Burton upon Trent water

[Kaiser]

I'm scrubbing the water profiles in Brewer's Friend and am noticing that many of them are out of whack with respect to ion balance. But that doesn't seem to be BF's fault, it only copied what was out there.

I'm particularly puzzled by the Burton upon Trent profile. It seems that almost every source out there has a different profile. Some even with a sulfate content of 800 ppm.

I even went to the web page for Burton upon Trent's water supplier and looked at the current water quality report. That lists only ~ 80 ppm for SO4 (http://www.south-staffs-water.co.uk/downloads/Hanbury_BUR.pdf). But that might be because the water source changed from what it used to be historically.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Most likely I'll drop this profile due to conflicting sources and come up with a suggestion that captures the intent of burton water.

Kai

 

[ajdelange]

My 'collection' of Burton profiles is equally diverse. Out of 8 I think I have 2 that balance. I know that the different breweries used different wells so I expect that has something to do with it. Seems to me I recall RA's that varied from right around 0 to slightly positive to about -75 (IIRC).

 

[Hermit]

Data point. Not sure it is any better than the ones you have though.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wsawdon/www/water.html

 

[Hermit]

My 'collection' of Burton profiles is equally diverse. Out of 8 I think I have 2 that balance. I know that the different breweries used different wells so I expect that has something to do with it. Seems to me I recall RA's that varied from right around 0 to slightly positive to about -100 (IIRC).

Interesting because my first guess would have been they relied on surface water since it seems to be abundant enough.

 

[ajdelange]

I can make that balance at pH 9.6 which isn't outside the realm of belief but the implied alkalinity is 259 (and RA 31) both of which are pretty high compared to the other reports I have for Burton. To make this work I assumed that 'all ppm' means all mg/L (no ppm as CaCO3). If I use ppm as CaCO3 I can't get it to balance.

 

[Hermit]

I can make that balance at pH 9.6 which isn't outside the realm of belief but the implied alkalinity is 259 (and RA 31) both of which are pretty high compared to the other reports I have for Burton. To make this work I assumed that 'all ppm' means all mg/L (no ppm as CaCO3). If I use ppm as CaCO3 I can't get it to balance.

I found this but it makes things even murkier. Page 207 has analysis of wells but they are all over the place. It looks like it is done on differing depths/water bearing formations.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Zu...ficial water analysis burton on trent&f=false

 

[Kaiser]

Thanks Hermit. But the problem with the "brewing" water profiles on the web is that they may simply perpetuate an incorrect profile.

A.J, how much difference can one expect from wells that are in the same region? Maybe Burton suffers from seasonally varying water supplies. When I checked the water company's web sites for that area of the UK I noticed that water may come from wells or reservoirs.

Kai

 

[Kaiser]

I found this but it makes things even murkier. Page 207 has analysis of wells but they are all over the place. It looks like it is done on differing depths/water bearing formations.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Zu...ficial water analysis burton on trent&f=false

Nice one. Maybe tomorrow I have time to look at this.

Kai

 

[ajdelange]

I'm not much of a geologist/hydrologist but I gather they can differ quite a bit if they tap different aquifers and even if they don't. I remember a guy who lives near me (I have quite a bit of sulfate - not by Burton standards by any means though) saying his well had no sulfate. I told him to get his money back from Ward Labs but to bring a sample by first so he'd have some ammunition. He did and, lo, it had no sulfate.

 

[Hermit]

I'm not much of a geologist/hydrologist but I gather they can differ quite a bit if they tap different aquifers and even if they don't. I remember a guy who lives near me (I have quite a bit of sulfate - not by Burton standards by any means though) saying his well had no sulfate. I told him to get his money back from Ward Labs but to bring a sample by first so he'd have some ammunition. He did and, lo, it had no sulfate.

Yeah, I'm getting the idea that it is becoming an issue of where you drilled and how deep did you drill. At least in this region Your advice to go for good beer and forget historical profiles seems to have just gotten a boost here and may be what Kai was hinting at in terms of simply tailoring a profile to expected levels.

 

[mabrungard]

An accurate analysis and summary of Burton water is presented in Section 3 here.

 

[Kaiser]

Nice one. Maybe tomorrow I have time to look at this.

I reconstructed Burton well water based on the analysis that is given in that book and this is what I found:

Ca 287 mg/l
Mg 41 mg/l
Na 113 mg/l
K 7 mg/l
Cl 85 mg/l
SO4 764 mg/l
Alkalinity 229 ppm as CaCO3

That's pretty close to what Martin found. I attached the spreadsheet I used.

One thing that's not quite clear to me is the hydration of these different salts.

 

[ajdelange]

I think you'd have to know the rules that were used for analyses like this one in order to resolve the water of hydration issue. Obviously there are an infinite number of ways to combine cations and anions with the only requirement being that the sum equals 0. Why is no calcium chloride specified? Or no potassium sulfate? Why is calcium partially associated with sulfate and partially with carbonate rather than all with sulfate? There must have been a set of rules and that set would dictate whether the masses were specified with normal water of hydration included or not.

I do note that you didn't do anything with carbonate of protoxide of iron. That's doubtless iron carbonate. The protoxide of iron is FeO and FeO + H2CO3 --> Fe++ + CO3-- + H2O

 

[Kaiser]

I think you'd have to know the rules that were used for analyses like this one in order to resolve the water of hydration issue. Obviously there are an infinite number of ways to combine cations and anions with the only requirement being that the sum equals 0. Why is no calcium chloride specified? Or no potassium sulfate? Why is calcium partially associated with sulfate and partially with carbonate rather than all with sulfate? There must have been a set of rules and that set would dictate whether the masses were specified with normal water of hydration included or not.

I was also wondering how water analysis done back then. One way is to evaporate all water and analyse the residue. But how did they identify all the salts in that residue?

I do note that you didn't do anything with carbonate of protoxide of iron. That's doubtless iron carbonate. The protoxide of iron is FeO and FeO + H2CO3 --> Fe++ + CO3-- + H2O

I wanted to end up with a balanced profile using only the 6 major ions that we care about. I also threw out the potassium for that purpose and re-balanced a bit. The idea for this exercise was to find a profile that is in line with the historical profile and can easily be built. In the case of this water I wonder if a good Pale Ale can actually made from it. I once made a English Pale with about half that mineral content and I found it rather "minerally". Even the water tasted like drywall.

I also did look into what the protoxide of iron is

Kai

 

[Hermit]

I was looking through the brewery section for any hint of recipe or water treatment and stumbled on this passage:

which, though they are unwilling to own it, I guess they doe by putting alum or vinegar into it whilst it is working, which, as Dr. Wilkes asserts, will both stop the fermentation and precipitate the lee, so as to render it potable as when it has stood a competent time to ripen."

A quick google shows alum can be used to purify water through precipitation. Would that make any difference here?

 

[Hermit]

Someone of the time tried to clone Burton Pale Ale:

Mr. Brougham* also stated in explanation "that the author of the Treatise was, at the time he wrote his article, not aware that the springs at Burton ran over a rock of gypsum, which gave them a natural impregnation ; and that circumstance had misled him, inasmuch as, in the various trials he had made to brew Burton ale, he could in no case succeed in resembling it without adding to malt and hops certain saline impregnations, chiefly gypsum."

 

[Hermit]

* The general and fallacious notion is, 1 believe, that although from the presence of sulphate of lime the Burton water is originally hard, it becomes soft by boiling; and this theory is held as a satisfactory explanation of the peculiar adaptability of the Barton water to brew good ale. Dr. Darwin, in a letter introduced into Pilkington's "History of Derbyshire," makes the following remarks in respect to the Burton waters:—"I cannot leave this account of calcareous, or hard waters, without adding that I suppose from the great affinity between calcareous earth and saccharine acid may be explained a circumstance, the theory of which has never been understood, and therefore the fact has generally been doubted, and that is, that hard water makes stronger beer than soft does. I appeal to the brewers of Burton for the fact, who have the soft water of the Trent running on one side of their brewhouses, and yet prefer universally the hard or calcareous water supplied by their pumps. I suppose there may be some saccharine acid in the malt (which is not all of it perfectly equally made into sugar by the vegetable digestive powers of the germinating barley), which, by its attracting the calcareous earth of hard water may produce a kind of mineral sugar, which, like the true sugar, may be convertable into spirit"

 

[mabrungard]

In my opinion, the Burton water quality is quite dependent upon the rate of withdrawal from those shallow wells and the local rainfall and river conditions. In its heyday, the withdrawal rate would have been high and the influence of the deep groundwater upwelling would be diluted more by the relatively unmineralized surface water and shallow groundwater. Therefore, its likely that the brewing water was less mineralized than shown in the information I received from the UK Environmental Agency. It would have still been high, but more moderate than shown. Colin says he likes sulfate at least that high in his pales.

 

[Hermit]

The one last thing is that originally all the ale ended up in oak barrels that had been steamed. Towards the end the barrels were coated but when the style was developing all of the ale was stored/aged in oak. This would have had an impact on the flavor also.

The book also states that is was all India Pale Ale for export until some underwriters wanted to recoup some of their loss from a ship wreck and had some salvage sold in England.

 

[Hermit]

In my opinion, the Burton water quality is quite dependent upon the rate of withdrawal from those shallow wells and the local rainfall and river conditions. In its heyday, the withdrawal rate would have been high and the influence of the deep groundwater upwelling would be diluted more by the relatively unmineralized surface water and shallow groundwater. Therefore, its likely that the brewing water was less mineralized than shown in the information I received from the UK Environmental Agency. It would have still been high, but more moderate than shown. Colin says he likes sulfate at least that high in his pales.

The book didn't really tell how deep the wells were exactly. It talked about the thickness of some layers and perhaps going back to his drawings you could deduce a little more information. I think your correct about the variability based on the range of numbers given at different times from the tests listed though. Perhaps the most pertinent piece of information I was able to glean was that someone cloning the beer at the time said he had to add a lot of gypsum. He was initially accusing the breweries of adulteration because he was unaware the water had high levels naturally.