Burton ale yeast and burton water - worth treating with CRS?

[mr_jolly]

I've brewed a barrel of "Young's Special" pale ale (recipe from Graham Wheeler's book) using Burton yeast from whitelabs and so far (10 days into maturing) it tastes excellent. It's taking me all my will power to not just drink it as it is!. I didn't use CRS but I did add 2 teaspoons of gypsum to the liquor (which I also boiled before using it for mashing / sparging). When the mashing was complete I tested its ph which turned out to be a bit on the high side (5.5) although, as I say, the beer tastes great so far.

I'm going to be brewing another barrel soon (might try a variation on the same recipe) but I'm wondering whether to use CRS to reduce the alkalinity from its current level of 233 mg/l of cac03 to the apparently desireable level of 30 before adding gypsum? OR should I just forget the CRS and add more gypsum during the pre-boil next time? (FYI I live just outside Burton on Trent and get Burton water).

Many thanks for your suggestions

[jubby]

(FYI I live just outside Burton on Trent and get Burton water).

Lucky bugger

I did the same thing for my last brew, boiled my liquor with the Gypsum in it as it is supposed to help with the reduction of carbonates, then racked the liquor off the precipitate when cool. Take a look at my question and answer here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=25622

[mr_jolly]

(FYI I live just outside Burton on Trent and get Burton water).

Lucky bugger

I did the same thing for my last brew, boiled my liquor with the Gypsum in it as it is supposed to help with the reduction of carbonates, then racked the liquor off the precipitate when cool. Take a look at my question and answer here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=25622

Thanks I think next time I'll just add more gypsum rather than using CRS. I didn't think living near BoT would be useful for the water until a few months ago when I started looking into brewing From what I understand 40% of the water that we get comes from boreholes and the rest from reservoirs and river sources (so at least it's 40% identical to well water!).

[subsub]

Brewerys regularly Burtonize their water. As you already have it, if it was me, I wouldn't do anything apart from adding a Campden tablet to my liqour