BEGINNER'S GUIDE #4 WATER

welcome all of you hobbyists distillers brewers wine makers yep I'm George and as always we are excited to have you here all this young well now that we're back you know that we've been doing a series of a beginner like distilling videos and so this is actually the fourth of those videos and on the first three remember the first one was really just kind of like basic equipment and stuff you kind of need to get started and then we did yeast we covered all the yeasts and those are just the things we just absolutely needed to know to get started we did everything we could about sugars remember we went this far into a topic that was that deep up and finally we are now at the water we are going to discuss water today and hopefully we can enlighten you on some of the things that we've learned or that we know or that we've researched and that we've experimented with so one of these items in front of me have to do with you well they have everything to do when it comes to water yes with the exception of one and that's this one I just want to show you this is a it's just an example I just wanted to show you what my copper springs look like after I had them sitting in that that solution that we made when we made that solution on the tips and tricks video yeah we did that and that's what they looked like so they're ready to go I set those aside now in this description and what we're going to discuss today is everything about h2o water okay and this one this hopefully this will enlighten everybody and kind of give you that warm fuzzy feeling inside that you're really on the right track trust me you more than likely you are on the right track provided whatever you taste tastes okay to you yes now we're also going to talk about another thing because it's a subcategory aliy a subcategory and it fits so well with water because it's the preparation for yeast and that's the nutrient levels so um as we discuss this I've got a lemon I've got a lime I've got some citric acid I guess some tomato paste of course I got some baking soda oh yeah and last but not least bottle of the settlements cut is almost gone about time I open up another one but then again isn't that what this whole hobby is all about so well I'm going to open this one in pour shot yep I don't have to tell you you can watch me do that this is primarily what this hobby is all about is about producing something that you enjoy that you can appreciate and you can also share with others and last but not least don't hangovers kiss the hangovers goodbye okay and we'll follow through of course we'll take it from here in our next video we'll discuss preparing a mash because if you've got this understood 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 and then we'll demonstrate a bunch of them and we'll walk you through the whole process cheers to everybody out there and we'll get this started mmm now first of all I'm going to need to zoom in just a little bit so you can see what I have because I downloaded my own city's water profile and you can do this as well just just go to your city's website um and go to the water distribution portion of your city and if you click on that any reputable city is gonna have to because there's a federal law there's a state laws all over the United States that require them to report of water quality in your locality so just download it look at it it'll tell you a whole lot about your water but it doesn't tell you enough and I'll share that with you and why now this is actually page two of our water report which is uh six pages in length and it it kind of it with what this does is gives you a background on important definitions of what you use in here ppm parts per million PPP parts per billion some other requirements millaa millaa REMS per year and we're talking that radioactivity and how minimum reporting unit mrl or minimal reporting limit mrl so it tells you what all of the the acronyms used in the chart itself tells you so don't skip this page this is actually page two the very first page of course is the I love me you know I'm a great wonderful place and I'm providing all the I'm providing the best you could possibly get and in a lot of cases that is true but you know that let your conscience be your guide all right and I use a rubberband here here's what I'll do I had these all printed up because of course they they come to you in PDF or depending on how your city does it so we'll peel this off and what mine tells me is and I'm gonna highlight some of the things that may be important and some of the things that probably aren't so important but here's an organic contaminants now in organic contaminants or things that minerals things like that that have no living substance and or are not organic to you follow me barium fluoride nitrate cyanide nitrite and thallium now two of those you know right off the bat you know look cyanide and thallium we already know that is really poisonous okay it's very toxic but at very very very low levels which you just can't seem to get rid of they're always there somewhere and thank goodness that we've got a requirement to test for that to tell us what our average level was this one was point zero four and the minimum limit to report is two so we have no violations this is a violation code and units of measurement and it tells you on this side you're the source of the contaminant where did they actually come from and a lot of these come from just Roth some of its fertilizer that's runoff from local farms some of it just happens to be in the groundwater itself it all it all just depends on where your water source comes from now we're going to discuss that shortly to is whether it's a stream whether it's a reservoir where there's reverse osmosis what are the what is your water source because that's important as well chloramines poor means are is a group of things and remember chlorine is used to disinfect your water I mean it's sort of it's as a matter of fact chlorine is used in even in a lot of bottled water bottled water sometimes just takes the local water source and filters that it puts that in but now I'm not trying to stab marketers in the back here but the truth of the matter is is that you can take regular tap water and purify it you do that at home with a Brita or a zero water filter which all by the way is number three on the list in the United States number three for removing chlorine contaminants minerals and some of those other things that you don't want so they'll use this filtering system or they'll use ozone or ultraviolet light and no bottle it and sell to you not a bad idea okay so these are our core means then we have disinfectant byproducts and these are the total acids used in our water source now first of all you know I have haven't really gotten to anything that is really specific to brewing yeah 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 very very young in all of ours seems to be well within the range that's permissible here are some things we've have parts-per-billion all these have one here these are context that none of these as a matter of fact really effect these are just run offs from insecticides those things that have nothing to do with the brewing industry but tell you everything about your water itself now how far have I gotten I've gotten I'm gonna page 3 of 6 actually of 5 because I only printed 5 of them and we really haven't gotten to anything except for the chlorine and none of these have any ill effect unless they were out of their parameters were brewing so I've got this whole list of things this will just tell you how much your water what with the contaminants and whether they're biological or whether they're mineral or those contaminants that are in your water these are undetected contaminants go figure I've got a whole list here where none were detected but they're all in there k diem Oh Gus asbestos arsenic then finally our last page really kind of describes something that's a little bit more esthetic to our tap water which is turbidity turbidity really is nothing more than a measurement of the clarity you know see the pure it's not our water tends to be really clear Oh and now mag nice in the mag nice family there magnesium is a constituent or a portion of water that is can be really really helpful that we're going to get to that so I've got one and other than that there's radium so if I remove this you'll notice that there's nothing else left so what did my water report actually tell me not a Dern thing that I really needed to know which was 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 an absent or they're just not tested for because the FDA doesn't think that they're necessary I don't care well we're going to get in today we've got the board switched and there's a lot of information here listen if you're interested of course subscribe you know comment below and all that but if you just go to the web to the I'm sorry to the YouTube channel itself you know type in the YouTube channel barley and hops brewing and you know click the first one it opens up the channel and you can go to playlist and open up beginners guide and it will list these videos in order or you can you know playlist on heating elements playlist on different stills but a whole bunch of different playlists in there so it kind of concentrates your search ok um gosh we there's so much you know what let's just say that tell you this much if your water tastes good you are the best judge of your own water content so here's my advice to start with and now this is some of its opinion but most of it is really fact-based distilled water has everything removed from it okay 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 chlorine it's been treated in order to prohibit bacterial growth think about that and that should just lead you right to should I use distilled water for brewing for making a mash or for making wine and chances are you come to the same conclusion probably not unless you're prepared to add a whole bunch of stuff to it because it lacks everything that you need see now this is where water and yeast work so closely together even before you add the sugar is 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 so you see how these three connect and become so important the three basic pillars of all fermentations water sugar yeast and if you got to get them all three right and there's not that hard come okay Oh a lot of people use water oh and I was going to say spring water spring water is a lot of runoff water from Springs and wood 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 tend to leave our water with a really nice Pleasant flavor profile not very acidic and it's also treated so it's just one form of water then you of course you have tap water and tap water some of it comes from Springs 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 and not as much minerals it kind of makes sense you know you get spring water you've got all the minerals that are coming in with a reservoir where you're collecting water and then you're purifying that water for your customer base the minerals are just not present as much okay they've 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 okay now we have one other form of water that's provided and that all depends on where your water comes from and that is you have a water softener in the house the water source up booze yeah Wow your water softener removes the hardness but a hardness and alkalinity kind of go together you know it's that inverse relationship you know and 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 doesn't have as much effect on the mineral content because those minerals do pass through but your water softeners I'm not even going to write those up there because you got water softeners reverse osmosis spring water and all that stuff let's let's talk about something that's I know we've all heard before brewers yeast of Brewers salts when you're trying to treat water okay it you can treat your own water to your own desires but I would just say just be cautious because you could always overdo something here's a question George can I over pitch yeast well you can definitely under pitch East because if you under pick meaning 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 though the proper nutrient level for them to you know develop a colony I mean it takes a while so if you 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 it ferment a five gallon batch absolutely eventually if all things are taken care of okay but we always throw in like for wine it usually in a five to six grams in a satchel beer is routinely in about eleven and a half grams I know we throw in like 40 grams of distillers active dry yeast it the only thing that is it's 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 nutrient your yeast what happens when you do that well it causes you needs to do things that you don't intend it to do so be careful if you're starting to add salt to your and those are gypsum yep yeah you know Jim Gibson um really all this adding is like sulfate and potassium sulfate and calcium and calcium and those are necessary for your building blocks you know one doesn't matter of fact a sulfate does a really good job of if you're making a beer of kind of mellowing out the flavor profile in your beer and the calcium is really really helpful in yeast propagation and also it aids in hop extraction you know your hop flavors so just be forewarned you know only use gypsum if necessary another one is going to be Oh what is it oh yeah Epsom salt epsom salts and epsom salts has has a tendency to soften your water just a little bit but also to lower the ph oh gosh yet sodium chloride there's another salt add additive and oh yeah last but not least baking soda the baking soda by itself as a pH of about nine but you can't measure that could just dry yeah you put it in water so if you're trying to raise the pH level into the alkalinity let's go from some again oh gosh let's do this seven is neutral anything above seven up to 14 is base meaning alkaline anything below 7 is acidic alright and all the way down here at one is going to be like Clorox bleach battery acid stuff like that okay so in the perfect level for as we always talked about for distilling is somewhere in the neighborhood of five point two somewhere in that range so you're kind of like almost in the middle here you know you know are a little bit above the middle so baking soda will raise your pH if you need to do that alright I hope I haven't lost anybody Oh with any of that I don't think so oh yeah the addition of any of these please be cautious about the amounts and do some research and find 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 you can send your water off if you if you are that concern in that anal about it I use the tap water because it tastes good or spring water that I can pick up because it tastes good I use distilled water only for cutting but if you're really really interested and concerned about 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 that brings us very yeah not enough room boom almost a blank page it's blank now but it won't be in just a second because we need to talk about now 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 1 to 14 7 being in the middle in normally you'll find that your city provided water or your whatever your municipality does normally it's in about these 7.4 to 8.2 range some a little bit more alkaline alright and that's that tends to be about the standard now remember my water my city water report didn't tell me what the pH was I've had to test it ours is 8.4 and that's quite all right for everything that we need to do but what that does at the same time is 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 you know like in the shower nozzle it makes it spray all over the different places yeah so I know that that's there I can reduce that but I don't want to add any acids to my water sources or coming in the house I just put up with like most people do now but 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 is it if what if you don't have sit can you get citric acid anywhere I'm not really you just got to order online and get to a brew shop use 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 hit yourself a pH meter you know one or two if you're if you're tracking that and I'd recommend that you track your pH especially for a mash or on a Pilsen or beer in particular and some of your really 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 huh you'll find out that you've just dropped your pH and you're probably in about maybe the 4 or 5 range if not squeeze a little bit more lemon juice now if you go too far you can also use lime juice ok lime juice will work it takes a little bit more lime juice because it's not as acidic as a lemon a lemon is really good can you use those little squeeze or lemon juice things and plastic ones you get at the grocery store absolutely so don't even ask yes you can use those what if you drop it too low well use some 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 just a can of 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 put that in there what you're going to do immediately is you're gonna 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 of a tomato base and that's because you're changing the pH of your tomato sauce mmm it's a wild thought but it's it's true now I have one other thing here this is a six ounce can of tomato paste and now for three people just this past week who have called in and I said hey okay 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 additional 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 I have one caller who said I don't know what it is but this has happened to the last four batches that I've done and I don't I just don't understand it and every time I use these ingredients it stops and it stops about 1/3 the way through fermentation just sits there so I said you're not gonna believe this but and please don't laugh go out and get you a six ounce can of tomato paste and add that in about three hours later I got a phone call back said George you're not gonna believe it I said yes I will just tell me it is to activate it and started going nuts and that solved my problem and I'll do that from now on I said you're welcome thank you very much and appreciate your call this has happened over and over again now here's what I caution you about believe it or not this has happened I had somebody call this has been some time said hey what do I do I said put a six ounce can of tomato paste in there that's a great nutrient and it's also a great addition to immediately drop the pH now will it turn a little red oh absolutely but that'll go away don't worry about it so drop in a can of six a six ounce can of tomato paste and that should solve all your problems the response I got back was hey can I use that can again I forgot to tell them I open the can up and dump the contents you just usually needs to use the can over and over again I'm like all right sometimes you just have to be a little bit more explicit yes please open the can dump the contents and use that all right what is in turbo yeast I hear this often as well and I'm gonna give me a chance to turn off this fan there get a little chilly out here okay I get this a lot as well is about turbo yeast um what is in turbo yeast well 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 yeast has in it is called diammonium phosphate ah there we go I'll get that right and diammonium phosphate is a base phosphate that is necessary for yeast propagation for yeast health and for growth okay and it really does does help um amino acids now your yeast 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 that to kind of boost a little bit and also there's free amino nitrogen fa n 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 of course would be helpful oh this isn't all vitamins and minerals now all these are really believe it or not they're just a whole bunch of potassium and magnesium those are your primary minerals that are there and as long and as well as vitamins and that's again it's just an aid because those start to deplete even though their resident when you throw a grains in if you're using grains in particular that level is pretty high but it depletes very very quickly will your mash from it completely absolutely it'll complete without it but you want to do the best you can to help it along the way now the one thing that you you can put too much ammonium phosphate in okay it's kind of hard to overdo with Meno acids vitamins and minerals kind of hard to overdo that of course anybody can go crazy with just about anything zinc is a mineral in this mineral is really really helpful for the production specifically of ethanol which is our goal in the first place so that's already that all these things are already in turbo yeast you can add them afterwards 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 a dead yeast it's a dead yeast cell as all that's really all it is it's a bunch of them umm what this is you see the yeast will also cannibalize a dead yeast cell to extract all the nutrients and anything left over 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 pasteurized you get a yeast colony growing really really good if you can heat that up to about 145 degrees and maintain it for about ten minutes you've pasteurized it you pasteurize beer that way you can pass her and what that does is he kills everything inside Pasteur is a if you use that slurry of those dead yeast cells along with some yeast nutrient the firm acts makes a great combination of yeast nutrient which 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've just made a good batch our turbo yeast you follow me you've made your own turbo yeast in that case you could also use just daddy distillers active dry yeast and the dosage is a tablespoon of yeast to two tablespoons of firm ax East nutrient and for all intensive purposes lacking any ghost cells and some the addition of diammonium phosphate called DAP you've actually made some turbo yeast in itself so the the the old folk I hear this all the time is George I'm not sure whether I should use turbo yeast or not because I hear it gives an off flavor well you don't want the easiest thing to blame if you've done something incorrect in your fermentation and/or your process the easiest thing to blame is the one thing that you just have no idea of or you can't control or you don't understand that's the East so for those who say I can taste it if you use turbo yeast I question that for those who say turbo yeast is useless and it causes too many problems I question that because in fact if you do know what you're doing and you add your yeast and you include some vitamins minerals some amino acids some ghost cells and maybe you thought a little bit of diammonium phosphate in there you're doing nothing more than using turbo yeast on your own come on call it what it really is okay so that should wrap up just about everything we need to know about water yeast nutrient the balance of all of those of and this information is in not close hold it is everywhere so please do some research give us a call shoot us an email don't make a comment below share us with your friends at least if nothing else because we like nothing more than to share all the information we possibly can with this community just to make you better at what you do we are not accusing anybody of doing anything incorrect just want to arm you with the information so that whatever you do you are successful your success is totally totally responsible for our success and I do appreciate that happy distilling

Channel: Barley and Hops Brewing

Views: 112,800

Keywords: neutral spirit, sugar wash, barlerandhops, hops, home, Sugar (Ingredient), sugar mash, distilling, barley, corn sugar vs cane sugar, corn sugar mash recipe, making a wash for distilling, running a still for the first time, first distillation, using yeast, mooshine, whiskey, making rum, making vodka, bourbon, baby step bourbon, making bourbon at home, sugar

Id: wjBB6uNM0KA

Length: 36min 25sec (2185 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2019