As part of my daily dose of work procrastination, I've been reading a bit about how various ions can affect the taste of beer. The main points I read about seem to be:
- Sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl-) ions give an impression of malty full-bodiedness.
- Sulphate (SO4 2-) ions give an impression of crispness, and accentuate hop bitterness.
I think it would be neat to see the effects of these ions tested side-by-side. Doing two brews back-to-back with different water treatments isn't really practical for me. Even if I could be bothered, I'm not sure if I could get two identical recipes to taste the same anyway, so it doesn't make sense to use a "control" brew when I don't even know if it's well-controlled to begin with.
So here's the proposal I'd like to hear feedback on: Take a few bottles from one ready-to-drink brew, preferably a simple pale ale. One bottle is a control. Other bottles get "reasonable" additions of table salt (NaCl), gypsum salt (CaSO4), or whatever mineral one could use to deliver sodium, chloride, or sulphate ions to solution. Then taste-test the bottles side-by-side.
What this really comes down to is whether one can reliably add salts at the bottle level. Measuring out what will inevitably be mg weights of salts could be tricky without a lab scale, for example.
Ultimately, water treatment is really just a subject I'm curious about. What have you guys learned about it?