BURTON WATERS—DRINKING AND BREWING. 27 
brewing waters, but the beers produced with these waters, 
although better in many respects than they would have been, 
had no gypsum been added, were not like Burton beers. 
The same thing may be said concerning the amount of 
sulphate of magnesia or of chloride of sodium, but individually 
they will not make a water produce beer like our Burton 
waters, so that we can but conclude that it is not to any 
one particular ingredient of the water that the Brewers are 
indebted, but to the relative proportion of all the ingredients. 
Having come to that conclusion, it is natural that Brewers 
having soft water supplies, should attempt the addition of 
these different salts in carefully calculated proportions to 
imitate Burton waters, but so far as I am able to judge, 
there is invariably a difference, which leaves the artificial 
water inferior to the natural one, and I believe all those 
chemists and brewers who have studied this question with 
any degree of care, will agree with me in acknowledging 
that up to the present time, either because our methods of 
analysis do not enable us to form correct conclusions re- 
garding the actual combination of the bases and acids found 
by analysis in a water, or for some reason connected with 
the solution of salts, we cannot artificially exactly imitate 
natural waters, but only approximately represent them. 
I think we may, however, so far support the popular 
belief in the value of gypsum in the Burton brewing waters, 
as to say that the relative proportion of calcium to magne- 
sium salts, when present in quantity, is of prime importance 
in a water for brewing pale or stock ales, and that the pro- 
portion of sodium chloride—common salt—to these salts of 
lime and magnesia has a marked influence when the water 
is used in the production of running mild ales. 
Although I might enter more particularly into the actual 
figures of these proportions, in so far as I have been led to 
a definite opinion, I think this is hardly the time or place 
for such information. 
