Will the real London water profile please stand up?!

[Netflyer]

The whole water chemistry of beer is facinating to me and a few folks on here have really helped me tweak my brewing water to actually mean a good deal to my final product. At first I was wanting to tweak to London to craft me up a nice Boddington's Bitter clone. The tweaking went well and the product was excellent. I started to read more here about water tweaking and recently came upon a reply to a thread I was part of that really got me checking and now I'm really curious... here is the quote (by Ajf):

According to Promash, London water has:
Cl 18 PPM
SO4 58 PPM.
That's hardly 1:1

According to Terry Foster - Pale Ale, for British ales the Cl:SO4 ratio should be between 1:5 and 1:10, or about 1:6 to 1:13 for hoppy beers (IPA's).
He also recommends SO4 of 100 - 200 ppm for normal beers, or 200 - 300 ppm for the hoppy beers (IPA's).
I find that these recommendations are very good, but with your Cl content, you would need to dilute your water with RO or distilled water, and then treat with gypsum, to meet the recommendations.

-a.

Now what is very conflicting is the different values I see for Cl and SO4 in prominent published places.

This is all the values I can find for 'London' water:

1. Promash as per above, Cl=18 ppm, SO4 = 58 that would give a ratio of .31

2. Beersmith, Cl=60 ppm, SO4=77 ratio of .77

3. TH's spreadsheet, Cl=34, SO4=32 ratio of 1.06

4. http://www.brewersfriend.com/water-chemistry/ Cl=10, SO4= 24 ratio of .41

5. Terry Foster, acclaimed beer writer, claims ratios of between 1:5 or .2 to .1 for bitters and 1:6 or .16 to 1:13 .07! for pale ales... I mean these ratios on TH's sheet and Palmers book are way in the very bitter ranges.

Anyhow, back to the original question. Will the real London water please stand up. I found a site that claimed that London water has seasonal differences and also that:

80% of our drinking water comes from storage reservoirs connected to the River Thames and the River Lee. The remaining 20% comes from boreholes connected to groundwater stores.

from http://www.londonontap.org/qanda/
but I can't yet find some official numbers for the minerals w/out having to pay to see some studies that may not even contain the data I would want to see.

If Terry is correct then the London breweries must add salts to their water. With just a quick look around I found at least 5 different ratios.

Thoughts?

 

[david_42]

London has multiple sources, like any large city, and the levels vary by source and season. This has been true for hundreds of years. To add to your agony, the malts available today are quite different from even 30 years ago.

 

[ajf]

I just looked up the water quality report for Chiswick (home of Fullers).

They don't give all the information you need, but surprisingly, they do give the Cl and SO4 concentrations, but not Ca, or Mg

The results are:
Min Mean Max
Cl 34.0 36.8 39.0
SO4 46.4 48.1 50.4
Na 23.3 24.8 27.3
Hardness as CaCO3 282 284 286

There are minor differences between this and other locations within London, but the differences are really minor.
Looks like Promash is a bit low on the Cl, and a tad high on the SO4
Beersmith looks high on both
and the spreadsheet looks good on the Cl, but a bit low on the SO4

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the details however, because by the time London started brewing modern style Ales, they were using water treatment to achieve a suitable profile.

-a.

 

[Netflyer]

Thanks so much for the details!

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the details however, because by the time London started brewing modern style Ales, they were using water treatment to achieve a suitable profile.

-a.

I figured they treated their water and I still believe the best bet is to use the Palmer inspired EZ water calc spreadsheet to bring your RA to the desired range for your SRM and bring the Cl/SO4 ratio into spec for the type of beer you are brewing. The worrisome thing if Terry is correct the Palmer numbers range seems a bit off on the high side..

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

The numbers from THs spreadsheet appear to be from Palmer's book How To Brew.

Looks like a good starting point is just to start with that stuff TF said:

According to Terry Foster - Pale Ale, for British ales the Cl:SO4 ratio should be between 1:5 and 1:10, or about 1:6 to 1:13 for hoppy beers (IPA's).
He also recommends SO4 of 100 - 200 ppm for normal beers, or 200 - 300 ppm for the hoppy beers (IPA's).

So for a Pale Ale, start in the middle (150ppm SO4) and then use the ratio (1:5 to 1:10) to yield 15-30 ppm Cl. Ima try this.

 

[Netflyer]

Right but a 1:10 ratio or 1:15 even give a number so far to the bitter end it seems ... well too far. The Very Bitter ratio is supposedly below .5 so any ratio greater than 1:2 would be increasingly very bitter .. 1:10 or .1 seems really far. I guess the question to ask here is has anyone brewed a Imperial Pale Ale with a ratio that high? And, if it not 'too far' then we should change the scale or add some clarifications like: .5 = very bitter for an American Pale ale but not for Imperial Pale ale?

 

[Seveneer]

At first I was wanting to tweak to London to craft me up a nice Boddington's Bitter clone.

It's probably worth pointing out that Boddingtons is brewed in Manchester which has soft water where as London has hard water. If you're trying to adjust your water to that used to brew Boddingtons you don't want to be aiming for a London profile.

/Phil.

 

[Netflyer]

Well really, the crux is I would like to match the Cl : SO4 ratio of whatever style I'm trying to brew. So it would be great to have the old strangebrew breweries Cl and SO4 ratio. Granted hard vs. soft is important but I'm more interested in ratio's and Residual Alkalinity... I'm really sure most breweries treat their water so it is silly to try to think the drinking water of an area is the brewing water.

 

[Seveneer]

Ok, so I live within 30 miles of London and the water is pretty much typical for the London area. According to my water report I have 31.4ppm chloride and 32.4ppm sulphate. So a ratio of 1:1 like London.

If you want to look at Manchester you could take a look here. Although the figures vary between source the ratio also looks like 1:1.

/Phil.

 

[Netflyer]

Right, thank you! That is really good information and much appreciated. What would be nice is to see how a local brewery deals with that water. Do they add Gypsum? Burton on Trent has extremely high SO4 due to the Gypsum in the soil. Do they brew with that water or do they dilute? I realize it is hard to keep a recipe totally secret but I would think a brewers brew water is a pretty well kept secret. To brew a consistant beer because of seasonal changes to the water a brewer would have to test and treat the water differently at different times of the year also. So if you measured London water has an approx. 1:1 ratio is it true that the bitters are made with 1:5 - 1:10 ratio? That would imply at least an addition of Gypsum to any London water for brewing.

Has anyone here specifically created water that had any where near a 1:5 - 1:10 ratio and brewed an ordinary, best, or special bitter with it?

I'm going to have to brew up like 5 batches of a std. 1.044 best bitter Here's my recipe:
Experimental Best Bitter #1 Cl to SO4 ratio 1:1
OG 1.044
SRM 14
IBU 34.5

8# Maris
.5# Crystal 60L or UK Crystal
.25# of Chocolate Malt
1/2 oz of Target 11% 60 min
1 oz EKG 5% 30 min
1 oz EKG 5% 0 min
I'll use Wyeast 1028 or 1968, not sure but I'll pick one and stick with it for all 5 batches.

I'll brew 5 batches of that and change the Cl to SO4 ratio 1:1,1:2,1:3,1:5,1:10 and see what I get.

Perhaps I'll follow some other UK advice and mash thick and cool, like 1 qt/lb and 152F each time too.

Tough job here but someone has to do it :rockin:

 

[ajf]

Right, thank you! That is really good information and much appreciated. What would be nice is to see how a local brewery deals with that water. Do they add Gypsum? Burton on Trent has extremely high SO4 due to the Gypsum in the soil. Do they brew with that water or do they dilute? I realize it is hard to keep a recipe totally secret but I would think a brewers brew water is a pretty well kept secret. To brew a consistant beer because of seasonal changes to the water a brewer would have to test and treat the water differently at different times of the year also. So if you measured London water has an approx. 1:1 ratio is it true that the bitters are made with 1:5 - 1:10 ratio? That would imply at least an addition of Gypsum to any London water for brewing.

Has anyone here specifically created water that had any where near a 1:5 - 1:10 ratio and brewed an ordinary, best, or special bitter with it?

I'm going to have to brew up like 5 batches of a std. 1.044 best bitter Here's my recipe:
Experimental Best Bitter #1 Cl to SO4 ratio 1:1
OG 1.044
SRM 14
IBU 34.5

8# Maris
.5# Crystal 60L or UK Crystal
.25# of Chocolate Malt
1/2 oz of Target 11% 60 min
1 oz EKG 5% 30 min
1 oz EKG 5% 0 min
I'll use Wyeast 1028 or 1968, not sure but I'll pick one and stick with it for all 5 batches.

I'll brew 5 batches of that and change the Cl to SO4 ratio 1:1,1:2,1:3,1:5,1:10 and see what I get.

Perhaps I'll follow some other UK advice and mash thick and cool, like 1 qt/lb and 152F each time too.

Tough job here but someone has to do it :rockin:

Yes, I do treat my water to yield a 1:7 ratio. As I have no way of actually measuring the Cl or SO4 (and the both vary considerably throughout the year, I'm just guessing at the 1:7, but is should be fairly close to that.
I don't brew ordinary bitters because I don't like them, but I do brew best and extra special bitters frequently. I must admit, that I have very soft water, and need to add gypsum because I have only 18 ppm Ca, and 20 ppm SO4 from the tap. without the gypsum, the beers do not taste good. With the gypsum, they taste much better, but I don't know what effect the Cl:SO4 ratio has to do with the flavor.

-a.