Do you treat your water to compliment your grainbill and style? A typical Bitter should be a pretty safe bet with suitable water treatment.Meatymc wrote: ↑Tue Oct 18, 2022 10:26 amLikewise - just seem to be more successful at brewing more hoppy beers although I suspect the hops mask some imperfections that would be noticeable in a mild or simple bitter - the latter of which I have until now been less than successful with. Having said that, porters and stouts haven't been a problem.
Pale malt with up to 10% adjunct (such as torrified wheat or flaked maize) and up to 5% crystal of colour to suit your taste should result in a run of the mill Bitter. Bittered to 25 to 30 IBU with hop of choice at start of boil, topped up to 30 to 35 IBU by aroma hops late. Water somewhere around 150 ppm calcium with 2 or 3 to 1 sulphate to chloride ratio with alkalinity reduced to 25 ppm as CaCO3 and Bob should be your uncle.
Looked at Northallerton on Yorkshire Water site and it seemed consistent during 2019, although I saw they were altering pipework for what might be a ring network covering a larger area. There was a printing error for one of the sulphate figures as their average figure doesn't compute, but the average figure fits well for ground water in that region. Towards the end of the 19th century a Darlington brewing company, Pugh's I think, established a large state of the art brewery just northeast of where the Great North Road was crossed by the railway. I'm quite confident that site was chosen not just for transport links, but also the water below.
From Yorkshire Water I would assume, Ca 69ppm, Mg 15ppm, Na 13.7ppm, SO4 110ppm, Chloride 17ppm with alkalinity 125 ppm as CaCO3, but an analysis would be safer and wiser. However, as a rough guide and back of the envelope calculation for bitter, I would try adding 1 ml CRS per 2 litres, 1 gm Gypsum per 5 litres and 1 gm of calcium chloride flake per 8 litres of all brewing liquor as a starting point. Sulphate adds nothing advantageous flavourwise to Stouts or Porters, so maybe 1 gm of calcium chloride per 3 litres of brewing liquor and half the quantity of CRS as for a bitter.
I'd appreciate your thoughts and any response you might have.