Water is the forgotten step-sibling in the family of brewing ingredients. When malt and hops make their grand entrance into the fairy-tale ballroom, the string quartet stops and heads turn. Yeast is content to sneak in through the side door, but it remains always capricious, lead-stealing one moment and coyly fading into the shadows the next.
But water spends its evenings shuttling the other three from one party to the next, the unseen driver of an invisible carriage. Never in the history of civilization has a single drop of beer passed a pair of lips and prompted the imbiber to exclaim, “My, what a lovely sulfate-to-chloride ratio!”
And yet, water is essential to IPA and every other beer you’ve ever tasted. Just because we don’t notice it doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Brewers of Irish stout and Czech Pilsner have long understood that water can make or break a style. In the case of India pale ale, it was originally the water of Burton-upon-Trent that made possible the highly hopped brew of two centuries ago.