Mash Water Salts Calculator

Different historic styles of beer and whisky are associated with different cities and regions throughout Europe. This is because different places traditionally would have most likely used local malt but would also have been constrained to a certain extent by the profile of the water supply available to them. The water of Pilsen and Munich is soft and low in salts making it ideal for brewing pale crisp lagers. Dortmund has a lot of minerals in its water and so beers made here tend to be sweeter, malty ales, whilst the water of Burton is very hard and lends itself to the strong, dry, hoppier ales traditionally produced there. The effect of salt composition is also important in the mash phase of whisky production, dictating both flavour and alcohol yield of the wash to be used for distilling.

Table showing the main ionic components in the water supply of different historic European brewing centres.

Nowadays a lot more is understood about the ionic chemistry of water and the way liquor composition affects the brewing process than when these cities first rose as great beer producers. Such as the effect calcium has on reducing mash pH by liberating phosphate ions to the way sulphate ions increase hop utilisation during wort boiling. Depending on the raw supply used different water profiles can be mimicked by adding treatment salts such as gypsum to the brewing liquor allowing different styles of beer to be brewed almost anywhere.

Below is a tool you can use to determine the salt additions you require in your brew to copy different historic styles or tailor your liquor to your brewing needs. Simply enter the volume of your brewlength and current ionic concentrations of your water supply then change the amounts of the various common treatment salts to determine what your resultant liquor composition will be.