Lactic acid for water treatment

[MattGuk]

Hi everyone,

I'm going to be brewing this weekend and thought I'd treat my water with lactic this time round so as not to over do the sulphate and chloride too much.
Just wondering who else has experience using lactic?
I usually use CRS, but I mainly use Brew father for my brewing and there is no option of CRS for water treatment and its a pain to keep going between that and an online calculator when brewing.
Interestingly, I have put my starting water into BF and into brewers friend calculator, and my grains and they both come up with totally different P.H values for the mash.
Same amount of lactic at 80% and same amount of gypsum and chloride ( about 2 grams of each to get the right ratio at lower levels using lactic ) BF says P.H 5.45 and brewers friend says 5.59.
Which would you trust if there is one to trust more than the other, and, is Lactic worth it?

Cheers

 

[Twogunrocky]

Hi Matt,
There is the option for CRS/AMS in Brewfather mate↓

 

[Agentgonzo]

I've used lactic acid. It seems to work fine. I go by the calculator in the grainfather app, which seems similar to brewfather.

I have hard water here (Southampton area) so add somewhere between 5 and 10ml to a 23L batch

 

[MattGuk]

I don't have the option for AMS/CRS, I wonder if that's because I use the free version?
With regards to lactic, I have read that ideally no more 1ml per gallon as it may be noticeable in the finished beer, has anybody ever noticed it?
To be honest, Brew father only thinks I need 4ml so it should be fine.

 

[Agentgonzo]

I don't have the option for AMS/CRS, I wonder if that's because I use the free version?
With regards to lactic, I have read that ideally no more 1ml per gallon as it may be noticeable in the finished beer, has anybody ever noticed it?
To be honest, Brew father only thinks I need 4ml so it should be fine.

I've put more than that in, and haven't noticed it. It's only gone in 2 brews so far though

 

[Begbie]

I started dabbling with water additions 2 brews ago and I've been using Brewer's Friend for my recipes and water calculators. I use Lactic Acid to adjust pH.

For my Golden Ale (20L batch) I only had to use 1.66ml (2g) of Lactic acid and my Tropical Stout (11L batch), 5.3ml (6.5g). I have never brewed these before so I don't have a base to compare against, or even what taste to look out for that would make it 'noticeable'. The Golden Ale turned out great and I await, with great anticipation, the final results of my Tropical Stout, which is carb'ing up nicely at the moment.

 

[Twogunrocky]

I don't have the option for AMS/CRS, I wonder if that's because I use the free version?

That is the free version

 

[MattGuk]

That is the free version

Found the option for it under settings lol, cheers

 

[MattGuk]

I started dabbling with water additions 2 brews ago and I've been using Brewer's Friend for my recipes and water calculators. I use Lactic Acid to adjust pH.

For my Golden Ale (20L batch) I only had to use 1.66ml (2g) of Lactic acid and my Tropical Stout (11L batch), 5.3ml (6.5g). I have never brewed these before so I don't have a base to compare against, or even what taste to look out for that would make it 'noticeable'. The Golden Ale turned out great and I await, with great anticipation, the final results of my Tropical Stout, which is carb'ing up nicely at the moment.

I'm no expert, but are you sure those lactic additions are the right way around?
Shouldn't you use less in a stout as the roasted malts will help manage the P.H, so should need less acid?

 

[Begbie]

I'm certainly no expert either!

I double checked my notes and it is definitely the right way around. I've got my water profile locked into my brewer's friend account and use the water calculator to achieve close to the desired profile and mash pH. Those values are what was given to me after lots of tinkering.

 

[MattGuk]

I'm certainly no expert either!

I double checked my notes and it is definitely the right way around. I've got my water profile locked into my brewer's friend account and use the water calculator to achieve close to the desired profile and mash pH. Those values are what was given to me after lots of tinkering.

Just seems odd that on a lighter beer with high water volume you had to add less acid.
Do you test you water with one of those salifert kits?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I use 5-10ml of Lactic acid in 30 litres of water depending on other salt additions and my blend of RO:tap water.

The key thing though is how much alkalinity you need to neutralise. As a rough guide 0.1ml of lactic acid per litre of water will neutralise about 50 ppm alkalinity.

 

[The Baron]

I use approx 5ml of Lactic in 20ltrs or 170g of Lactic Grain which is my preferred method in my water and get anywhere between 5.2/5.4 in my mash

 

[MattGuk]

I use 5-10ml of Lactic acid in 30 litres of water depending on other salt additions and my blend of RO:tap water.

The key thing though is how much alkalinity you need to neutralise. As a rough guide 0.1ml of lactic acid per litre of water will neutralise about 50 ppm alkalinity.

I was going to use it to lower my alkalinity, enough so, that hopefully my mash p.h would be in the right range, or is it not quite as simple as that?

 

[nickjdavis]

I don't have the option for AMS/CRS, I wonder if that's because I use the free version?
With regards to lactic, I have read that ideally no more 1ml per gallon as it may be noticeable in the finished beer, has anybody ever noticed it?
To be honest, Brew father only thinks I need 4ml so it should be fine.

I used to use it with my local hard water...when I started getting above 11mL for a 20-23L brew then I believe that it came through in the taste and some feedback from comps also seemed to indicate this.

Now I cut my hard tap water with RO and typically add maybe 2-5mL for a 25L brew and it is simply not noticeable.

 

[Begbie]

Just seems odd that on a lighter beer with high water volume you had to add less acid.
Do you test you water with one of those salifert kits?

Yeah, I bought a Salifert kit to confirm my water alkalinity.

Just for clarity, 5ml lactic was used in the mash, which was a 15L strike volume. 0.3ml was used in the 6.8L sparge water, so total water volume of 21.8L.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I was going to use it to lower my alkalinity, enough so, that hopefully my mash p.h would be in the right range, or is it not quite as simple as that?

It can be but often people are trying to balance pH and the sulphate/chloride ions in the water, and they may use RO water, bottled water, and/or tap water.

What water are you using, is it tap water, bottled water, RO water or some blend of these? (This will tell us what options we have to blend water).

Do you know the alkalinity of your water? (This will tell us what the starting point is).

What kind of beer is it? (This will tell us what we need to be looking for)

Do you add salt additions of gypsum and/or calcium chloride? (This will tell us how much work can be done by salts and how much is down to acid or other carbonate reducing agents).

If you add salt additions do you know the amount of calcium, chloride, and sulphate in your water? (This will stop us from advising you to add too much of anything).

 

[MattGuk]

It can be but often people are trying to balance pH and the sulphate/chloride ions in the water, and they may use RO water, bottled water, and/or tap water.

What water are you using, is it tap water, bottled water, RO water or some blend of these? (This will tell us what options we have to blend water).

Do you know the alkalinity of your water? (This will tell us what the starting point is).

What kind of beer is it? (This will tell us what we need to be looking for)

Do you add salt additions of gypsum and/or calcium chloride? (This will tell us how much work can be done by salts and how much is down to acid or other carbonate reducing agents).

If you add salt additions do you know the amount of calcium, chloride, and sulphate in your water? (This will stop us from advising you to add too much of anything).

I'm using tap water, and although I haven't had it tested, I do check the alkalinity and generally is anywhere from 160-180ppm.
My water report from Thames water shows a mean of
Chloride 29ppm
Sulphate 66ppm
Magnesium at about 4ppm

Sodium at about 18ppm
It doesn't state calcium, however somebody worked it out at rought 80-90ppm.

I'm brewing a stout, and wanted to try lactic acid so as not to increase the chloride and sulphate to much more.
Apparently adding 3g gypsum will add 44ppm sulphate and adding 2g calcium Chloride will add about 25ppm.

Hope that helps a bit

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

A stout can handle quite high alkalinity and salt additions but for what you’re asking for you could maybe reduce the alkalinity by 100ppm by adding 0.2ml lactic acid per litre of water.

You could go further at 0.3ml to reduce alkalinity to very little but with little alkalinity and low salt levels you may find the stout lacking character.

 

[MattGuk]

Thanks Hazelwood.
Strange thing is, and maybe this is normal, but once I have put my acid additions in BF it doesn't change my alkalinity or Bicarb as it is listed on there