Making water

[Witch Doctor Dale]

I have DI water and want the famous Burton water, by the five gallon batch, how do I make it? 30 years since a chemistry course, I need help!

[sagnew440]

If you want to just wing it i would buy a pack of burton salts and throw that in. I build my water up from RO and use www.EZWaterCalculator.com to take care of all the thinkin.

[siwelwerd]

Question: What is this famous water you want to replicate?

Code: Select all

Source          Ca  Mg  Na  SO4  Cl  HCO3
-----------------------------------------
Promash         268 62  30  638  36  141
Noonan          275 15  25  450  30  260
Daniels         294 24  24  801  36  0
Palmer          352 24  44  820  16  320


And that's just the books on my shelf. You see that sulfate content ranges from 450-820, and bicarbonate from 0 to 320. So, it's not clear at all which water you should be emulating. Compare this to what I have listed for our part of St. Louis:

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Ca  Mg  Na SO4 Cl HCO3
--------------------------
21  15  29 41  20 110


In terms of flavor, the big thing going on consistently is the elevated sulfate content. I would just start with tap water (you do want all the other minerals there in trace amounts), and add some gypsum (Calcium Sulfate). I did 3g into the mash on the last bitter I brewed; I just calculated out that this should have given me something like 100 ppm SO4 in the finished product. My back of the envelope calculations say that on my system, 5g gypsum will elevate sulfate levels by 100 ppm in the finished product. I would start there.

Keep in mind that many authors say what is relevant is the sulfate to chloride ratio; you see above that this ranges from 15:1 (Noonan) to 50:1 (Palmer). My typical gypsum addition of 3g puts it at more like 5:1.

If you want to taste what 3g gypsum does to a Bitter, I have it on tap right now