adding salts based on Brewsmith water tool

Hey all,

I plugged in the numbers to Beersmith using Burton on Trent as a target profile (for an imperial IPA) and the amounts the software suggests I add are as follows:

Gypsum 36.1 grams
Epsom 22.7
CaCl 1.8
Baking Soda 9.8
Chalk 8.0


I am just learning about water conditioning so I wanted to check these numbers out with some folks who know more than me. I am using RO water with a TDS of around 11. Do these numbers seem right? To high? To low? out of balance?

Thanks for the help.

how much water is this going into?

10.6 gallons total. Preboil 7.25, post boil 6.

I am by no means an expert on this stuff, and have only been messing with water chemistry for 6 months or so, but your numbers look out of whack to me. Specifically, the baking soda. The profile I have for Burton shows 30ppm Sodium. If you put as much baking soda in as you have listed, the sodium will be way too high (and so will the bicarbonates).

I messed with ProMash's water calculator and got these additions to dose 10.6 gallons:

Gypsum: 31.8g
Epsom: 22.3g
CaCl: 3.2g
Baking Soda: 3.2g
Chalk: 6.4g

I used "distilled" water as the base water, and these additions give me the following profile:

Ca: 270 ppm (target for Burton: 268)
Mg: 55 ppm (target for Burton: 62)
Na: 22 ppm (target for Burton: 30)
SO4: 659 ppm (target for Burton 638)
Cl: 38 ppm (target for Burton 36)
HCO3: 151 ppm (target for Burton 141)

unionrdr said:

I'm going to use distilled water myself,seemed like the most logical way to do it economically. It seems to me that someplace said that Burtonizing the water accentuates the hop profile or something to that effect.?

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Yeah. That bit is about the ratio of chlorides to sulfates mainly. More sulfates than chlorides and you accentuate hops. More chlorides and sulfates and you accentuate malt.

Burton's water is REALLY hard and REALLY high in sulfates.

Yea, when putting the Burton numbers in most calculators, they show it to be too high and would cause over bittering. But my previous numbers from Beersmith were way high.

unionrdr said:

LD Carlson lists their ingredients as papain & gypsum.

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Papain is just for clarity, so all you are really adding to the water chemistry is gypsum, which contributes calcium and sulfates. It won't make your water look like "burton water", but it will jack up the sulfates in your water to accentuate hops.

You can just add gypsum and get the same effect as those "burton salts".

unionrdr said:

Well,so much for shortcuts. Now I'll have to find what adds to the malt side to balance it out some. Have to look at some more info on this...

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To bring the malt forward, you need Chloride. You can get Calcium Chloride at your LHBS to up the chlorides.

edit: you can also add good old NaCl salt to up chlorides, but you have to watch the sodium addition. and you have to use canning/kosher salt (salt without iodine added).

jedheuer said:

10.6 gallons total. Preboil 7.25, post boil 6.

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You would want to use 6 gallons as your volume for additions then. Some of those numbers look a bit high for 6 gallons. I know BeerSmith "best fits" the additions so you get a little over on some and a little under on others.

helibrewer said:

You would want to use 6 gallons as your volume for additions then. Some of those numbers look a bit high for 6 gallons. I know BeerSmith "best fits" the additions so you get a little over on some and a little under on others.

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This is probably what I did wrong then. I used 10.5 as the water volume, not realizing that it will (mostly) all end up in the kettle minus whatever get left in the mash.

helibrewer said:

You would want to use 6 gallons as your volume for additions then. Some of those numbers look a bit high for 6 gallons. I know BeerSmith "best fits" the additions so you get a little over on some and a little under on others.

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I disagree here.

The water profile for burton water is what they get out of the tap in Burton. So, the levels of minerals and whatnot (IMO) should be added to the full volume of water used to make the beer.

When you boil it, the levels will concentrate.... but they will also concentrate in the water that a Burton-based brewery uses, too.