The Power of H+

I am new to brewing, not real dumb, but still looking for a lot of answers. I hope this can help someone else.

Heres what I learned last night. I was into about 6 or 7 pints of IPA, so cut me SOME slack.

I have tried to understand all the things involved while I am getting set-up to AG brew. I have found a lot on water chemistry, and am blessed with really good well water. But I have tried doing searches for info on wort pH, but 'Search' doesn't like short word terms like 'pH'. I found nothing in the WIKI. I have found some stuff from Palmer on acceptable pH range, but it is tightly coupled to knowing your exact water chemistry, and I just want to know what I need, and what to do to attain a GOOD pH, and why it's important and what happens when it's off.

So, I asked the local 'Master. Here's what I got.

First, you HAVE to be in the range of about 5.2-5.5. If you are not in this range (and it's better to be on the low side than the high), the beer will taste blah, bland, and if you do everything right, but miss the pH correction, your beer will be disappointing. Correct pH wort produces beer that is crisp, and has distinct flavors.

So, what do you do about it? Litmus is easy to use but not that clear as you must interpret the result, and litmus gets old sorta quickly. An electronic pH meter calibrated with a liquid 'Standard' is real accurate, but expensive and awkward or cumbersome to use.

So, what do you add to fix high pH? Palmer says calcium chloride or calcium sulphate (gypsum), but my buddy says he just uses phosphoric acid.

When is this most important? If you brew a pale beer, trying to get a proper pH wort, pre-boil, is something to have to work at a bit, as kilned dark malts are acidic, so darker beers need less work.

How do the Germans do it (brew a pale beer, no dark malts, with correct wort pH) and stay true to the Gehsundhite (!) Law? Acidulated Malt.

http://***********/referenceguide/grains/grains4.html

Malt L G Decription
German Grains
Acidulated (Sauer) Malt 1.7-2.8° 1.033 High lactic acid. For lambics, sour mash beers, Irish stout, pilsners and wheats


And I said, 'oh.'

If anyone can offer more on this subject I think that it would help a lot of other people.

Malt is acidic. If your water is netral then you will be hitting the proper PH range. Dark malts are more acidic. Thats why people with slighty alkaline water supplies can make ambers and dark beers fine but may have problems with pilsners. High PH (alkaline) strips husky tannis from the grains.

What is the PH of your water? Odds are you will not need to do anything to it.

Hardness is another matter, some styles like hard water, some like soft.

Palmer's book How to Brew addresses this in good detail, and also stresses this is something we shouldn't stress about. Typically, the acid in the malt more than offsets any pH problems.

The Brew/Pub is about 8 miles away, so water should be fairly similar. I have had many different houses with well water and this is one of the best if not THE best water I have had. But the only real direct advice I can get is from the Brewmaster and his type of beer making is doing it so that everything IS done right. Yeah, so far my only Buddy in the hobby is a Professional. He checks every batch of every recipe, and does make corrections to all of them. His batch size is 30 barrels, though.

My aim is to make basically only IPA's, Stouts, and psuedo-lagers with ale yeast (summer). The pale beer is maybe gonna need some help, the IPA's and Stouts may not, but I want to KNOW what I have to work with for pH. I may just as well do a quick check of each one, or at least until I see where they fall on the scale, and get the hang of re-current recipes. I want a K.I.S.S. style of brewing, but I want to make sure that what I AM doing I am doing right. Did that make sense?

I cheat and use pH 5.2 buffer. It locks the pH in regardless of the water chemistry. One less thing to worry about.

'thing with 5.2 buffer is that it doesn't really help with sparge water.

I was told not to worry about the water; just make SURE that the wort pH is low enough, preboil.

I'm in the "don't worry about it" camp. I too am fortunate enough to have well-water. It's great. And I add 5.2 to the mash water before striking, I never add anything to the sparge.... If your water tastes good, use it.

I'd say, brew away and look into getting your water checked later! cheers -p

Henry Hill said:

I was told not to worry about the water; just make SURE that the wort pH is low enough, preboil.

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That's 100% accurate by my understanding. Palmer says that's one of the most common misconceptions homebrewers make, trying to correct the water pH, and not the wort pH. His exact words were that this thinking is "putting the cart before the horse". Different grainbills will combine with your water to give you different pH. So, there is no magic pH target for strike water, if I'm getting this.

Still, this 5.2 pH buffer seems intriguing to me. I read that it gives a good boost to mash efficiency, but I'm kind of veering off track here.

greg75 said:

Still, this 5.2 pH buffer seems intriguing to me. I read that it gives a good boost to mash efficiency, but I'm kind of veering off track here.

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I dunno about that, I didnt notice any difference when I used it. It does make your water look all weirded out though. It also smells like crystal meth or something, really chemically smelling stuff...I stopped using it, but Im sure it works.

As far as 'THE POWER OF HYDROGEN IONS' :rockin: I dont know much about water, but those little H+'s do a lot to drive ATP production.

Ivan Lendl said:

It also smells like crystal meth or something, really chemically smelling stuff...I stopped using it, but Im sure it works.
.

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I'm sold. You had me at "crystal meth". Although I think my beers could be improved on with a little crack character added to it...

Seriously, that kind of scares me now that you say it has strong chemical smells. Did you notice any of this in your finished brews, or was it just in the strike water itself before the mash? I hit 71% on my second batch sparge yesterday, so if I can eventually hit 75% without the 5.2 buffer, I'll probably just forego using it, especially if it gives off funky odors.

greg75 said:

I'm sold. You had me at "crystal meth". Although I think my beers could be improved on with a little crack character added to it...

Seriously, that kind of scares me now that you say it has strong chemical smells. Did you notice any of this in your finished brews, or was it just in the strike water itself before the mash? I hit 71% on my second batch sparge yesterday, so if I can eventually hit 75% without the 5.2 buffer, I'll probably just forego using it, especially if it gives off funky odors.

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No just the stuff itself smells. It doesnt affect the beer flavor at all. I stopped using it just because...no real reason, I just stopped using it. Im sure it works, but I didnt notice any difference in effecincy or anything.

My understanding of pH adjusters is that they are composed of salts, and the salts dissolved in water form ions, which give a lowering change to the pH. Also, trying to understand how Palmer explains pH and hardness, is that he links pH, and adjustment by salts, to the alkalinity of the water, which IIRC, is the available calcium (carbonate?) of some form.

All I know is I get confused every time I try to think of pH separate from alkalinity. Since I have a pool, a salt water, chlorine-ion generator type pool, and I'm generally half in the bag whenever I try to adjust the pool pH.

I have come to try to adjust pH in my pool with Muriatic acid, and think I want to use phosphoric acid (like the Brew/Pub) in my beer, rather than dump salts and minerals in it. The most direct way, in other words. Why add a bunch of minerals/salts to relatively soft well water? I just want to change the pH.

The standard in Europe now is to add lactic Acid to the mash to lower PH.

Alkaline sparge water will cause your mash PH to lower quicker but for anything other than pilsners or other light colored beers it shoud not matter. Odds are you will be done gathering your runnings before the PH drops enough to be a problem.

greg75 said:

Seriously, that kind of scares me now that you say it has strong chemical smells.

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It's just a simple phosphate buffer I think. It may smell like chemicals but it won't hurt you and once it's diluted it will be undetectable.

I don't do a thing to adjust my pH. I've never even checked. It still comes out as great beer.

Adjustments are really only needed if you have screwy water with a high PH and are brewing light colored beers with said water.