Fuller's Water Profile: 200 Sulphate, Zero Chloride?

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Die Schwarzbier Polizei
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Gentlemen, this month I'm going to brew three Fuller's clones: 1935 Old Burton Extra, 1845 Strong Ale and ESB. Two of them (1845 and ESB), I've brewed already 4 or 5 times each, so they're not new to me. This season, however, I have to include water treatment too, for the first time, as my water supply changed and the new water is awful. So, I went for search for Fuller's water profile. And found quite a few hints on the subject.

First I found this on the AHA Recipes Section:
If you want to emulate Fuller’s water, aim for:
Ca 268 ppm, Mg 62 ppm, Na 30 ppm, SO₄ 638 ppm, Cl 36 ppm, HCO₃ 141 ppm.
I'm very far from being experienced in water treatment, but I didn't take that for the answer to my search. Learning thoroughly the subject, I noticed that those Burton Water Profiles are often dismissed by experts on the ground that nobody brewed beers on such extremely mineralized water in real life and that the brewers treated it anyway.


Then, Stan Hieronimus in his For The Love of Hops gives the exact recipe for 1845 taken from John Keeling, then Fuller's brewing director (78% Pale Malt, 19% Amber, 2% Crystal, 1% Black, 52 IBU) and some details on water profile:
Water treatment:
Key parameters: reducing naturally high carbonate levels to less than 80 parts per million;
sulphate additions to increase level above 200 ppm; calcium greater than 200 ppm

Also I found a post of 2009 on this board, where the fellow member MattHollingsworth says discussing the 1845 recipe:
I attended a tutored tasting with a rep of Fuller's taking us through this beer at the Great British Beer Festival in London in August.
This is what he had to say:
Grain: Less than 1% chocolate malt, 10% crystal, 10% amber malt, 80% pale malt (what he said).
50 ibus.
Same house yeast as all beers.
Added gypsum to water.


And, finally, I found an earlier thread on the same subject, where no conclusive answers were given, but where the highly respected patto1ro chimed in noting that
Fuller's use the municipal water supply, which they treat. They add gypsum, amongst other things.

Well. So, they add gypsum (presumably, to the London water profile available in the Brun Water spreadsheet). As I'm quite new to water treatment, it's hard to me to predict how 200 ppm of Gypsum will affect the flavour. None of my recent beers where I employed different water profiles (including profiles with high Sulphate additions) is ready yet, they are still lagering.
What I've read is that Gypsum dries the flavour and emphasizes the hops. And we know Fuller's beers as quite malty and, though firmly bitter, not particularly hoppy. Which a bit confuses me.

Long question short:
- Will I spoil my Fuller's Clones by following the Hieronimus' advice on 200 Sulphate and (presumably) 0 Chloride?
 
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Long question short:
- Will I spoil my Fuller's Clones by following the Hieronimus' advice on 200 Sulphate and (presumably) 0 Chloride?

I wouldn't presume 0 chloride. I read those (your quote, I don't have the book) as key parameters. At least 200 each of Ca and SO4. Cl level not so important, but still existent.
 
Good point. Chloride can't be Zero as they use their ground water, not a Deionized or RO.
Then it makes more sense to presume the Chloride being around 40 ppm (Brun London Profile and other sources on London water).

So, the SO/Cl ratio is about 5 to 1. Is that extreme?
Any potential to wreck a beer that should taste MALTY?
 
I'm as interested as you in others' answers!

I'm a Yank who as of yet hasn't been brave enough to try UK salt levels. Next time I brew a bitter I'll use @Northern_Brewer's suggestions in their SMaSH write-up shared not too long ago.
 
Do you mean this Northern_Brewer's thread - Learning to write recipes with a SMASH ? Will explore it.

I want to try to build a real English water, but I'm confused about where to find the right profiles. I suspect that many of those extreme Burton profiles with SO up to 800 ppm I found on the interwebz have little to do with the water they really used in traditional English brewing.
 
Do you mean this Northern_Brewer's thread - Learning to write recipes with a SMASH ? Will explore it.

I want to try to build a real English water, but I'm confused about where to find the right profiles. I suspect that many of those extreme Burton profiles with SO up to 800 ppm I found on the interwebz have little to do with the water they really used in traditional English brewing.

That's it, yes. Not to say it has anything to do with brewing Fuller's. Just a Brit I've come to trust regarding British brewing.
 
Northern_Brewer has also posted extensively in a thread relating to ESB's, I can't find it but I promise it exists and wasn't updated too long ago (weeks not years).

That or another thread had some pictures apparently taken by a Fuller's brewer as well. Maybe to help confirm the recipe and see if it contains any info?

I wonder if any UK based brewers on the forum have done a Ward's type analysis on their water? Maybe you could head over there and grab some tap water near the brewery. I'm kidding on that of course, but mildly serious about any options along those lines. Would Ward's analyze a beer sample???
 
That or another thread had some pictures apparently taken by a Fuller's brewer as well. Maybe to help confirm the recipe and see if it contains any info?
Yay! Great idea to look up there!
I long have those Fullers brewjournal pics from that thread saved on my disk. That's where I took my ESB recipe from, and have brewed it several times since. Didn't pay attention to the water treatment part though.
Now I see: "1.33 g / KG Gypsum" and "4 g / HL №3 Powder". Hmmm. What's that Powder?

Actually, the pic answered my question.
With 1.33 Gypsum per Kilo, I think I'm roughly (will calculate precisely later) in the ballpark of what S. Hieronimus suggests.
They didn't add anything but Gypsum, so I may assume the Chloride amount is the same as in Brun London Profile. And Calcium is known.
So, whether 5:1 SO/Cl ratio is extreme or not, it's how they do it, so I will recreate it.

The only thing I dont understand, what's that Powder №3? Aha, found that: it's Sodium Hydrogen Sulphate for fine pH controlling. Not needed at my homebrewing level.
 
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Any potential to wreck a beer that should taste MALTY?

I wouldn't get too hung up on that idea - British beers are all about balance. And yes, we use the correct amounts of mineralisation, rather than the half-arsed amounts used across the pond. This thread includes water recommendations from Murphys, one of the main brewing labs here which should be pretty representative of traditional styles brewed commercially here (although there has been a tendency to go less SO4, more Cl with the new generation of "juicy bitters" or whatever you want to call them :
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/...vous-about-mineral-levels.94723/#post-1044916
The thread with Fuller's brewbooks in is here :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...imperials-neipa-from-the-horses-mouth.642756/
 
Absolutely brilliant article and table from Murphy, many thanks! That's what I needed: reliable guidelines on English water profiles. I have a similar (though more detailed) table for German beers from Braumagazin.de and was searching for an English equivalent. So, here it is.

The only question left, where to place Burton Ales on that table? I brew them quite often, following recipes from R. Pattinson's blog. Mild, perhaps?
 
Absolutely brilliant article and table from Murphy, many thanks! That's what I needed: reliable guidelines on English water profiles. I have a similar (though more detailed) table for German beers from Braumagazin.de and was searching for an English equivalent. So, here it is.

The only question left, where to place Burton Ales on that table? I brew them quite often, following recipes from R. Pattinson's blog. Mild, perhaps?
Burton is known for its very high mineral levels, so in the table it would be bitter. I think it could be even a bit more extreme.

@Northern_Brewer how big of a role plays magnesium? I never paid much attention to it.... Did I miss something important?
 
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Yes, that makes sense.
I thought of the "Mild" option because in my experience the darker and stronger Burton Ales (IPAs excluded) were rather "balanced" than "bitter".
 
I've used the Murphy profiles with success. I've never been able to get the SO4 and Cl levels as high as thet suggest so I settle for getting as high as possible while keeping the ratio between the 2 as close as the Murphy ratios
 
@Northern_Brewer how big of a role plays magnesium? I never paid much attention to it.... Did I miss something important?

I suspect it's part of the picture in Yorkshire, as they have quite a lot of magnesian limestone there and so it probably contributes to the Yorkshire taste, I'd love to talk to a Tadcaster brewer about it. But I wouldn't sweat it too much.

I thought of the "Mild" option because in my experience the darker and stronger Burton Ales (IPAs excluded) were rather "balanced" than "bitter".

But IPAs are nothing to do with Burton Ales - the latter is a specific style that has been effectively extinct in the UK for 50+ years and saw its heyday 200+ years ago.

I think people get too hung up on "this water profile is "bitter" versus this profile is "malty"" in terms of how the beer comes out - you can be 100% chloride but if it has 70 IBU then it's going to be bitter! I have no particular insight but would use a bitter profile as a starting point.
 
Yep, I learned that from SUABP blog. As I understand, there's "Burton Ales" as a concrete historic style: strong, very malty and firmly bitter (but not "hoppy"), caramell-coloured darker ales. And then there's often mentioned in the interwebz "Burton Ales" as an "indication géographique", that includes everything brewed around Burton, including English IPAs. So, I excluded IPAs just in case someone would want to correct me: "not all ales in Burton were balanced, some were intentionally bitter, f. ex. IPAs".
I've brewed some old Burton recipes from the blog with IBU up to 65, and didn't find them particularly bitter after a proper aging. Maltiness was so rich, they felt rather balanced than bitter (although having high IBUs).

So, thanks for suggestion! I will start with the Bitter Profile then.
I know, that was a silly question, but I really have no idea yet how those numbers affect the flavour. My first treated-water batches, where I applied different water profiles, are still lagering. After I taste them, I'll know more :)
 
Yep, I learned that from SUABP blog. As I understand, there's "Burton Ales" as a concrete historic style: strong, very malty and firmly bitter (but not "hoppy"), caramell-coloured darker ales. And then there's often mentioned in the interwebz "Burton Ales" as an "indication géographique", that includes everything brewed around Burton, including English IPAs. So, I excluded IPAs just in case someone would want to correct me: "not all ales in Burton were balanced, some were intentionally bitter, f. ex. IPAs".
I've brewed some old Burton recipes from the blog with IBU up to 65, and didn't find them particularly bitter after a proper aging. Maltiness was so rich, they felt rather balanced than bitter (although having high IBUs).

So, thanks for suggestion! I will start with the Bitter Profile then.
I know, that was a silly question, but I really have no idea yet how those numbers affect the flavour. My first treated-water batches, where I applied different water profiles, are still lagering. After I taste them, I'll know more :)
You can get a rough idea what each of the salts is doing to the beer by dosing it to a finished beer in the glass that has low levels of these ions. It won't be the exact same thing as if it was in there from scratch but imo is surprisingly close.

I found out that I do not like high levels of sulfate above 200 ppm this way. I could confirm this afterwards by not listening to myself and brewing a burtonised IPA anyway. Had the same thing going on that I disliked at the test beer.
 
Oh, that's a good idea!
I don't like sharp bitter hoppiness in beers at all (that's why AmIPAs are exceptionally rare in my cellar) so I'm worrying a bit about spoiling my Burtons, which I love exactly for their malty richness. The proposed Sulphate addition of 200 ppm, although not 638 ppm as AHA suggests, makes me a bit nervous as it's twice as high as in any German water profile I built during my 2021 Lager Crusade (and I tried a dozen of them - from Bru'n, Staudt and several other sources).

So, this evening I will try tasting my untreated Boddington Mild 1913 with some Gypsum added.
 
Oh, that's a good idea!
I don't like sharp bitter hoppiness in beers at all (that's why AmIPAs are exceptionally rare in my cellar) so I'm worrying a bit about spoiling my Burtons, which I love exactly for their malty richness. The proposed Sulphate addition of 200 ppm, although not 638 ppm as AHA suggests, makes me a bit nervous as it's twice as high as in any German water profile I built during my 2021 Lager Crusade (and I tried a dozen of them - from Bru'n, Staudt and several other sources).

So, this evening I will try tasting my untreated Boddington Mild 1913 with some Gypsum added.
OK, to ease your nervousness a bit, I started disliking the beers probably above 400ppm and the one that would have been obviously better with half of the sulfate or less in it had above 600ppm. So your 200ppm is probably fine anyway. I just don't like to go into the extremes, but really wanted to know how it tastes.

Overall, the beer was fine, there was just this specific dryness/slight sharpness that I would have loved to be removed. It was far from undrinkable though, it was still good.

I'm not sure how important hop bitterness is to get this sensation though, maybe a mild is not bitter enough to really get it. But this is a guess, worth a try anyway.
 
... you can be 100% chloride but if it has 70 IBU then it's going to be bitter! I have no particular insight but would use a bitter profile as a starting point.

Agreed with this! I was going to say something similar but you've already done it.

It isn't really malty vs. bitter but more smooth vs. sharp - well, not sharp but something like that. You can have a malty profile but tons of hops, or a bitter profile with very little hops. "Mouthfeel" might be a better descriptor? It's not great either but - yeah, the malty / bitter thing on the ratios is but one way to think of the effect of the ratio, and probably not the best one.
 
I suspect it's part of the picture in Yorkshire, as they have quite a lot of magnesian limestone there and so it probably contributes to the Yorkshire taste, I'd love to talk to a Tadcaster brewer about it. But I wouldn't sweat it too much.

My supply is from the same aquifer as Tadcaster, but it is massive and the water isn't perfectly uniform for many reasons.

The magnesium content of my water supply is usually between 40 and 45 ppm and suspect the wells of the three remaining Tadcaster breweries have similar magnesium levels. Tadcaster might have more sulfate with large gypsum deposits to the north west and the aquifer sloping down to the east and south, water potentially flowing towards Tadcaster.

On the map linked above, Tadcaster is midway between Leeds and York. I was told Sam Smith's well is 173 feet deep, more or less the same depth as here in Durham County.

Put crudely, if I want a dry beer, alkalinity is reduced using sulfuric acid. Adding calcium chloride to raise calcium to ~150 ppm then results in 2:1, 300 ppm to 150 ppm sulfate to chloride ratio. Using 50:50 gypsum and calcium chloride results in 400 ppm sulfate, 100 ppm chloride, producing a very dry beer in need of maturing for several weeks, when it becomes what one might expect from a real Burton Beer.

For sweeter pale beers, alkalinity is reduced with CRS or hydrochloric acid with a mix of gypsum and calcium chloride to suit.

For Darker beers, Stouts, Porters, Milds, Brown Ales, alkalinity is suitably reduced using hydrochloric acid, with calcium chloride additions to raise both calcium and chloride. Darker beers can be made with less calcium than pale beers, but I usually aim for 150 ppm.

For hoppy beers, I add more hops.
 
And then there's often mentioned in the interwebz "Burton Ales" as an "indication géographique", that includes everything brewed around Burton, including English IPAs.

It may be on the internet, but I'm not sure it's a particularly helpful term to use, particularly now that there's a greater awareness of Burton Ale as a historic style, as opposed to ales from Burton.
 
So, this evening I will try tasting my untreated Boddington Mild 1913 with some Gypsum added.
Well, tried and tasted. It was about 0.3 g of Gypsum to a cup. SO ppm rate was probably in thousands.
Very little changed, to my surprise. Noticed a slight decrease in excessive tanginess of the original beer. Which I welcomed.
Probably, I had to try first this simple experiment before worrying about the high SO ruining my planned beer.
 
Well, tried and tasted. It was about 0.3 g of Gypsum to a cup. SO ppm rate was probably in thousands.
Very little changed, to my surprise. Noticed a slight decrease in excessive tanginess of the original beer. Which I welcomed.
Probably, I had to try first this simple experiment before worrying about the high SO ruining my planned beer.

If some or all of that gypsum was present in the mash, about half of its calcium remains there, and with it, phosphate, oxalate and other unwanted minerals. If some or all of that gypsum was included in the boil, about half of its calcium would deposit with cold break, retaining other minerals that would otherwise pass into the FV. But trying to change the belief by the overwhelming majority of US homebrewers, that calcium additions are unnecessary and make chewy and minerally beers will be a very difficult task. Almost impossible while those who quite obviously, by their advice, have never experienced a real, live, hand pulled cask British beer and continue to insist selling their misbeliefs to others.
 
The thing is, those ranges and recommendations come from some folks you'd call experts. I'm not saying they are right and you are wrong, far from it, so please don't think of it that way. It's just that - dangit, if we can't trust them, where do we go?

Palmer - 50 - 150 ppm CA
Bruungard - 50 - 100 ppm

I pulled those numbers from their sites just now. I would expect they've had English beer in England but... perhaps not. Or perhaps we are misreading what they are saying. They give ranges, but they don't say beer sucks outside of it. So... Anyhow, the sources for the info should be considered trustworthy, hence why it's an entrenched belief at this point.

It is an interesting question regardless of how you look at it. Thank you for your view on it, as a brewer from the UK.
 
you can be 100% chloride but if it has 70 IBU then it's going to be bitter! I have no particular insight but would use a bitter profile as a starting point.
I’ll just chime in here and say this was the whole reason I had my water tested and started getting into this. I moved in 2019 and was finding I could not brew a decent hoppy beer at the new place. Malty beers were coming out just ok. After 4-5 tries at pale ales with lousy results I decided to have my water tested.

Wards report shows my Cl is 85 and my SO is 5 (translates to 15). Thats over 5:1 Cl to SO. And that explains to me why I have not been able to make a decent hoppy beer. You have to have some SO in hoppy beers. I have another APA planned in the next couple weeks where I’m going to adjust SO up.
 
The thing is, those ranges and recommendations come from some folks you'd call experts. I'm not saying they are right and you are wrong, far from it, so please don't think of it that way. It's just that - dangit, if we can't trust them, where do we go?

They're self-appointed experts who appear to be making recommendations for British styles that bear no resemblance to actual practice in the UK. I mean dammit, adding large amounts of sulphate to brewing liquor is such a thing here that it's got its own verb! They may be experts in US beers, but beware ultracrepidarianism.

(always nice to find an excuse to use one of my favourite words...)
 
I pulled those numbers from their sites just now. I would expect they've had English beer in England but... perhaps not. Or perhaps we are misreading what they are saying. They give ranges, but they don't say beer sucks outside of it. So... Anyhow, the sources for the info should be considered trustworthy, hence why it's an entrenched belief at this point.

It is an interesting question regardless of how you look at it. Thank you for your view on it, as a brewer from the UK.

One might expect. From a British brewer's aspect, it would appear these experts believe British beers must be a failed attempt to replicate Budweiser.

I’ll just chime in here and say this was the whole reason I had my water tested and started getting into this. I moved in 2019 and was finding I could not brew a decent hoppy beer at the new place. Malty beers were coming out just ok. After 4-5 tries at pale ales with lousy results I decided to have my water tested.

Wards report shows my Cl is 85 and my SO is 5 (translates to 15). Thats over 5:1 Cl to SO. And that explains to me why I have not been able to make a decent hoppy beer. You have to have some SO in hoppy beers. I have another APA planned in the next couple weeks where I’m going to adjust SO up.

Agreed, increasing sulfate does increase the perception of hops by drying a beer. It works well in pale beers, but care should be taken not to reduce chloride to the point when fullness is lost, when the beer may become one dimensional unless aged .

Darker beers do not benefit from sulfate levels in excess of chloride, so I advise for a well hopped Stout or Porter, try to avoid sulfate above 150 ppm.
 
They're self-appointed experts who appear to be making recommendations for British styles that bear no resemblance to actual practice in the UK. I mean dammit, adding large amounts of sulphate to brewing liquor is such a thing here that it's got its own verb! They may be experts in US beers, but beware ultracrepidarianism.

(always nice to find an excuse to use one of my favourite words...)
Certain things in the US brewing community get repeated and become articles of faith, rather than reason. Don't even get me started on the LODO (low dissolved O2) advocates.
 
They're self-appointed experts who appear to be making recommendations for British styles that bear no resemblance to actual practice in the UK. I mean dammit, adding large amounts of sulphate to brewing liquor is such a thing here that it's got its own verb! They may be experts in US beers, but beware ultracrepidarianism.

(always nice to find an excuse to use one of my favourite words...)

Had to look that one up :D
 
It isn't really malty vs. bitter but more smooth vs. sharp - well, not sharp but something like that. You can have a malty profile but tons of hops, or a bitter profile with very little hops. "Mouthfeel" might be a better descriptor? It's not great either but - yeah, the malty / bitter thing on the ratios is but one way to think of the effect of the ratio, and probably not the best one.

That is what I found when playing with additions. Sulfate accentuated a bit of a crisp flavor that lets hop bitterness show more. Chloride provide a bit of a "fullness" character, maybe a touch "slick".

I also found that I needed to add quite a bit to be able to detect differences. It made me realize that, while I might notice a difference between 50 ppm and 150 ppm, I don't worry much about 40 vs 60. Well, at least with Chloride (Calcium Chloride) and Sulfate (Calcium Sulfate). When adding Epsom Salt (Magnesium Sulfate) and Table Salt (Sodium Chloride) to a beer, small amounts were much more noticeable.
 

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