Glossary
Water treatment
Adjusting brewing water’s mineral content and alkalinity to suit the beer being made — in practice, mostly about reaching a workable mash pH.
Also called brewing liquor treatment, liquor treatment.
The full record
Water treatment has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
Water treatment — Adjust the mineral content and alkalinity of brewing water so the mash reaches a workable pH and the finished beer has the intended balance.
The order of operations matters and is often reversed in popular accounts. A brewer first deals with alkalinity, because that is what prevents the mash reaching a workable pH; only then are sulphate and chloride adjusted for their effect on perception.
Brewing water is traditionally called liquor, a usage that distinguishes it from water used for cleaning.
Related
- Burtonisation — The classic named treatment.
- Alkalinity — The first thing treatment addresses.
- Mash pH — The target it aims at.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.