If you have the hops book (which I do) and the malt book (which I don’t) then you might want to complete the set with Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers, by John Palmer and Colin Kaminski, “which will help brewers who have long been flummoxed by the liquid’s complex chemistry.”
Yup, this book from the Brewers Publications’ Brewing Elements series is “solely devoted to the use and treatment of water throughout the brewing process. From an overview on sources, quality and geography, the book shows brewers how to read water reports, understand flavor contributions, and adjust the chemistry of brewing water. A discussion of adapting water to styles of beer, residual alkalinity, malt acidity, mash pH, brewery process water and wastewater treatment is included.”
It’s gonna get technical but if you have an interest in diving deeper into beer then this book will give you some key information because….
“If you don’t get the water right, neither will you succeed with the beer,” said Charlie Bamforth, professor of malting and brewing sciences at the University of California in a review on the book.