Rainwater Beer

Randy checks the setup before the brewfest begins.

Rainwater is an ideal base to use for making beer. It is a natural water source, free of chlorine, fluoride, and any other added chemicals. It allows the true taste of the grains and hops used in the brewing process to shine through. Specifically, rainwater is the perfect source to brew a Kolsch-style beer. This is because a Kolsch-style beer requires a water source that is incredibly soft and has a pH lower than the norm. Rainwater meets both of these requirements extremely well. Before we could brew anything, we had to run our rainwater through a series of 3 sediment filters and a UV sterilizer in order to ensure that the water would be free from contaminants and safe to drink.

The low Ph profile of rainwater closely resembles the water used by the early pioneers of brewing. It produces a clean, crisp flavor which can’t be matched with chlorinated tap water.

Once our water had been purified, we gathered the necessary materials to brew some beer. This included the grains, hops, malt extract, sugar, and yeast. We also needed a pot to boil it in, a propane burner, a wort chiller (cooling coil,) and a fermenter. With our materials gathered, we set forth brewing some beer. The process took about 4 hours to boil the grains, prime the yeast (this means that we activated or “woke up” the yeast to make sure that it would eat all the sugar we gave it and turn it into alcohol), add all the hops, and filter out the particles. The finished result was about 7 gallons of beer which we are currently fermenting. This batch should be ready to bottle in about 6 weeks. At that point the real fun of brewing begins–the tasting!

The first tasting.

For more information, visit our beer page.