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Water accounts for 80-90% of the contents of most beers in the world, with alcohol, carbohydrates, proteins, and minerals making up the balance. And water is the medium where malt, adjuncts, and hops make their contributions to wort. Yet it’s the mineral composition of water that makes water a beguiling ingredient for many a practical brewers to manage. Deciphering water chemistry and adjusting the mineral composition of beer’s number one ingredient can be a major challenge, especially when water composition may change without notice, and other ingredients, like malt, also contain minerals that affect beer and brewing.

This BA Collab Hour webinar will begin with a review of large-scale, municipal water treatment and methods used at the brewery to tailor municipal- and well-waters for brewing, and then take a deep dive into a practical view of brewing water and adjustment.

Learning Objectives

• Understand key information contained in a typical, modern-day water analysis
• Calculate residual alkalinity by hand and with water calculators
• Understand brewery water treatment methods
• Estimate mash pH based on grist bill and residual alkalinity
• Recognize the minerals present in malt and their role in brewing water chemistry

About the Speaker

Ashton Lewis, Manager of Training & Technical Support

BSG

Ashton Lewis joined BSG in December of 2016 and is currently Manager of Training and Technical Support. Prior to working in the world of ingredients, Lewis was the Staff Master Brewer and Brewing Group Sales Manager for the Paul Mueller Company, living in the world of custom stainless steel. He was also a partner in the Springfield Brewing Company (SBC) in Springfield, Missouri, and SBC's master brewer from 1997 to 2019. Ashton holds a bachelor's degree in food science from Virginia Tech (1991) and a master's in food and brewing science from the University of California, Davis (1994). For the last 27 years he has worked for Brew Your Own magazine as technical editor and "Help Me, Mr. Wizard" columnist. Ashton is currently the Master Brewers Association of the Americas (MBAA) District Great Plains Technical Chair, a member of the MBAA National Technical Committee, and a lecturer at the Siebel Institute of Technology. In his spare time, he enjoys music, cooking, homebrewing, talking about beer, and playing with Excel.