I’m looking to brew a British strong/Burton ale and I’m not quite sure if i went to do full on Burton-on-Trent water profile. While I try to brew in line with the style of beer I’m making, the sulfate and bicarbonate levels alarm me. Has anyone brewed this style and used that water profile? Or what water profile would anyone recommend? I just don’t want to end up with something over minerally.
Other brewers have confirmed this to me: The ionic content in most reputable Burton water profiles is a bit much in most brewing. Its too much! In my research of the Burton hydrogeology, I found that the wells at the best Burton breweries had a significant inflow and mixing of shallow groundwater that dilutes the very concentrated groundwater from the deep aquifer. So most Burton breweries weren’t using the full strength deep groundwater.
In my opinion, employing the Pale Ale profile from Bru’n Water is a good compromise that better approximates what a nice, minerally ale water might be. I’ve used it a lot in my pale ales and I like the minerality without it getting too overwhelming. It has about 300 ppm sulfate and that might be a bit too much for some drinkers. As a starting point, I recommend that you include at least 200 ppm sulfate in your water and see if you like that.
To test if you should use more sulfate in your beers, I suggest the following testing. After you’ve brewed the batch, add a ‘thin’ pinch of gypsum powder to a pint of the finished beer and taste to see if it improved the beer in your opinion. That gypsum dose should bump the overall sulfate content in that beer by about 100 ppm and you can use that result to decide if the full Pale Ale profile is something you’d like to use.
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I kind of thought that bringing the sulfate down to 150-300ppm is what people are doing. I will probably do the middle ground of 200ppm. The other level that was concerning is the bicarbonate level. I don’t want to raise the Ph. too high. I know the higher ph. will bring out the malt character more. (I learned this with my Irish stout that the ph. was too low and adding a pinch of baking soda back into the beer brought up the ph. and brought out more of the malt character) but i also don’t want to drown out the bitterness or hop character.
A raw water profile’s bicarbonate content is only there as a placeholder to balance the cations and anions and it shouldn’t be considered a target. Use the grainbill and water chemistry to calculate what the actual mashing water bicarbonate content should be.
If a lot of gypsum is used on the water profile to bring the sulfate content to 300 ppm, it is possible that a tiny bit of alkalinity might have to be added to the mashing water. But that’s rare. Do keep the mashing pH in the 5.3 to 5.4 range. If you’re going to add a bunch dry hopping to a beer or its post-fermentation pH isn’t low enough, do be ready to add a bit more acid to the finished beer to keep the final beer pH below 4.4. Dry hopping does raise beer pH.
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