BrewPhase

Chloride : sulfate ratio

Enter chloride and sulfate from your water. See which way the water leans — malty or bitter — and how that compares to the style you're brewing.

Why this ratio Chloride tends to make beer taste rounder and fuller; sulfate tends to make hop bitterness crisper and drier. Comparing the two is a quick way to see which direction your water will push the beer. It's a seasoning, not a recipe: yeast, malt and hops matter more.

Typical ranges by style1

Notes
  1. Style ranges and the malty ↔ bitter labels are guidance drawn from common homebrew practice (e.g. Palmer & Kaminski, Water, and widely shared charts). They are not rules; different sources draw the lines a few tenths apart.
  2. The ratio is contested. Some water specialists argue the absolute amounts matter more than the ratio — 50:100 and 150:300 have the same ratio but taste very different. Keep sulfate and chloride in sensible absolute ranges as well. BrewPhase flags the ratio as unreliable when chloride plus sulfate is under 50 mg/L.
  3. Ratio is by mass (mg/L ÷ mg/L), the way homebrew sources quote it. Some texts use a sulfate:chloride ratio instead; that is simply the inverse.
  4. Homebrewing beer for personal use is legal federally in the US; check your state and local laws.