon, carbon, carbon filter.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: So it's like your Brita filters, but large
Bobby Fleshman:scale and there's like infinite surface area in there.
Bobby Fleshman:So you, you can run a lot of water through that type of filter to huge effects.
Bobby Fleshman:The other...
Bobby Fleshman:some brewers will actually press all the ions out of the water.
Bobby Fleshman:So in water, you're going to get minerals, pure water wouldn't taste very good.
Bobby Fleshman:You're going to get some calcium, some magnesium, some carbonates, and
Bobby Fleshman:there's a measure of hardness and pH.
Bobby Fleshman:And there are things that your city does a good job at regulating,
Bobby Fleshman:keeping between the lines.
Bobby Fleshman:We'll see water drawn from surface or ground, and that's a seasonal variation
Bobby Fleshman:you might might pop up and no one gives a damn if you're just drinking it.
Bobby Fleshman:But if you're brewing, it matters because it affects pH and
Bobby Fleshman:various other things downstream.
Bobby Fleshman:So we're trying to respond to that.
Bobby Fleshman:And we know how in this modern setting to adjust the ions.
Bobby Fleshman:and adjust the pH
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: pH is just a level of acidity.
Bobby Fleshman:I've come to believe that we talk about temperature and we
Bobby Fleshman:talk about various other parameters when brewing a lot more than we should.
Bobby Fleshman:I think that pH is where we should fixate because there's so much, Driven by that.
Bobby Fleshman:There's there's volumes that we could go on about there.
Bobby Fleshman:So, so what has happened in history is before the invention of pH meters, and
Bobby Fleshman:really any knowledge of water chemistry.
Bobby Fleshman:People have been making beer and they've been trying things out.
Bobby Fleshman:worldwide with their local ingredients, with their local water supply.
Bobby Fleshman:And they've, and they've landed on things that taste good.
Bobby Fleshman:They've seen, they've seen combinations that work well.
Bobby Fleshman:And, and this predates the renaissance and modern science really.
Bobby Fleshman:maybe dive right in and talk about some regions and how
Bobby Fleshman:water supplies led to styles.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Well, can I say one more thing about pH?
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So we have, so if you think about the brewers as being yeast farmers, they want
Bobby Fleshman:to make sure that the yeast are fed, they give them sugars and then from that, or
Bobby Fleshman:I guess you're, you're a yeast herder.
Bobby Fleshman:I don't know.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeast herder.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:We're not brewers.
Bobby Fleshman:so all we have to do is like the yeast make the beer, we
Bobby Fleshman:just make the yeast happy.
Bobby Fleshman:And so because yeast are a fungus, I believe, is that right?
Bobby Fleshman:Saccharomyces means.
Bobby Fleshman:Sugar fungus.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Oh, well there you go.
Bobby Fleshman:Anyway, so our sugar fungi we need to keep them happy, and so they only can
Bobby Fleshman:do their thing in a certain level of pH.
Bobby Fleshman:And so pH 7 is neutral.
Bobby Fleshman:And so blood that goes through you is a really good buffer.
Bobby Fleshman:And so what that means is it's going to maintain about a constant pH range.
Bobby Fleshman:And so it's not going to get too acidic or too basic.
Bobby Fleshman:And so yeast only really work in a good range of pH.
Bobby Fleshman:And so, one of the things that we have to do is just to make sure that
Bobby Fleshman:we add all of these different things to conform or to fit the liquid water
Bobby Fleshman:that the, or the liquid that the yeast are suspended in to be within that
Bobby Fleshman:pH range so that they can then eat.
Bobby Fleshman:Poop CO2, poop alcohol and do all of their other things that they need to do.
Bobby Fleshman:And when you read like in cosmetic products, it'll say like pH balance.
Bobby Fleshman:What that means is it's stuff that they've added such that if you get too acidic or
Bobby Fleshman:too basic, it's not going to go that far.
Bobby Fleshman:It's going to stay in that one pH range.
Bobby Fleshman:Water chemistry is a lot of.
Bobby Fleshman:There's a lot going on there.
Bobby Fleshman:Even Allison will tell you water chemistry is challenging.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Oh, it's ridiculous.
Bobby Fleshman:It is so far from the chemistry that I do because it's too hard.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Well, not too hard.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: It's just not that interesting.
Bobby Fleshman:And never mind that pH is a logarithmic scale.
Bobby Fleshman:And so it's kind of hard to get your head around.
Bobby Fleshman:We live in a linear, well, we think we can think logarithmically, but
Bobby Fleshman:generally we think linearly and it's kind of hard To get your head around.
Bobby Fleshman:I've always felt the pH scale was dumb.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: It is so dumb.
Bobby Fleshman:It is so dumb.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh,
Gary Arndt:I mean, why not zero as neutral?
Gary Arndt:You can move the scale and just call it zero.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy Fleshman: It's because of the auto ionization of water.
Gary Arndt:I'll stop.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:I want to go back to just some briefly talked about filtering.
Gary Arndt:Someone's a home brewer and they're listening to this.
Gary Arndt:Their water is probably going to just be out of a tap, right?
Gary Arndt:Is that going to kill?
Gary Arndt:I mean, how important is filtering?
Gary Arndt:Is it just important at this scale?
Gary Arndt:Even a homebrewer be filtering their water?
Bobby Fleshman:All the different ways you can filter.
Bobby Fleshman:The one you're talking about is carbon filtering.
Bobby Fleshman:I think that's required on every scale.
Bobby Fleshman:Everyone needs to do that everywhere because every modern municipality
Bobby Fleshman:is using chlorine and chloramine.
Bobby Fleshman:And You've got to get that out of there because that recombines with esters
Bobby Fleshman:and produces these band aid flavors.
Bobby Fleshman:You can probably taste that if you ever had homebrew and they had zero idea of
Bobby Fleshman:what they were doing right off the bat.
Bobby Fleshman:It probably smells like, they think it's coming from the bucket that they
Bobby Fleshman:ferment it in, but it's coming from the water that they use generally.
Bobby Fleshman:So, that, that's easy.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Of course, and if it, if it is coming from the
Bobby Fleshman:bucket, then they have other problems.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:I bet that beer's not going to taste good anyway.
Bobby Fleshman:They're a food grade bucket, it's fine, but, if they have a Brita
Bobby Fleshman:filter, this is how I started.
Bobby Fleshman:I, I had a Brita filter and it took me hours to filter
Bobby Fleshman:what I needed, but it worked.
Bobby Fleshman:You know, you don't need to spend any money to do that.
Bobby Fleshman:then I, then I started to use RO, reverse osmosis water from the
Bobby Fleshman:store and go buy, remember this?
Bobby Fleshman:We would wait down.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Oh, I do.
Bobby Fleshman:You would send me to the grocery store or I would go and you're
Bobby Fleshman:like, oh, hey, pick up some water.
Bobby Fleshman:It's like, how many?
Bobby Fleshman:10 or 20 gallons?
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:20 years ago, this was, You know RO systems at home, I think are kind of
Bobby Fleshman:off the shelf now, but back then that's where we go to the store to get it.
Bobby Fleshman:So with that, you can actually build with spreadsheets.
Bobby Fleshman:You can just go buy the salts you want, the calciums and
Bobby Fleshman:magnesiums and the bicarbonates.
Bobby Fleshman:You can just dump them in and get what you're looking for.
Bobby Fleshman:The calculator will tell you, but if you don't know what you're starting
Bobby Fleshman:with, as with CPC, City water.
Bobby Fleshman:You do have, you have to stay on top of your own testing.
Bobby Fleshman:You gotta taste, test that base water and then add those molecules
Bobby Fleshman:to get where you want to be.
Bobby Fleshman:And the things you're thinking about when you're, when you're building that is
Bobby Fleshman:you're thinking about what's my pH going to be when I combine this water with the
Bobby Fleshman:grain, that's going to become this beer.
Bobby Fleshman:Then you're thinking about, is there enough calcium?
Bobby Fleshman:for this yeast to survive, to do its job.
Bobby Fleshman:The calcium is important for their health, bubbles, structures, so on and so on.
Bobby Fleshman:And then ultimately, and then the third thing you're thinking about is flavor.
Bobby Fleshman:So those first two things are really process, but the
Bobby Fleshman:third one is about flavor.
Bobby Fleshman:And that's, that's generally when you're talking about, when
Bobby Fleshman:we say salt, we mean table salt.
Bobby Fleshman:We're really thinking about sodium when we start talking about flavor
Bobby Fleshman:or, or chlorides or, I guess I'm thinking of some other ones.
Bobby Fleshman:potassium.
Bobby Fleshman:There are other molecules that sneak in as far as flavor goes.
Bobby Fleshman:So those are the three things in that order of priority, pH, calcium, flavor.
Bobby Fleshman:You got to build each water recipe before you even begin to build your beer recipe.
Bobby Fleshman:And they are built in tandem and they're built.
Bobby Fleshman:Every recipe is built to mimic whatever style and or region
Bobby Fleshman:that you're looking to mimic.
Bobby Fleshman:And why do those, why do those water profiles work with those beers is
Bobby Fleshman:because people discovered that the water they have works well with this
Bobby Fleshman:ingredient that they evolved alongside with this one commercially sold.
Bobby Fleshman:So they kept brewing it.
Bobby Fleshman:So therefore they must have liked it.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Well, they weren't even necessarily thinking,
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, I need to have my water this way.
Bobby Fleshman:That's just, that's the water had
Bobby Fleshman:They had no idea.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: And then those particular beers just tasted better.
Bobby Fleshman:No, whether you're talking about Dublin or Munich or
Bobby Fleshman:Prague, London, they weren't checking each other's water to see if their
Bobby Fleshman:styles worked in each other's regions.
Bobby Fleshman:They had no idea.
Gary Arndt:So what is an example of A water profile from particular place
Gary Arndt:and a particular beer that evolved in that place because of the water,
Bobby Fleshman:let's maybe start from the back of the very Latin.
Bobby Fleshman:Most recent one would be Pilsner in Prague.
Bobby Fleshman:Their water is almost void of calcium.
Bobby Fleshman:It's almost void of everything.
Bobby Fleshman:There, there's maybe 10 parts per million of calcium, which is just
Bobby Fleshman:maybe by an eyelash sufficient to pull off fermentation, otherwise
Bobby Fleshman:equivalent to our reverse osmosis water.
Bobby Fleshman:And that's what you really need if you want to build something that is as clean
Bobby Fleshman:and naked to off flavors as is a Pilsner.
Bobby Fleshman:And it's why it worked.
Bobby Fleshman:It's why it was the right time, right place.
Bobby Fleshman:They had the right brewer from Germany.
Bobby Fleshman:They had technology that had been modified from England, from pale ales,
Bobby Fleshman:and ultimately they made this light lager that worked extraordinarily well with
Bobby Fleshman:their groundwater and made them the, made the Pilsner the style, even to this day,
Bobby Fleshman:that's number one consumed in the world.
Bobby Fleshman:So that one's, it's probably coming from, I can't speak to the ground formation or
Bobby Fleshman:the water formation, but it's probably coming from the ground and it's probably
Bobby Fleshman:some hard, Non like gypsum type rocks that they're drawing their water from.
Bobby Fleshman:I can't even speak to that.
Bobby Fleshman:Gary is,
Gary Arndt:I have no idea what's happening in Prague in terms of
Gary Arndt:water, but I do know, yeah, you're going to get different types
Gary Arndt:of water based on your place.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:One, there's a sir.
Gary Arndt:Richard Branson has an Island in the Caribbean and 55 gallon drums of
Gary Arndt:New York city water to make pizza.
Gary Arndt:So they can create genuine New York pizza.
Gary Arndt:And I've had a lot of people that say that that's the water that
Gary Arndt:literally is what makes the dough pizza in New York different?
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy Fleshman: It's, I'm sorry, forgive me for laughing, but
Gary Arndt:there's a, a picture we have on the wall that says Olympia beer, it's
Gary Arndt:in the water or it's the water.
Gary Arndt:And I can't imagine that being the same type of advertising for New York pizza.
Gary Arndt:It's the water that just seems so not connected at all.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:But, but bagels, I think have, there's pH that makes the bagel.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: You have to have a very basic.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So you see this in baking all the time,
Gary Arndt:Water in Montreal.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:That's why bagels in Montreal have, are such a thing.
Bobby Fleshman:And now we, we live in this modern time.
Bobby Fleshman:We can make this water anyway, anywhere.
Bobby Fleshman:But yeah, back in the day, we didn't know that.
Gary Arndt:So when you're making a pilsner, then is the first step then
Gary Arndt:to make the water that is somewhat.
Gary Arndt:Similar to what they're going to find in Prague.
Bobby Fleshman:We are very fortunate.
Bobby Fleshman:If I did have a reverse osmosis system, I would utilize it for the Pilsner, but
Bobby Fleshman:we are extremely fortunate in Appleton.
Bobby Fleshman:We have some really good base water here for brewing.
Bobby Fleshman:It has a sufficient like 25 parts per million calcium and just to give you
Bobby Fleshman:context, I said 10 was for Prague, but you might see up to levels of
Bobby Fleshman:200, you know, in various styles.
Bobby Fleshman:So we, we actually start with a pretty good canvas slate on which to build.
Bobby Fleshman:And then there are other, ions in our water here.
Bobby Fleshman:But generally speaking, Appleton's really good and it's and it's
Bobby Fleshman:fairly steady throughout the year.
Bobby Fleshman:So that's what we do.
Bobby Fleshman:We don't do anything to it.
Bobby Fleshman:We, we, we filter it and we just start brewing because the best
Bobby Fleshman:we can do is start with what we have since we don't have R.
Bobby Fleshman:O.
Bobby Fleshman:And we're just fortunate enough and somewhat By design, we don't
Bobby Fleshman:have RO because we knew we had good enough order to build a Pilsner on.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Is that one of the reasons that, Miller and
Bobby Fleshman:just down South in Milwaukee has the similar, I mean, it's a, it's a lager
Bobby Fleshman:yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:I bet they're using Lake.
Bobby Fleshman:I bet it's Michigan.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:From 150 years ago.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, I'm sure that all the Germans settled here because of the water
Bobby Fleshman:they're I'm sure they were trying to to replicate What what they did in Germany?
Bobby Fleshman:Well
Bobby Fleshman:if you're gonna pick a place to live and you know move your entire culture
Bobby Fleshman:You might as well pick the place that you can brew the best beer.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, it's good
Bobby Fleshman:and and And even if, even if you don't know all the ins and outs of water
Bobby Fleshman:chemistry, the people have learned lime can be added to the water.
Bobby Fleshman:I am a chemist.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: I am paid to be a chemist and I do not know all
Bobby Fleshman:the ins and outs of water chemistry.
Bobby Fleshman:It's such a unique niche field.
Bobby Fleshman:And Germans anecdotally, they were able to put together process.
Bobby Fleshman:And, but you know, the Germans aren't going to allow you to use these
Bobby Fleshman:things to begin with because of this rule called the Reinheitsgebot.
Bobby Fleshman:But they, there are brewers everywhere that have just have learned before the
Bobby Fleshman:advent of water chemistry, how to get their water soft enough in order to brew
Bobby Fleshman:as in low enough in calcium and magnesium in order to brew something like a Pilsner.
Bobby Fleshman:The other extreme on that Gary would be like, in Dublin, you
Bobby Fleshman:find a lot of bicarbonates, sort of closer to the surface.
Bobby Fleshman:They are, they're dissolving, bicarbonate, which tends to, will,
Bobby Fleshman:will increase your pH of your water.
Bobby Fleshman:And in Dublin, they're famous nowadays for the, the roasted dry stouts.
Bobby Fleshman:And whenever you use grain that provides acidity.
Bobby Fleshman:So you see the two coming together, high pH.
Bobby Fleshman:Means basic and you add that to, an acid profile in your, in your
Bobby Fleshman:grist in your, in your grain and you, and you strike that balance.
Bobby Fleshman:You look for that pH that makes those yeast happy.
Bobby Fleshman:And then the other things you care about calcium and flavor,
Bobby Fleshman:but namely again, that pH.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Making yeast happy.
Bobby Fleshman:And all, and it goes through the list, you know, Burton
Bobby Fleshman:upon Trent in England had eight levels of, of gypsum and gypsum
Bobby Fleshman:makes your calcium extremely high and makes your salt, your, what is it?
Bobby Fleshman:Calcium sulfate.
Bobby Fleshman:So your sulfate levels go very, very high and it makes for a really good
Bobby Fleshman:IPA to sell around Africa to India.
Bobby Fleshman:It, it tends to be stable.
Bobby Fleshman:It tends to present as sharp.
Bobby Fleshman:It tends to be a good canvas for hops and then, and then you have London made
Bobby Fleshman:the best porters probably still do on earth for their, for their profile.
Bobby Fleshman:And then Munich makes the best dark lagers in the world.
Bobby Fleshman:So on and so on.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: I'm just going to throw out there.
Bobby Fleshman:Just reminded me.
Bobby Fleshman:We're familiar with this in terms of naming some of these
Bobby Fleshman:salts Bobby's talking about.
Bobby Fleshman:A lot of them have like common names, like Epsom salts.
Bobby Fleshman:I should have said chalk.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So chalk is what we're talking about when I say carbonate.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: But like Epsom, so it's from the Epsom salts discovered in
Bobby Fleshman:Epsom, England, a spa town in the 1600s.
Bobby Fleshman:But Epsom is magnesium sulfate Epsom salt.
Bobby Fleshman:And so most of these salts have normal
Bobby Fleshman:names.
Bobby Fleshman:The calcium sulfate gypsum.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, right.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So one of them brings calcium.
Bobby Fleshman:Everyone brings magnesium to the table.
Bobby Fleshman:They're both important.
Bobby Fleshman:You just need them both.
Gary Arndt:I'd never thought what you said about the
Gary Arndt:Dublin water and putting a...
Bobby Fleshman:an acid
Gary Arndt:An acid into it.
Gary Arndt:It makes perfect sense.
Gary Arndt:I never would have thought of that,
Bobby Fleshman:but this is the aha moment.
Bobby Fleshman:I hope that everyone's having out there because for me, there are two
Bobby Fleshman:things I think a lot about bubbles.
Bobby Fleshman:We talked a lot about last episode, but this, this whole concept of why we
Bobby Fleshman:have beer styles and how it's connected to the water and the regions and all
Bobby Fleshman:of the evolution of these ingredients.
Bobby Fleshman:It's probably the most profound way to tell the story of beer.
Bobby Fleshman:So whenever I do beer classes, I always like to think that way,
Bobby Fleshman:even if I'm not, I'm not telling them I'm thinking that way.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Well, at least before it was, before we lived in a,
Bobby Fleshman:a truly connected global society where each of these individual cultures
Bobby Fleshman:were developing on their own kind of independently, I mean, that's where the
Bobby Fleshman:history of these beer, like beer styles came about with what water that they had.
Bobby Fleshman:So I think in terms of like telling the narrative of humans experience with beer,
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, we had to go where the water was.
Gary Arndt:So you, you mentioned that the water you use here is
Gary Arndt:conducive to making a pilsner.
Gary Arndt:So if you want to make an Irish stout, Do you then have to make
Gary Arndt:the water more basic in order to sort of replicate those conditions?
Bobby Fleshman:So I'll grab a scoop of, it's not just, there's a measured scoop.
Bobby Fleshman:It's a calculated scoop, but I'll, I'll grab a scoop of chalk and I will dump it
Bobby Fleshman:into the kettle and that chalk raises the pH where it otherwise would have been.
Gary Arndt:Calcium carbonate sounds a lot better than chalk.
Gary Arndt:I know.
Gary Arndt:I know.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:It really sounds like you're just taking something off a chalkboard.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:you've also, it's hard to dissolve chalk.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy Fleshman: It is hard to dissolve chalk.
Gary Arndt:That's a challenge.
Gary Arndt:When you take, you know, when you grab a Tums and you toss it in your mouth,
Gary Arndt:you're like, get in your calcium.
Gary Arndt:What you're really eating is chalk.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:It's chalk.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: But well branded chalk.
Bobby Fleshman:There's a demonstration there that professors
Bobby Fleshman:could probably do by eating chalk.
Gary Arndt:Coral, limestone, seashell.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:But it's, it's an antacid.
Bobby Fleshman:So it's anti acid.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:But yeah, getting it to dissolve is tricky business and, and you got to get
Bobby Fleshman:the, the temperature of the water, right.
Bobby Fleshman:And the pH, right.
Bobby Fleshman:And it's a lot of things were at play there.
Bobby Fleshman:And we, and with the, like an English IPA, we'll dump loads of
Bobby Fleshman:gypsum in there for the same reason.
Bobby Fleshman:And, and all in the middle of that spectrum, you, you see these dark
Bobby Fleshman:loggers and quarters and so on.
Bobby Fleshman:Is there any water that just.
Gary Arndt:Bad for brewing.
Gary Arndt:Like this is not a place you would want to create a place.
Gary Arndt:Well, I mean, other than, you know, contaminants and pollution, obviously,
Gary Arndt:but just like regular groundwater, spring water that just would not be suitable.
Bobby Fleshman:High magnesium will notoriously give you bad bowel problems.
Bobby Fleshman:So you want to keep that at a minimum.
Bobby Fleshman:And the other one is sulfur.
Bobby Fleshman:You want to avoid that rotten egg smell.
Bobby Fleshman:burnt match.
Bobby Fleshman:And these are things you know immediately from pasting the
Bobby Fleshman:water if you want to brew with it.
Bobby Fleshman:If you don't want to drink your water, don't brew with it.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, that's pretty.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: For a while when I was growing up, we were in West
Bobby Fleshman:Texas in the Permian Basin and there, the water there was just so gross.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh my God, it was so gross.
Bobby Fleshman:It has so many nasty salts in it.
Bobby Fleshman:But I just, I can't imagine that you would ever want to start with
Bobby Fleshman:that sort of It's disgusting.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Groundwater.
Bobby Fleshman:You really have to get into a distilled slash RO slash membrane
Bobby Fleshman:filtered situation if you're in those kinds of regions for sure.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: This was back in the early 90s and the RO system that my
Bobby Fleshman:dad bought must have cost him an entire paycheck, but oh, it was so worth it.
Bobby Fleshman:But Wisconsin and I do praise Appleton in particular
Bobby Fleshman:has good water, believe it or not.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Does it fluctuate seasonally with the salt runoff?
Bobby Fleshman:We do.
Bobby Fleshman:You see seasonality.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:I'm.
Bobby Fleshman:I've correlated it with what I think is the salt runoff, the salt from
Bobby Fleshman:the roads, making its way into a combination of surface and groundwater.
Bobby Fleshman:And so we, it's not like you're drinking, it's not the
Bobby Fleshman:anything you would taste, right?
Bobby Fleshman:But it's enough for me to pick up on the chloride level or whatever.
Bobby Fleshman:And I have to.
Bobby Fleshman:Remove where I would otherwise put calcium chloride in, I omit it and
Bobby Fleshman:put calcium sulfate instead in.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So there are some small changes.
Gary Arndt:And just, just to clarify for people, if you're not familiar with
Gary Arndt:this, we've been using the word salt interchangeably with different things.
Gary Arndt:Yes.
Gary Arndt:Yes.
Gary Arndt:There is table salt, table salt, which is the colloquial
Gary Arndt:term for salt, which is an ACL.
Gary Arndt:But then there are salts of which salt is a salt.
Gary Arndt:Yes.
Gary Arndt:Allison, take it.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy Fleshman: What is it?
Gary Arndt:Not so all whales are mammals, but not all mammals are whales.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: So.
Bobby Fleshman:NACL, table salt.
Bobby Fleshman:You didn't lead with life depends on.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Oh my god, that was the best one.
Bobby Fleshman:Life depends on salts and sunshine.
Bobby Fleshman:That's from a, a book that I absolutely love called Ionic liquids on all things.
Bobby Fleshman:Anyway, that's a scientific technical thing.
Bobby Fleshman:But salts, what is it?
Bobby Fleshman:So the chemical definition of a salt, two things ionically bonded together, which
Bobby Fleshman:is going to be a metal and a non metal.
Bobby Fleshman:And so if you have a metal, like sodium, lithium, potassium, any of those on the
Bobby Fleshman:left hand side of the periodic table, calcium, magnesium, strontium, francium
Bobby Fleshman:any sort bonded to a non metal, things on the right hand side of the periodic
Bobby Fleshman:table, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfurs, fluorines, other things,
Bobby Fleshman:chlorines Those two things bond together.
Bobby Fleshman:That's the technical definition of a salt.
Bobby Fleshman:And there are countless, and I mean, gazillions of salts.
Bobby Fleshman:However, as humans, we typically run into just a few of them.
Bobby Fleshman:And they're the ones that have the common names like Epsom salt
Bobby Fleshman:calcium carbonate chalk, gypsum.
Bobby Fleshman:And water has the nature of.
Bobby Fleshman:pulling them apart in solution, right?
Bobby Fleshman:Yes.
Bobby Fleshman:That's the whole idea behind ionic bond.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Yes.
Bobby Fleshman:So this is, so if you were to have salt water, so you go and take table salt
Bobby Fleshman:water and you want to gurgle it because you have a sore throat or something,
Bobby Fleshman:you're going to throw some salt in.
Bobby Fleshman:What's going to happen is called dissociation, not dissolving.
Bobby Fleshman:So those ions are going to break apart because water is
Bobby Fleshman:really strong at doing so.
Bobby Fleshman:But if you throw in like sugar, sugar is an ionically bonded and
Bobby Fleshman:that's actually going to dissolve.
Bobby Fleshman:So you can't say that salt dissolves in water.
Bobby Fleshman:It actually dissociates in water.
Bobby Fleshman:And I'll stop there because that's too much.
Gary Arndt:Because water is a polar molecule?
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy Fleshman: Yes.
Gary Arndt:Can I keep going?
Gary Arndt:Oh my gosh.
Gary Arndt:So water is a polar molecule.
Gary Arndt:And this goes back to when we were talking about bubbles.
Gary Arndt:So chemistry have this, this wonderful phrase called like dissolves
Gary Arndt:like, and I mentioned this before.
Gary Arndt:So oil and water don't mix because they're molecularly two separate things.
Gary Arndt:And so oil has a nonpolar character and water has a polar character.
Gary Arndt:And so a polar thing is going to interact with a polar thing.
Gary Arndt:Salts are like the epitome of polar.
Gary Arndt:And so they're going to interact.
Gary Arndt:Whereas you really can't dissolve a salt or dissociate a salt into an oil because
Gary Arndt:that would just be weird chemically and you wouldn't really want salt oil.
Gary Arndt:That's strange.
Gary Arndt:chemically, it wouldn't work either.
Gary Arndt:So a lot of big breweries, they'll often use their water
Gary Arndt:as a marketing, you know point.
Gary Arndt:So there's actually maybe something to it.
Gary Arndt:Can we kind of like, if we want it to encapsulate everything,
Gary Arndt:the water is really important.
Bobby Fleshman:If, if we were relying fully on a source
Bobby Fleshman:and at its mercy, then yes.
Bobby Fleshman:But in this modern setting, it's no longer that relevant.
Bobby Fleshman:We know how to make any water we want anywhere.
Bobby Fleshman:But at its core, my water is extremely important.
Bobby Fleshman:It's 95 percent of beer.
Bobby Fleshman:And it's amazing.
Bobby Fleshman:We overlook it when we talk about beer, but it's extremely important.
Gary Arndt:All right.
Gary Arndt:Well, that concludes another episode of respecting the beer.
Gary Arndt:Join us next week for another show.
Gary Arndt:And until then, please visit us on our Patreon page or on our
Gary Arndt:Facebook group links to which can be found in the show notes.
