BEGINNER'S GUIDE IN WATER

We're going to discuss today Is everything about water, now we're also going to talk about another thing because it's a subcategory and it fits so well with water because it's the preparation for yeast. That's nutrient levels. I’ve got a lemon. I've got lime. I've got some citric acid. I got some tomato paste, a baking soda. So that first bottle of settlement cut is almost gone suboptimally put up another one. This is primarily with this hobby is all about producing something that you enjoy that you can appreciate and you can also share with others. And last but not least, no hangovers.

Next prepare a mash because if you've got this understanding, then you're able to work your way into developing your own mash your grain bill and producing your own mash based on available sugars for fermentation. And then, of course, we'll get into different stills and how they operate, then we'll demonstrate a bunch of them. We'll walk you through the whole process. Cheers to everybody out there. And we'll get this started.

Important definitions of what you use in here, ppm parts per billion ppb parts per billion. Some other requirements, Milam millirems per year, and we're talking about radioactivity, and how minimum reporting unit MRL or minimal reporting limit MRL. So it tells you what all of the acronyms used itself tells you. 

Inorganic contaminants are things that minerals, things like that have no living substance and are not organic, to follow me. Barium fluoride, nitrate, cyanide, nitrite, and thallium. Now two of those right off the bat, cyanide, and valley we already know that it's really poisonous. It's very toxic but at very low levels, which you just can't seem to get rid of, they're always there somewhere. To tell us what our average level was this one-pointed 04 and the minimum limit to report is two. So we have no violations. This is a violation code and units of measurement it tells you on this site, the source of the contaminant, where do they actually come from? a lot of these come from just Roth.

Some of its fertilizer, that's runoff from local farms. Some of that just happens to be in the groundwater itself. It all just depends on where your water source comes from. Now, we're going to discuss that shortly to where there's a stream whether it's a reservoir where there's reverse osmosis. What is your water source because that's important as well. Chloramine's core means a group of things, chlorine is used to disinfect your water, chlorine is used even in a lot of bottled water. 

Bottled water sometimes just takes the local water source and filters that it puts it in. But the truth of the matter is, is that you can take regular tap water and purify it and you do that at home with a Britta or zero water filter, which number three on the list in the United States, number three, four removing chlorine contaminants, minerals and some of those other things that you don't want. Though use a filtering system or though use ozone or ultraviolet light and know to bottle it and sell to you, these are core means we have disinfectant byproducts. And these are the total acids used in our water source. 

Makes you wonder why these are the safety concerns. Lead copper, of course, and total coliform bacteria. Coliform bacteria is nothing more than a bacteria that really doesn't cause any diseases but is linked to other bacteria that maybe if you're sensitive to it or elderly, rarely very young, and all of ours seems to be well within the range that's permissible. 

Things we've had parts per billion really affect. Runoffs from insecticides, those things that have nothing to do with the brewing industry, but tell you everything about your water itself. None of these had any ill effect unless they were out of their parameters for brewing. This will just tell you how much your water with the contaminants is biological or whether the mineral is those contaminants that are in your water. 

These are undetected contaminants but they're all cavum Oh Gus is the best arsenic. Our site describes something a little bit more aesthetic to our tap water which is turbidity really nothing more than a measurement of the clarity. 

Magnesium Magness in the Magness family, their magnesium is a portion of water that can be really helpful, and other than that there's radium.

 

What about potassium? chloride? What about sodium chloride? What about biotin? What about some of those other things that we're really looking for that we really need? 

Well, it tends to tell me that maybe they're absent, or they're just not tested for because the FDA doesn't think that they're necessary but we're going to get into that. We've got the board switched. If your water tastes good, you are the best judge of your own water content. Here's my advice to start with and now this is some of its opinions but most of it is really fact-based distilled water has everything removed from it.

All of your minerals are gone, all of your chemicals are gone and it's sort of just like it's just almost plain water with Some it's been treated, of course, ultraviolet light or ozone or even Corey.

It's been treated in order to prohibit bacterial growth and that should just lead you right to should I use distilled water for brewing for making mash or for making wine and chances are you're coming to the same conclusion because it lacks everything that you need. 

Now, this is where water and yeast work so closely together, even before you add the sugar that your yeast needs an environment which is first of all healthy, but in that healthy environment is everything that's in that water. And then you have to have food and that would be the sugar. 

The three basic pillars of all fermentation are water, sugar, and yeast, if you have to get them all three, right and there's not that hard, a lot of people use water. Springwater is a lot of runoff water from springs and carries with that as a lot of mineral content and a lot of things that are within the surface because it's spring water that tends to leave our water with a really nice pleasant flavor profile not very acidic it's also treated so it's just one form of water. 

Then, of course, you have tap water, some of it comes from spring some of it comes from reservoirs and in a reservoir, You'll have a little bit more biological elements in that water profile that are cleaned out through disinfectants not as many minerals.

Get spring water, you got all the minerals that are coming in with a reservoir where you're collecting water, then you're purifying that water for your customer base. The minerals are just not present as much, you got reverse osmosis. That's purified water that's had just about everything pulled out of it and use ultraviolet light and or ozone techniques to purify that water and provide it to you but its source can be almost anything. 

It all depends on where your water comes from. You have a water softener in the house. Your water softener removes the hardness but hardness and alkalinity kind of go together it's that inverse relationship. One goes up, the other goes down, only goes down, the other goes up. 

But it does a great job of removing the hardness out of your water. But when it does, it leaves the alkalinity behind. So of course, you'll have to treat that as well but doesn't have as much effect on the mineral content. Because those minerals do pass through but your water softeners are gonna write those up because you got water softeners, reverse osmosis, spring water, and all that stuff. 

Let's talk about something that I know we've all heard before brewers yeast are brewers salts when you're trying to treat water. If you can treat your own water to your own desires, but I would just say just be cautious because you can always overdo something.

You can definitely under pitch East because if you underpaid meaning is not put enough in it just takes forever in a day for them to develop a colony, you know, you need to have the proper oxygen level, the proper nutrient level for them to develop a colony I mean, it takes a while so if you're not putting in enough look, you could put in one green of yeast. 

I mean, that's thousands of cells. It will ferment a five-gallon batch. If all things are taken care of but always thrown in, like for wine, usually five-six grams in a satchel beer is routinely in about 11 and a half grams. I don't really throw in like 40 grams of distillers active dry yeast is the only thing that is just to ensure that you have enough yeast to get started and then it becomes survival of the fittest so you it's kind of difficult to over pitch yeast. 

It is very easy to over nutrients your yeast. It causes us to do things that you don't intend to do. So be careful if you're starting to add salts to your and those are gypsum. Gypsum is added like sulfate and potassium in sulfate and calcium are necessary for your building blocks. You know what one does matter of fact, the sulfate does a really good job of if you're making a beer of kind of mellowing out the flavor profile or your beer in calcium is really really helpful in yeast propagation and also it aids in hop extraction your hot flavors so just before warned only use gypsum if necessary another one is going to be on what is Epsom salt. 

 

Epsom salts have a tendency to soften your water just a little bit but also to lower the pH. 

There's another salt Add additive in last but not least baking soda.

The baking soda by itself has a pH of about nine but you can't measure that because it's dry, you put it in water. So if you're trying to raise the pH level into the alkalinity go from again. Seven is neutral. Anything above seven up to 14 is bass meaning alkaline. 

Below seven is acidic and all the way down here at one is going to be like Clorox bleach, battery acid. In the perfect level for as we always talk about for distilling is always somewhere in the neighborhood of 5.2, somewhere in that range, so you're kind of like almost in the middle here, you know, and are a little bit above the middle. So Baking Soda will raise your pH if you need to do that. I hope I haven't lost anybody with any of that. 

The addition of any of these please be cautious about the amounts and do some research and find out one of the easiest things for you to do is to take some of your water go online and type in water lab. and there's a place where you can send your water if you are concerned in that anal about it. I use tap water because it tastes good. 

Spring water that I could pick up because it tastes good. I use distilled water only for cutting. But if you are really interested in the flavor profile and or the basic ingredients of your water, send it off to a lab and have it tested and they will tell you what you need to add to it well.

We need to talk about how the nutrient base for yeasts. First of all, if you're going to adjust the pH level, you know we had that graph on here from one to 14 seven being in the middle. Normally you'll find that your city-provided water or whatever your municipality does, normally it's in about these 7.4 to 8.2 range from a little bit more alkaline that tends to be about the standard. 

Now, my water my city water report didn't tell me what the pH was attached to test it ours is 8.4. and that's quite all right for everything that we need to do but with that does it the same time as I know that there's a bit of hardness that goes along with that and over a period of time, we'll have a little bit of calcium buildup like in the shower nozzle, it makes it spray all over the different places. I can reduce that. 

But I don't want to add any acids to water sources coming in the house I just put up with as most people do. When I'm brewing, it's important to adjust the pH of the water and you can do that by using citric acid. 

Now, what if you don't have it? Can you get citric acid anywhere? Not really. You just got to order online and get to a brew shop via citric acid. A really good source of citric acid is a lemon.

Cut your lemon in half. You can use pH test strips. These come in many different forms but they will measure whatever it is you're looking for. Just get yourself some pH test strips or get yourself pH meter, you know, one of the two, if you're tracking that and I'd recommend that you track your pH, especially for a mash, or a Pilsner beer in particular, and some of your really good wines. 

But if you cut that lemon in half, and then test your pH and then hold it over your bucket and squeeze the lemon juice in there, stir it up, test it again. You'll find out that you've just dropped your pH and you're probably in about maybe the four or five range. If not, squeeze a little bit more lemon juice. Now if you go too you can also use lime juice. 

Lime juice will work. It takes a little bit more lime juice because it's not as acidic as lemon. Can you use that little squeeze of lemon juice things and plastic when you get to the grocery store? So don't even ask if you can use those. What if you drop it too low? 

Well, Baking soda, put a teaspoon of baking soda in there, stir it up, bring it back out and test it again and you'll see that baking soda has a wonderful effect on raising the pH back up to a more alkaline environment.

Here's a test for you: take some tomato sauce, desiccated tomato sauce, and pour a little bit into a cup. Take a taste of it, you know what tomato sauce tastes like. Take a little bit of baking soda and put that in there. What you're going to do immediately if you're going to raise the pH to a more alkaline base and when you taste it, it will be a little bit dull or bland. 

It'll start to lose its appeal as a tomato base because you're changing the pH of your tomato sauce. So while thought but it's true now Have one other thing here. This is a six-ounce can of tomato paste for three people just this past week who have called in, you got a stuck fermentation, things aren't working right. 

You've done all the other things. We've talked through it. They had an initial gravity reading, they've got a present gravity reading, things just aren't working the way the temperatures, right? All things considered. Everything seems to be going well, but it stops. 

 

What is in turbo yeast? Turbo yeast is really East with nutrients, minerals, vitamins, and a few other things and I'll share that with you. The first thing that turbo use has in it is called diammonium phosphate. Diammonium phosphate is a base phosphate that is necessary for yeast propagation for yeast health and for growth. 

 

It really does the help amino acids your use will produce a lot of amino acids on their own. But it's really wise if you have some amino acids that you can add to it to, to kind of boost a little bit, also there's free amino nitrogen, a fan that also is a partner for your amino acids. 

So anything you can add to that, which will help that environment for your yeast will be helpful. This was all vitamins and minerals. All these really, believe it or not, they're just a whole bunch of potassium and magnesium Those are your primary minerals that are there as long, as well as vitamins in that just an aid because those are starting to deplete even though they're resident when you throw grains in, if you're using grains, in particular, that level is pretty high, but it depletes very quickly. 

Will your mash ferment completely, absolutely complete without it, but you want to do the best you can to help it along the way, the one thing you can put too much ammonium phosphate in, it's kind of hard to overdo amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. Kind of hard for anybody to go crazy with just about anything. 

 

Zinc is a mineral in this mineral that is really helpful for the production specifically of ethanol, which is our goal in the first place. So all these things are already in turbo yeast. You can add them afterward if you don't have turbo yeast, and I'll get to that, and then last but not least, we have what we call ghost cells.

A ghost cell is dead yeast. It's a dead yeast cell. That's really all it is. It's a bunch of them. With this is the yeast will also cannibalize a dead yeast cell to extract all the nutrients and anything leftover in that yeast cell in order for that yeast to continue to survive, and also to grow rapidly. 

 

This is really helpful that you can really boost there are a bunch of different recipes out there for this and they all actually work. You could actually take fresh yeast and then pasteurize it when I say pasteurizer you get a yeast colony growing really, really good. If you can heat that up to about 145 degrees and maintain it for about 10 minutes. You've pasteurized it, you pasteurized beer that way you can pasture and what that does is it kills everything inside.

 

Pasteurization if you use that slurry of those dead yeast cells, along with some yeast nutrient fermax makes a great combination of each nutrient that has minerals. It has minerals, vitamins, and amino acids, and a little bit of diammonium phosphate and you put that together with your yeast, you just made a good batch of turbo yeast.