EZ Water Calculator 3.0

**-TH-** · 08-05-2011, 02:05 PM

EZ Water Calculator 3.0 is now available:
http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/

v3.0 calculates mash pH differently now (using distilled water mash ph's of each grain in the grain bill among other things) and I think you'll find it considerably more accurate in predicting mash PH.

Also it has been rearranged a bit including separate sections for "adjust mash ph down" and "adjust mash ph up".

Also adjustment with slaked lime has been added.

Here's a screen shot:

wildwest450 · 08-05-2011, 03:21 PM

Nice work TH, i'm a big fan of the simplicity of these calculators.

_

millstone · 08-05-2011, 04:40 PM

+1 on being a big fan... keeps getting better and remains simple to use

thanks,
tom

**bsdx** · 08-05-2011, 06:36 PM

I plugged a previously brewed and measured really dark imperial stout into it and it was way more accurate, thanks! TH 2.0 predicted 4.73, TH 3.0 predicted 5.75, and measured was 5.62.

**MNDan** · 08-05-2011, 07:53 PM

And thanks for putting in the pH recommended range w/ temp info - this looks great! Can't wait to try it!

datamike · 08-05-2011, 08:09 PM

Looks good!

I plugged a few recipes in and surprisingly, your calculator is quite close to the actual readings - generally within .05.

How about a field for phosphoric acid in the next revision?

Michael

mcaple1 · 08-05-2011, 08:13 PM

subscribed

CPooley4 · 08-10-2011, 01:35 AM

TH - If I'm seeing the calculations properly it looks like you are using the distilled water mash pH of the crystal malts rather than the acidity as recommended in Kai's paper (I could be reading Kai's paper incorrectly though). Though utilizing the distilled water pH would seem to make perfect sense to me. Any thoughts on that?

Also, the distilled water pH for your calculator comes up as 4.92 for crystal 60 rather than 4.66 reported in Kai's paper. Did you do some separate experimentations to come up with your values as well?

Any thoughts on what to use for Aromatic, Brown Malt, Honey Malt, Victory, etc...? Essentially many of the specialty malts not listed specifically on your spreadsheet. Should we be using Base - Other?

Sorry for all the questions. Love the new look. I'm incorporating it into my brew workbook with some minor adjustments. Looking forward to working with it.

cp

**ajdelange** · 08-10-2011, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CPooley4

TH - If I'm seeing the calculations properly it looks like you are using the distilled water mash pH of the crystal malts rather than the acidity as recommended in Kai's paper

Acidity could be used and I have proposed taking it one step further i.e. modeling the details of the acidity as a function of pH (finding a set of pK's which fit the titration curve for each malt) but in this case it appears that a simple linear combination of DI pH's serves quite well and is certainly much simpler both in terms of the math in the spreadsheet and the amount of lab work that would need to be done to get the input data. A single pH reading on a distilled water mash is much, much less involved than doing a titration and finding pK's that fit the titration. Even if the pK's were handed to you you would have to use iterative techniques to find the mash pH in the spreadsheet.

It should be clear that if malt A has a DI pH of 7.6 and malt B has a DI pH of 7.5 that a 1;1 blend of these 2 would have a pH somewhere in between but the fact that it seems to fall half way in between implying that a linear model is useful is a pleasant surprise!

**-TH-** · 08-10-2011, 12:06 PM

Hey Cory,
Sorry I didn't get back to your PM. I'll respond here instead...

Quote:

Originally Posted by CPooley4

TH - If I'm seeing the calculations properly it looks like you are using the distilled water mash pH of the crystal malts rather than the acidity as recommended in Kai's paper (I could be reading Kai's paper incorrectly though). Though utilizing the distilled water pH would seem to make perfect sense to me. Any thoughts on that?

You are correct. As AJ says in the above post (and I'm paraphrasing), the KISS method actually works quite well here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CPooley4

Also, the distilled water pH for your calculator comes up as 4.92 for crystal 60 rather than 4.66 reported in Kai's paper. Did you do some separate experimentations to come up with your values as well?

I did my own linear regression on his crystal data. His test result of c60 was a bit of an outlier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CPooley4

Any thoughts on what to use for Aromatic, Brown Malt, Honey Malt, Victory, etc...? Essentially many of the specialty malts not listed specifically on your spreadsheet. Should we be using Base - Other?

I've been using 3.0 for a few months now and I use Northern Brewer's printed catalog to find what catagory a malt falls into, i.e. base, caramel, or roasted/toasted. You could also use their website: http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/brewing-ingredients/grain-malts (categories are listed in box on left). This has worked very well for me. Obviously I would love to lab-test every malt from every maltster, but until then...

Quote:

Originally Posted by CPooley4

Sorry for all the questions. Love the new look. I'm incorporating it into my brew workbook with some minor adjustments. Looking forward to working with it.

No problem. Thanks. Have at it! Great!