Water Chemistry driving me loco....

[Loco_ola]

I'm coming to understand that one last acid adjustment which is to be made immediately pre-boil and which is targeted to to hit ~5.2 pH (5.0 to 5.2) as measured at room temperature is not something that should be ignored. It may be as much or more important than adjusting pH within the mash (which may only be necessary for the case of mashing at 5.9 or above pH, or for bringing up what might otherwise be a mash at below 5.2 pH). And for ~30 years I didn't even know about, or ever even consider this option.

I've been brewing for nearly 5 weeks now and this is the first I've heard of it! Where can I read more?

Does this go for all beer styles?

Should we always be aiming for that 5.2 pH pre boil @ room temp (I assume this is like 20°C or something, our rooms are around 10°C or below!) - The kitchen gets to about 20 when brewing though

Thanks again.

The water treatment stuff in Beersmith is pretty new. I've tried using it and come to the conclusion it needs a bit more time. For me it is always coming out way too high. So I continued using Bru'n Water.

I've ended up trying quite a few now, Palmers is good, but doesn't have enough styles in the list. Brew n water seems really reliable, and I tried Kaiser which seems quite good also. Had a play with mash made easy and it seems really good too. I must admit the biggest issue is having to re-enter ingredients. I get this will give the most accurate results of course. I think my biggest gripe with most of these is that excel/numbers/openoffice really makes a poor user interface.

If only there was a web developer who could make a decent online version which works. (@Argentum -gimme a shout if you're interested )

 

[Argentum]

@Argentum, it's you isn't it!

Who's me?

 

[Argentum]

If only there was a web developer who could make a decent online version which works. (@Argentum -gimme a shout if you're interested )

I'm just a retired guy who is relatively decent at spreadsheet building, but who knows zero about things like JAVA coding or HTML.

 

[Argentum]

I've been brewing for nearly 5 weeks now and this is the first I've heard of it! Where can I read more?

Does this go for all beer styles?

Should we always be aiming for that 5.2 pH pre boil @ room temp (I assume this is like 20°C or something, our rooms are around 10°C or below!) - The kitchen gets to about 20 when brewing though

Thanks again.

I've come across it in a number of old peer reviewed journals from the brewing industry. It is just now hitting the home brewing level, and I'm one of the few promoting it. My mash pH assistant software (free spreadsheet) contains a kettle pH adjustment sheet which quite easily does the pre boil acidification calculations for you. I believe it to be the first software to do so. It should work for most all brewing styles this side of sours. 20 degrees C is the EBC standard for "wort" acidification pH readings. Interesting enough, there does not seem to be either an EBC or ASBC standard for how to take a mash pH reading. Many of the same old peer reviewed documents have me believing that the big boys measure mash pH at mash temperature, so their 5.2 to 5.6 pH would equate to something like 5.5 - 5.9 pH at room temperature. And thus their need to further drop it to ~5.2 pH (as measured at 20 degrees C.) pre-boil. If its good enough for the big boys, it should be good enough for us little guys/gals of home brewing also.

 

[Loco_ola]

After sparging it all came in at 5.2 pH today (both at the mash and the pre boil) I was kinda expecting it to be higher. But sounds like it was pretty good!

Still a bit shocked 'cos apparently I've hit 87.3% efficiency when I took my OG reading @20C. I crushed the grains much smaller, did a mash out and then vorlauf till clear.

Re the sheet - when I've got some time I'll check out the formulas and see what's going on :)

 

[Argentum]

The trick is that once you hit around 5.2 pH it tends to hold at that level, even through the boil. The higher above 5.2 it is pre-boil, the more it tends to drop during the boil, but it may not drop enough, and aiding it in hitting 5.2 pH pre-boil is easier than messing with mash pH adjustments. Far fewer variables to juggle once the wort is fully dissociated from the grist.

 

[Loco_ola]

Thinking about it I recon my salt additions are what brought the overall pH to 5.2 - what do you think?

How can I make sure there isn't too much of a drop in future recipes? - should I factor them in somehow? Being told to not look at residual alkalinity threw me a bit. Any thoughts good people?

 

[strange-steve]

I wouldn't think so, you've only added about 0.1g/L calcium chloride which would increase the calcium level by about 25ppm, bringing the total up to ~80ppm. I don't think this would cause a big drop in mash pH, I normally aim for 100-150ppm calcium.

If you wanted to increase the mash pH in future then you could add all the salts to the boil rather than mash water (this will have a small effect) or better yet don't reduce the alkalinity so much.

BTW I wouldn't be too concerned about a mash pH of 5.2 anyway.