Copper is a common metal used in brewing equipment, but does it leech into your brewing water and what effect does it have on your beer?
How does Copper affect your beer?
Copper can be a beneficial chelating agent in your brewing water. Meaning that it will bind to other particles and prevent haze. But this only happens in very low concentrations, at higher concentrations it can create a metallic flavor and can be harmful to yeast. It can also cause oxidation which can lower the shelf life of the beer.
Does Copper Equipment affect Copper concentrations?
There’s ongoing debate about whether copper leaches from brewing equipment into water or wort during the brewing process. Most brewers agree that if your water doesn’t already contain high levels of copper, any copper introduced from brewing equipment is likely at a low enough concentration that it won’t cause negative effects.
In fact, some brewers intentionally expose their wort to a small amount of copper—such as copper tubing—to achieve a trace level of copper that can be beneficial to yeast health. Copper kettles and tubing have been used in brewing for centuries and, when used properly, shouldn’t negatively impact your brew.
However, if you’re concerned about copper contamination from your equipment, the only way to be certain is to have your water and wort tested at different stages of the brewing process through laboratory analysis.
Copper Amounts in Brewing Water
Copper can become detrimental to your beer at low concentrations. To avoid these negative effects, it needs to be kept at below 1 ppm.
To receive the beneficial effects of copper it needs to be at approximately 0.1 ppm.
Testing your water’s Copper levels
To determine the Copper concentration in your water, you should use the CraftPro Master Brewer’s Test Kit.
The Craft Pro In-Lab test kit will let you send in a sample to our laboratory to have it tested for copper and 14 other parameters that are critical to brewing such as magnesium, chloride, and sulfate. As well as two brewing specific calculations that affect your water profile.
The CraftPro Master Brewer’s Test Kit makes it easy to get your results. After you order your test kit you’ll get everything you need to collect a sample and send it to our lab. Once we analyze your sample, we’ll send you an easy-to-read, electronic report with exact concentrations and calculations done for your sample.
How to remove Copper from brewing water
If your water is near the limit for copper, then using stainless steel equipment instead of copper is a way to minimize any additional copper from being introduced during the brewing process.
If you are already using Copper equipment, switching to stainless steel is likely too expensive of a change and filtration can be used instead.
Reverse Osmosis Filtration has become extremely popular in the brewing community. This is because it will take your water profile to a blank slate. This is an effective way to remove everything you do not want in your water, but it will also remove everything else.
If you are using a reverse osmosis filtration system, you will need to build your own water profile by adding the minerals back in.
How to Increase Copper Concentrations.
If you want to increase copper concentrations, simply adding a few inches of copper tubing into the wort can give you a beneficial level of copper. This copper tubing can be repeatedly used between brews.
