Randy Mosher's Water Profiles by style
 

Does anyone happen to have these water profiles that can be input into TH's spreadsheet? Or do I need to buy the book;)

I've be trying to dig up the same information as you. I didn't have much luck finding anything on Randy's profiles. I did however run across a dated but helpful link of different water profiles throughout the world. I found it helpful.

http://www.brewery.org/brewery/library/WaterProf.html

Several years back I pulled together a collection of profiles and developed recipes for them. They can be found at www.wetnewf.org. The "server" (an old Mac Mini) and my ISP's attempts to prevent its customers from operating websites can sometimes conspire to make access difficult so don't give up if you don't succeed at first try.

There is a good chart in Palmer's book on what style to use for each major brewing city

Water Chem by Styles
 

OK, two things:

I did not make these up, I've collected them from the net and books over the years. If you don't think they are correct, please help me adjust them.

Second, I've tried to make everything line up but I really can't. I know it makes it hard to read but if it's in tables, tabs or just a ton of spaces, I can't make it work. Feel free to fix as well.



Calcium Magnesium Sodium Sulfate Chloride Carbonate Hardness BicarbonateHCO3 Alkalinity
Ideal Alt 38 0 28 90 45 0 26.8 0 0
Ideal Bitter 90 10 28 240 38 0 70.2 0 0
Ideal Bock 60 0 50 45 75 60 42.9 60 49
Ideal Brown Ale 23 0 50 53 75 0 16.1 0 0
Ideal Burton Pale Ale 111 18 35 337 32 38 89.9 37.82 31
Ideal Dark Lager 83 0 50 53 75 90 58.9 90 74
Ideal Dark Lager 73 13 52 125 80 63 59.8 129.32 106
Ideal Dopplebock 78 0 55 45 85 90 55.4 90 74
Ideal Dortmunder 75 0 53 175 80 0 53.6 0 0
Ideal English Ale 52 10 6.2 65 9.6 63 43.0 129.32 106
Ideal Light Lager 45 0 28 108 45 0 32.1 0 0
Ideal Light Lager 21 5.2 18 21 16 51 18.1 84.18 69
Ideal Maerzen 45 0 35 105 53 0 32.1 0 0
Ideal Medium Lager 74 5.2 10 21 16 111 55.9 225.7 185
Ideal Mild 38 10 35 133 55 0 33.0 0 0
Ideal Mild/Dark Lager 75 12 35 120 100 100 60.6 100 82
Ideal Munich Dark 63 0 10 28 13 60 44.6 60 49
Ideal Pale Ale 125 20 25 363 40 0 101.1 0 0
Ideal Pale Ale 110 18 17 350 50 0 89.2 0 0
Ideal Pale Ale 110 18 17 350 50 57 89.2 57 47
Ideal Pale Ale 126 19 18 281 48 66 101.2 66 54
Ideal Pale Lager 1 0.5 1.05 5 0 0 1.0 0 0
Ideal Pilsner 7 5 2 6 5 15 7.9 15 12
Ideal Porter 65 0 40 60 60 60 46.4 60 49
Ideal Scottish 25 0 16 60 24 0 17.9 0 0
Ideal Stout 50 12 60 46 175 0 42.8 0 0
Ideal Stout (Dry) 90 10 15 73 24 130 70.2 130 107
Ideal Stout (Sweet) 65 0 15 45 24 70 46.4 70 57
Ideal Weizen 23 0 10 53 15 0 16.1 0 0

Looking at the Bock:
You state Ca++ at 60 and Mg++ at 0 but then list the hardness as 42.9. If the 60 number is ppm as CaCO3 and there is no Mg then the hardness in ppm as CaCO3 is 60. If the 60 is ppm as the ion then the hardness is 50*60/20 = 150 so there is a discrepancy there. You also list CO3 as 60, HCO3 as 60 and alkalinity as 49 and you do not specify a pH. For CO3-- and HCO3- to be equal the pH would have to be 10.38 and that's an impossible amount of CO3-- so I don't think that's what those really mean. If the bicarbonate really means bicarbonate and the pH is reasonable then the alkalinity would be approximately 50*60/61 = 49 and that's what is listed. Interpreting it that way the profile is pretty badly balanced (by 1.2 mEq/L) if the calcium is interpreted as the ion. If interpreted as CaCO3 it's still imbalanced (0.6 mEq/L) but not quite so badly.

So there is something I'm obviously not understanding here. Can you check the column headings and tell me what the units are for each column? Without that info all I can do is fiddle around trying to figure out what these numbers mean. I think it's clear what the bicarbonate/alkalinity relationship and the CO3, whenever given, seems to be the same as the bicarbonate which, as noted above, only occurs at pH 10.38.

I see what you mean and again, I just posted to put the info out there for discussion. I think as a group we should tackle this project, maybe one style at a time.

I've started look at things from a different angle basing things on some minimums, maximums, Cl:SO4 ratios, and RA based on what the particular style demands for color/balance and not on where the beers originally came from.

Since the Bock was the first one brought up:


From the Quickie Water Chemistry Primer
http://www.brewery.org/brewery/library/wchmprimer.html

Dark Lagers -- Bocks, for example. Model: Mosher's "Ideal Mild Ale / Dark Lager"
Ca 73
Mg 13
Na 52
Cl 80
SO4 125
HCO3 63
Alkalinity 106
Hardness 51.6
RA 46.3
SRM Low 9.0
SRM High 13.8
Cl:SO4 0.64
Balance Bitter

Based on the style description:

Traditional Bock 5B
SRM 14 to 22
Mean OG 1.068
Mean FG 1.016
RTE* 25.36
Mean IBU 23.5
BV** 0.74
BV Balance Slightly Malty

From:
http://beercolor.netfirms.com/balance.html
*RTE = 0.82 x FG + 0.18 x OG
**BV = 0.8 x IBU / RTE

This would show that the two don't really align.

After some tweaking:

Ca 50
Mg 13
Na 60
Cl 100
SO4 50
CO3 176.5
Alkalinity 150
Hardness 178.7
RA 106.7
SRM Low 13.9
SRM High 18.8
Cl:SO4 2
Balance Malty

Now the colors line up as well as the balance.

Thoughts?

I think you'd do better by trying to find out anything you can about the water that defined the beer. There is no usable information about water chemistry in beer color and there are no "requirements" for a particular chloride to sulfate ratio. The spreadsheets that advise setting RA in accordance with color will only lead you astray. Yes, people used dark malt to offset highly alkaline water in the past which is why some styles are dark and others aren't but the spreadsheet formulas are based on poor fits to, AFAIK, colors calculated from grist bills using one of the popular color models and heaven knows what for water chemistry data since most of that out in public is bogus. Palmer came up with a slope of 7 RA per unit of SRM. I can at least measure color but still don't have anything other than reported chemistry to work from and I got a slope more like 1 and Pearson' coefficient for that was less than 0.5. If were were talking money instead of RA I certainly wouldn't be placing any bets based on either model.

A good RA for all beers is 0 or less. You should never increase alkalinity (of RA) unless 1) Your mash pH is way low 2) You want bicarbonate taste in your beer. The reason I mention this is because some authors think Bock should have some residual carbonate taste. I don't. The less the better.

A couple of papers were written in the UK suggesting that chloride to sulfate ratio was better correlated with taste panel impressions that the absolute values. This is by no means universally accepted. Among German brewers a good ratio is infinite (i.e. no sulfate).

My most recent Bock (hadn't done a Bock in a long time) came out at 26 SRM. I have 5 reported profiles for Munich water. Four of these are from the literature, none balances electrically and they all give, based on what is clearly under reported bicarbonate, RA's of around 60. A sample of Munich water I measured myself had an RA of 205. So which is more suitable for the beer? Or should I just take Palmer's spreadheet and decide I need 195 - 254 RA and shoot for that or use the EZ spreadsheet only to have it tell me that I will get a mash pH of 4.93 if I take the approach I did which is to completely ignore color and shoot for a slightly elevated (over my well water) RA of 80 acheived by adding a bit of calcium chloride and a bit of chalk. Dough in pH came out at 5.2 and settled in at 5.3 using 2.5% sauermalz. I said earlier that a good RA is <= 0 so why did I raise RA. It was based on Daryl Richman's monograph telling me that some bicarbonate is part of the profile of Bock to which I say, having brewed the beer, hooey. As always, when I make a statement like that I say that if you like bicarbonate taste in your beer go ahead and use it! It's just not to my taste. Raising RA to 80 did not, by any means, spoil the beer. It's delicious but there was no need for the higher RA and and I won't increase it if I brew this beer again.


At this point we have 5 or 6 conflicting ideas as to what sort of water treatment should be used to brew a Bock beer depending on
1)Whether you think Munich Water represents a good model for Bock (that is, after all, the city where the style was brought to fruition even if it was born in Einbeck
2)Which of several reports on the nature of Munich water you choose to believe in (4 are historical but physically impossible, the other is modern but I expect the good burghers of Munich may have improved the city's water treatment in the last century)
3)Whether you think SRM is tightly correlated to water chemistry (it isn't).
4)Given that you think it is which model (slope of 7 in Palmer's or slope of 1 in AJ's or Kai's).
5)Whether you think the brewers of Munich do or did decarbonate the water before they brewed Bock.
6)Etc.


In this case, at least we know where this water came from as Ken tells us that on his site. He used 2.0 grams of chalk in 5 gal and mentions on the page that this must be dissolved using CO2. If you make the assumption that he used CO2 to restore the pH of the DI water to 7 after the chalk addition then you get numbers like his for the ion content except that the bicarb he states is about half of what it actually would be (it's actually going to be close to 131). For pH < 8 bicarb ~ 61*alk/50 = 61*106/50 = 129. To get alkalinity of 106 from the additions he used you have to make some assumptions about the final pH and the pH that was used to do the titration when alkalinity was measured. The RA is closer to 49.

The level of sulfate in this profile is totally unacceptable for Bock! Munich water contains less than 10 mg/L sulfate (though 1 of my historical reports says 79 - my guess, given the source of Munich's water, i.e. the Isar, is that this was mis-transcribed or misprinted and should be 7.9 but I certainly can't prove that). A level as high as 125 would be disastrous with the fine hops that we want to give Bock that smooth "The drinker shouldn't know he is drinking bock until he tries to get up from the table" quality. Continental brewers are not really concerned with chloride to sulfate ratio - they want minimum sulfate.

They certainly don't "align" on the sulfate, the color is largely immaterial (as far as mineral additions are concerned) as are the OG, FG and IBU's. I have no idea what RTE is (an estimate of the true extract?) or BV either. I'm guessing that it is some sort of bitterness per unit of true extract with true extract representing sweetness. That wouldn't be controlled with water chemistry but by rest temperatures, number of decoctions, yeast strain...

As noted color really has almost nothing to do with this and it appears you are comparing "balance" based on chloride to sulfate ratio in one case and IBU to TE ratio in the other. The latter would be more valuable IMO. If you offered me that profile as a strawman for Bock I'd ask you if you particularly wanted residual bicarb going into the mash and if you said "yes" I'd say OK go with that but drop the sulfate. If you said "no" I'd say get rid of the bicarb too. I'd advise using less sauermalz with the bicarb gone or better still, a test mash to determine the amount of sauermalz needed.

The sodium and chloride are also way high for Munich.

In summary, my philosophy is that there is no "ideal" profile for any style of beer. What I have sketched out here is an approach where we assume that the water of the Isar is responsible for the qualities of Bock and that we should therefore at least approximately try to match Munich water. But then you could argue that I should be trying to match Einbeck and I wouldn't argue back very hard.

If asked what I think the ideal water for bock would be I'd say take RO water (it's much easier to get now than when I started looking at this) and add 1 tsp calcium chloride to each 5 gal. Be sure to use sauermalz to set mash pH and check it. If you think the beer is lacking mineral character that you want (or think a judge might want) then add that mineral next time you brew and see if the resulting beer is better. But then I say that for all brew styles.

Disclaimer: I've used a narrative style here that might be interpreted as meaning that I'm stating proven fact. Certainly there are factual statements in the post but the philosophy definitely represents an opinion based on my experience. It is an opinion that, as it has solidified, is yielding consistently good beer but an opinion nevertheless.

While I understand the certain beers styles were developed out of necessity based on what the region's water supply allowed, it is a bad idea to try to replicate the water exactly. I know that when I want to make an IPA, the Seattle water supply won't provided the crispness but I'm certainly not going 600+ on the Sulphate just because Burton did. We should be examining why these styles were developed and trying to mimic the benefits while staying within moderation.

I understand that the Chloride to Sulfate ratio ratios or any ranges are not defined in the style guidelines but when attempting to develop a brew water for a batch, we should take into consideration the attributes of the beer that is being brewed and tweak accordingly. This is what I was attempting to do in a more quantifiable manner using the RTE and BV. (more on that later)



While I agree that the models in place are not completely accurate because there's more than one way to make the same colored beer, each of which will affect your mash pH, I think they are a good jumping off point and better than nothing or just using the city of origin. This is also the reason I think so many people want to see an "Ideal" water profile by style. That way they're not playing around with spreadsheets until they hit the right color and balance while drastically over-treating.

Really? So any city that has water over an RA of zero can't make good beer? How do explain the success of Dublin?



Maybe for the beers that they are brewing and the hops they are using but this is not a universal truth. I agree that it is the ratio and not the absolute amounts that are important. This is right in line with my attempt to use the RTE and BV while designing water.


Real Terminal Extract (RTE) is one way to look a finished beer because it takes attenuation out as a variable unlike a simple IBU:OG ratio.

I think you are missing the point. I'm not saying that the RTE of BV are defined by the water chem but that we should be taking it into account when developing water for styles. We should be looking at adjusting water to it aligns with the balance of the beer.


Exactly. Chloride to Sulfate ratio is the "balance" for the brewing water while the IBU to RTE is the balance of the beer. I'm just saying that we need to make sure the two match. I have "Very Malty" water so when I brew a "Very Hoppy" beer, I need to adjust my water to have a "Very Hoppy" ratio.


I agree that there is not one "Ideal" water to brew a beer with but there are some key attributes that the water should have based on the attributes you are trying to make in the beer. Again, while I know that the correlation for RA and color are not something you can completely, accurately define, I don't think they should be ignored all together. They should be taken with a "grain of salt" when creating brewing water.

I don't really care what types of water others are using to brew with. I know what I use and how I do things. I think the goal of this post and others like it was to give some guidance to people who may be new to brewing or at least to water adjustments so when they want to brew a certain style of beer, they know what types of water to use and not have to fiddle around with the numbers too much.

I think you missed my point here. Burton ales are Burton ales because of the Burton water supply. Therefore it makes sense to know something about Burton water if you want to brew Burton ale. But I certainly agree that you shouldn't try to duplicate Burton water exactly because:
1) You can't - there is not physically realizable profile in the half dozen or so in my collection.
2) Even if you could, there were multiple wells in Burton. Which would you choose?
3) Burton style beers brewed with softer water are better beers than ones brewed with "authentic" water.

Yes!

In the case of Burton the hardness was sufficient that mash pH settled into a reasonable (if not ideal) range. The sulfate they had was the sulfate they had. If they had any way to take some of that sulfate out they probably would have. And if they had had pH meters they probably would have started adding acid to their mashes earlier than they did.



Absolutely. So, using Burton as the new example, knowing that it was born of high sulfate and relatively low in carbonate we should synthesize water with those general properties and then experiment. It's no different than cooking. If you make a bernaise sauce you can have any ratio of chervil, tarragon, salt, black pepper, cayenne and lemon juice you like but you darn well better keep the temperature below the point where it curdles. This seems a good analogy for beer because it doesn't matter if you get the magnesium, calcium, sulfate, bicarbonate flavors right on if you don't get the mash pH right. That's why I tell people to use RO water, use acid to set mash pH and then worry about the "stylistic" ions. Given that you are going to take this approach you might as well start with a clean sheet of paper and taste your way along rather than trying to deduce how much chalk to add from some seriously flawed model relating that to color.




I have seen the conclusions that use of this model lead to. I've never tasted a beer brewed using them but I've had them described to me. Chalky and like Alka Selzer come to mind.

I think they want an "ideal" profile because they are totally bewildered by brewing water chemistry and they have a right to be given the misinformation and misinterpretation of valid information that abounds.

There is no such thing as an ideal profile for a style IMO. Are you shooting for authenticity or the best beer? The water treatment will be different in many cases. Are you brewing for yourself and family/friends or a judge. If a judge, what's his take on the mineral related flavors appropriate for a beer. Should Export have mineral crispness or not (this is an interesting one as the BJCP guidelines used to say "yes" but don't any more). A nominal profile would be nice and that is, I suppose, doable but I think it has to be based on the style's origins - not just numbers deduced from color and degree of fermentation.




Didn't say that. If you have an RA larger than 0 you can make good beer but you must compensate for it. In Dublin they did that with roast barley and, of course, Guiness wouldn't be Guiness if they had been "smart" enough back then to decarbonate and/or use acid. This brings in another city but it is an intersting example. I use enough roast barley in my Irish stout to give me colors between 60 and 80 SRM. My water has RA that ranges from 1/5 to about the same as Dublin's depending on whose report I look at. I use no chalk in the mash or the water and get a pH of 5.5. That's high. I'd like it lower but I don't use acid. I can make very good Irish stout without even thinking about the water - no spreadsheets, no calculations of any kind. Just a pH check.



Just to be clear, this is not my position. It is clearly the absolute levels that matter. Forgive the use of reductio in absurdam but if the sulfate is 1 mg/L and the chloride also 1 (ratio 1:1) the beer will have a very different character than if the sulfate is 100 and the chloride 100 (also 1:1). The first would make a fine Pils but the second wouldn't!


That's what I figured it had to be. I agree that it might be useful to normalize bittering by TE (most authors simply call it True Extract) but if I thought the IBU/TE for a beer was too low water chemistry would be the last place I'd look to fix it. I'd increase hopping, use a higher alpha hop, convert at a temperature that gives more maltose... Apparently people think that by changing the ratio of sulfate to chloride they can change the bitterness vs maltiness. This is not, IMO, the case at all. Adding sulfate only makes hops bitterness harsher and dryer (and IMO, less pleasant) whereas increasing chloride enhances the mouthfeel and mellowness and up to a point, sweetness. But maltiness is not exclusively sweetness - the melanoiding character is the mainstay of maltiness to me.


How would you do that?




I guess I have "hoppy" water. I put in an RO system to get rid of sulfate (that's really the only reason I did it) and now supplement all my beers with calcium chloride so I now have "very malty" water. All my beers, hoppy or not are brewed with this "very malty" water.

I looked at data from 4 recently brewed beers (all measured -not calculated) and while that certainly isn't a very big sample there wasn't much of a correlation (Pearsons r = -0.24) between chloride to sulfate ratio and IBU/TE. But note that the correlation is negative. IOW a scatter plot of IBU/TE vs Cl:SO4 is pretty much centered around a horizontal line. I do not take chloride to sulfate ratio or IBU/TE ratio into account when designing brewing water (but I surely do think about TE and hopping levels in planning grist and hop charges) and based on this data I wouldn't. But you are saying perhaps I should? I'm sure as hell not adding any sulfate to my Pils!!! Or my ale - the bitterness is already too harsh for my taste.


It's not that you can't define it, it's that
1)You can't get data that would let you measure it
2)The data I have measured shows that the correlation doesn't exist (r<1/2 isn't a whole lot better than no correlation at all IMO)


I think a lot of people would have been saved from ruining a lot of beer if Palmer had never put that in his spreadheet or had, at least, caveated it in big red letters.

I think you must. If you are using profiles like the ones you posted originally I know I can have you making better beer than you are. Others besides me understand how this works and are getting similar results. Some of them post here.

To me the biggest appeal of homebrewing is the expectation that you will learn to do things better. I've been at this over 20 years and I'm still doing incrementally better beers and expect that trend to continue as long as I can heft a mashing oar.

That's a very noble goal but let's be sure we are leading them, not misleading them.