BenB wrote:It's true about profiles being averages and sometimes unhelpful. The listed water profiles are for the local water profile by a time when analysis was available. By that time the profiles had often diverted quite significantly from the water that was available when that area became known for a certain style and by that point brewers also had available salts, acids and other ways of adjusting their water.
Even if you look at brewing texts in the 1700s they talk of using well water for dark water and river water for light beers. So define the local "profile". The London water profile is a classic example- it started quite soft but as the Thames got more and more polluted and pollution got into the shallow well water, deeper (more mineralised) wells were dug. Everyone talks about Guiness and high alkalinity (as shown in the Dublin profile). But the Guiness brewery is fed from water drawn from the River Niffey long before it goes over the limestone area that gives the high alkalinity. I seem to recall Martin Brungard having done extensive work on Irish water profiles- I hope I have remembered his conclusions correctly.
So city water profiles are an average arm-waving profile measured at a time by the point brewers were already adding salts, mixing water sources and other things to get the liquour to what they needed to make a beer that often was originally made with quite a different water source.
In terms of the original question I have no idea! I've read a lot on water (certainly enough to muddy the liqour even further!) but opinions still vary....
I think the suggestion that you add salts to the grain is that the acidic mash conditions might help dissolve certain salts. But equally adding them to the water as it heats up gives it longer to dissolve and means the mash pH will reach target quicker.
While the above picture contains true statements, it is also rather deceptive.BenB wrote:Okay so its gets even more complicated than that...
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=476312
Martin Brungard gives some very interesting info on that thread, including the advice not to over-mineralise beer, so perhaps poor dissolving by adding to liquour rather than the mash isn't a problem
Guinness currently use soft water and have done so for some little time, but when Guinness started brewing they had no soft water supply, nor on the Liffey to take that water. The Dublin Corporation entered into a contract in 1765 with the company building the Grand canal to supply water to Dublin and it was this in the dispute with Guinness. Another hundred years past before the project bringing soft water to Dublin was started. Below are extracts from The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland, a four volume series by Alfred Barnard, on his visit to St James about 1890 when it had a connection this softer water supply.
Why ignor information from books of such standing?
Beer can be brewed with low and high ion beers and anywhere in between, each with their benefits and each with their disadvantages depending what the drinker finds important. I live and started drinking in an area with moderately hard water and find it is easily to treat to make beers that suit my tastes. On the other hand there will be those who have been raised on beers made with low ion waters who need to start with such water to make a beer to their taste. What we do find is that it was areas of harder waters that had the most breweries when the industry grew at its fastest rate.
