Has anyone ever used the Beersmith Burton water profile?

[cheeseyfeet]

As the title really, the Burton on Trent water profile in BS looks crazy to me. 700+ sulfates?

Has anyone used this without getting a minerally mess of a beer?

 

[foxbat]

I wouldn't dare try to add that much gypsum. I'm not sure I could actually dissolve it.

 

[cheeseyfeet]

My thoughts too , I'm sure my mash would need about 15g of gypsum!

I'm interested because I follow HarryBrew on YouTube and I've brewed his vacant gesture mosaic pale before and didn't think much of it, but on a recent video he mentioned that he ''burtonised' his water and wondered if that would make the difference?

 

[peebee]

Dissolving it is a bit of an issue. The new gypsum I got is very finely milled, and a heck of a lot easier to dissolve. Remember, gypsum dissolves best in cool water - don't heat it! Also dissolve it first, i.e. before any other salts, especially other calcium salts.

It's peculiar as salts go 'cos it really does affect the taste. I was playing with it in large amounts to get a Marsden's Pedigree clone. Fairly successfully too. Except...

I brew in a similar way to breweries, and have many of my beers casked and serving in about ten days. Serving in a "cask" style too (very low carbonation, out of handpump usually). And I had about three weeks to drink it before it "transformed", pretty impossible when at the time 45L was my smallest batch size. When it "transformed" all the distinctive rounded malt forward (and sulphurous, but I think that's action of yeast not gypsum) "Pedigree" character disappeared and was replaced with everything you read about gypsum; emphasises dry, hop bitterness, so on. I described it like sticking your tongue on a well used blackboard! A character that might of worked with high gravity beers?*

It was a light-bulb moment for me though: Explained why bottled Pedigree was so naff.


* EDIT: … high-ER gravity beers. Burton-on-Trent's well known export - India Pale Ale (real IPA, not the modern day stuff which can't be anything like it, or , God forbid, the 1950/70 keg or bottled stuff) was comparatively low-gravity for beer at the time - 19th century - at about OG1.060-66.

 

[peebee]

Actually ...

I wasn't following Beersmith's gypsum quantities, my trials pre-dated the addition of much of the BS water stuff. I followed Bru'n Water's take, and the advice to try the "Pale Ale" profile before diving into the "Burton" profile. The "pale ale" profile (I also use Graham Wheeler's pale profiles) had about half the gypsum of the "Burton" profile.

Still a lot, 30g in 75L of water.

 

[Clint]

Reviving this oldie...
I've just viewed the D. Heath video for ESB and he suggests Burton water profile of...
Ca 270,Mg 41,Na 113,Cl 85,s04 720 and HC03 270
I'm around 12l mash and 22l sparge so this gives me sulphate/chloride ratio of 8.5:1.
Additions as follows..
Mash
Gypsum 14.8g
Calchl 1.8g
Bicarb 3.6g
Sparge
Gypsum 25.8g
Calchl 2.1g
CRS 8.53ml

Thoughts please!

 

[Sadfield]

I'd take a lot of it with a pinch of salt. Most of it appears to be based on the assumption that Burton water was used untreated.

http://edsbeer.blogspot.com/2014/09/brewing-with-burton-water.html?m=1

 

[Clint]

Would you try it?

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Clint
with all that gypsum your mash will set like concrete lol. I would half the quantities of additions or use SS‘s water addition calculator.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

PS
this was Steve’s water profile for Bitter
150 calcium
250 sulphate
130 chloride
35 alkalinity

 

[Sadfield]

If Dave Heath recommends it's for his recipe then I wouldn't say not to. I'm just sceptical about whether many of these 'Burton' profiles actually reflect what the brewers in Burton actually mashed in with. Looking at what I've used previously it's triple the sulphate I'd normally use in a Bitter (double in the Burton Ale I've recently brewed*), so I'm not sure I'd make such a big step up straight off the bat, but that's just me.

*Graham Wheelers Burton profile from Jim's.

 

[Clint]

I've used SS's as default a few times. Wondering what DH is like.
Thanks for the replies BTW!

 

[BackToBasics]

I brewed David Heath's ESB recipe a few months ago. Just checked on brewfather and my water additions were

Mash:
Gypsum 17.74g
Calcium Chloride 3.02
Epsom salts 8.19
Bicarb 6.25

Sparge:
Gypsum 9.46g
Calcium Chloride 1.61g
Epsom salts 4.37g
Bicarb 3.33g

Sulfate:Chloride was around 8:1

Easily the biggest salts addition I've ever done but the beer turned out really well. Didn't get any hint of chalkiness or any sort of distinct mineral flavour. Definitely one that I'll brew again and I don't intend to mess with the water profile.

 

[Kit-brewer]

I'd take a lot of it with a pinch of salt. Most of it appears to be based on the assumption that Burton water was used untreated.

http://edsbeer.blogspot.com/2014/09/brewing-with-burton-water.html?m=1

They used to use a well that was located in my Church. At one point I remeber that they were thinking about reusing it due to water shortages at the time. Not sure I they did, but there are a lot of wells around Burton that the various breweris used.

 

[Sadfield]

They used to use a well that was located in my Church. At one point I remeber that they were thinking about reusing it due to water shortages at the time. Not sure I they did, but there are a lot of wells around Burton that the various breweris used.

Indeed. I've read on a couple of occasions, that the breweries used shallow wells until they got contaminated with sewage from the growing town, leading them to use deeper well that went into different, more gypsum rich geology. Don't know how true that it is.

 

[peebee]

As I was saying a while ago:

A lot of Sulphite (and Calcium) works fine for some modern style Burton bitters (i.e. OG <1.050) drunk within a month, and possibly much stronger "historical-style" beers (like early 20th century "Burton Ale" style beers, although they weren't all made in Burton!). But I'm not sure it will work for any beer served "cold and fizzy" (those complaining of "minerally" are sure to be complaining about something they don't like).

@Sadfield and @Kit-brewer point out the Burton water comes from various sources and undergo various treatments (like boiling for n minutes) and the actual amount of carbonate hardness (or "alkalinity") is quite different in the brewing waters used. There is no one "Burton" water used for brewing like many of the published water profiles suggest, there are dozens of different profiles, and many will contain very little Gypsum. I never bother about matching "carbonate" profiles and just let a water calculator do the hard work of figuring out the approximate mash pH; low for pale beers (pH2-3) high for darker beers (pH4-5), or whatever.

For my odd new-world "craft beer" attempts that get served cold and fizzy, I'll use an inane weakly mineralised profile. I've done with high sulphite content beers for now because the fine "warming, malt-enhanced" effect is so short-lived, but I might give it a go again for some of the stronger (OG 1.060+) historical beers (which never get served below 14°C anyway), those beers might be just the ticket to handle the "tongue on chalky black-board" effect of mature high-sulphite beers? Everything else is full-on mineralized water and the result served at 16°C plus, and very probably hand-pumped.