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Author Topic: Tree House Brewing Water Profile  (Read 8675 times)

Offline Kutaka

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Re: Tree House Brewing Water Profile
« Reply #15 on: November 08, 2017, 08:13:59 pm »
The best water expert on the internet has already replied to this thread.  If he doesn't have an answer you want to hear, then Tree House really does have some magic water there.

Offline hopfenundmalz

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Re: Tree House Brewing Water Profile
« Reply #16 on: November 09, 2017, 07:00:10 am »
KCl tastes pretty bad as a direct sub for salt on food.  Maybe it tastes ok diluted in beer?  Don't want to find out.  Determining the 'magical' mystery water from over hyped juice beer breweries is not worth chasing.
+1 on the hype

Everyone commenting here is a paying member of this association and has a right to leverage this forum.  Everyone likes different styles, has different tastes, has different learning interests, and has different levels of knowledge.  This is less about "chasing" water profiles but more about learning and understanding the dynamics at play.  I still haven't heard an aligned or confident rationale on how a finished beer can have such low calcium and hardness but such high sulfates and chlorides.  I'm particularly interested because I (my opinion) find Tree House beer to be beautifully crafted with fantastic aroma, incredible taste, perfectly balanced, with incredible mouth-feel.  But that's ok...if people aren't interested in this particular thread then they should just move onto the next one.  I take no offense to that.  That's what I do when I see threads that don't pique my interest.  So, I'd be happy to hear any more rationale you all might have for some of the questions I've posed here.  Otherwise, I'm sure there are some great "Do you like NEIPAs" threads out there for a good old beer style debate.   

MgCl is used by some to boost the Cl in their Czech beers. I don’t know if that trick would work as the Mg would go up, maybe too high.

I think some good points are raise in the Scott Janish link. At the bottom he has measurements from his water and finished beer. The levels don’t look remarkably different from the treehouse beer. Some of the minerals have different levels though. I think his speculation on malt type needs a comment - he used Rahr in his beer, do you know what Treehouse uses? John Kimmich has said that Heady uses Pearl malt from the UK for the base malt.

John Palmers water book has a table on page 178 that shows how a 1.040 beer made with de-mineralized water has chloride levels of 130 ppm. The SO4 was not too high at 15ppm.

More questions than answers, but malt might be one of the keys to the mineral profile.

I don’t know if this helps, but it isn’t an intriguing area.
Jeff Rankert
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Ann Arbor Brewers Guild
Home-brewing, not just a hobby, it is a lifestyle!

Offline BitterItDown

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Re: Tree House Brewing Water Profile
« Reply #17 on: November 12, 2017, 11:45:18 am »
Scott Janish covers mouthfeel softness and haze.

Speaking from personal experience, I have successfully made low calcium - high sulfate and/or chloride - waters (beers) using calcium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid.  This was starting with distilled or de-ionized water.  Being strong bases and acids they do require precision and a modicum of caution when working with them (to avoid inhalation/burning oneself and a Ping-Pong pH effect...).  I believe the British work with these acids more than Americans (CRS - i.e. Carbonate Reducing Solution).  Jim's Beer Kit is a good British homebrew forum.

There are several water calculators that account for these acids but I don't know that any allow the use of the proprietary CRS solution.

The resulting beers were very good indeed.  I received compliments on how "soft and smooth" they were.  However, that may not be totally attributed to water as much as it is the entire process (water included): quality, fresh ingredients, recipe, low bittering addition with smooth bittering hops (i.e. Magnum), lower boil intensity, fresh beer (not overly oxidized), yeast, etc...