5star 5.2 buffer and efficiency

i just used the 5star 5.2 stabilizer in my mlt for the first time, and i got some of the worst efficiency i've ever hit, around 52%.

i usually use 10% phosphoric acid to bring my 9.7 pH water down to a proper level. i get consistent results with this, but wanted to give the 5star stuff a try, so i used 1 tablespoon for a 5 gallon batch, as recommended on the package (and in beersmith).

it was kind of a sloppy mash-in because the markings on my mlt were more faded than i thought, and i may have ended up mashing a bit thin. i hit my 154* mash temp and held it for an hour, then batch sparged (2 batches with recirculation).

has anyone else had trouble with the buffer? there is a good chance that it was a coincidence and something else was the problem, so i'll give it another chance.

Most places here in central TX have water with bicarbonate levels off the chart. I know ours is. The buffer will work great for most people, but it probably just isn't strong enough to buffer how much residual alkalinity is in your water.

FYI - even if you add enough acid to bring the mash pH down, you still probably don't want to use water that high in bicarbonates. You might consider diluting with 50% RO and and then adding the buffer.

What are most other Austin brewers doing with their water?

Call me crazy, but how can 5.2 affect your efficiency?

wildwest450 said:

Call me crazy, but how can 5.2 affect your efficiency?

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well, from a quick google search i found this on Home Brew Digest:

Mash pH. A mash pH that is drastically too high or low will adversely affect extraction efficiency, by inhibiting the enzymes that convert starches to sugars.

Lil' Sparky said:

FYI - even if you add enough acid to bring the mash pH down, you still probably don't want to use water that high in bicarbonates. You might consider diluting with 50% RO and and then adding the buffer.

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i haven't had any problems that i've noticed. what are the symptoms of high bicarbonate levels?

i'm going to be adding a filter to my setup within the next couple of batches, is there something specific i should look for that can help with bicarbonate?

Wildwest450 - there is a slim pH range that the malt enzymes will work properly. Like slim said, if your mash pH is too high, your enzymes won't be doing their job fully converting the starches, so you end up with low efficiency - and if the pH is too high, you'll probably end up with some astringency, too.

From what I've read, the high bicarbonates can affect the finished product. For example, bicarbonates intensify the bitterness in hops. Lower levels will make it easier to hit your mash pH, no matter what technique you're using anyway.

I don't think normal filters remove bicarbonates. Reverse osmosis does, along with everything else.

Lil' Sparky said:

From what I've read, the high bicarbonates can affect the finished product. For example, bicarbonates intensify the bitterness in hops. Lower levels will make it easier to hit your mash pH, no matter what technique you're using anyway.

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that makes sense, burton water is high in bicarbonate. i haven't had any problems with the bitterness in my beers that i've been able to detect. i also haven't had any problem hitting my mash pH using phosphoric acid. i usually add 2 tsp of 10% to 5 gallons of water, a ratio suggested by a friend of the guys at AHS who is a chemist at UT. i think i'm going to try a bit of phosphoric acid in combination with the 5.2 buffer next time.

slim chillingsworth said:

i haven't had any problems that i've noticed. what are the symptoms of high bicarbonate levels?

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Slim, the major symptom of high bicarbonate concentration is crazy high pH -- Bicarbonate is the main ingredient used to add basicity to powdered laundry detergents, so it works rather well at raising pH. 9.7 definitely qualifies as crazy high. I can't say whether bicarbonate is the culprit of your basic water for sure or not, but your high pH readings coupled with Sparky's knowledge of high bicarbonate levels in Texas water sure point to it.

adrock said:

Slim...

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i guess i should have phrased it differently. i know that my pH is high and have been effectively treating that. i was asking about the symptoms of high bicarbonate in the finished product in order to determine whether or not i need to do something in addition to treating the pH problem related to high bicarbonate.

I'd PM EdWort and see what he (and other Austin brewers) do.

I've found a few methods that seem to work OK for me here, but getting the skinny from someone local might really help out.

I dilute 2:1 with RO water, add 1T of 5.2 and a couple of teaspoons of either CaCl2 (Halite) or CaSO4*2H20 (Gypsum) depending on the beer. Gets the pH to 5.2 with test strips. Even diluted 2:1, using 5.2 only gets down to 5.4 with P-ville water, which is 430ppm off-the-freakin'-charts bicarbonate. Last few mashes I calculated my mash eff. at 95-100%.

When I sparge with tap water I add 3ml of phosphoric acid per batch infusion to keep the runnings <6. Without the acid the last runnings end up over 6.2 (tannin leaching danger zone).

I really need to be doing this to my batches. My Bicarbs are so off the freaking charts! I always dilute 1:1 but I really dont know where my mash falls.

Saccharomyces said:

I dilute 2:1 with RO water, add 1T of 5.2 and a couple of teaspoons of either CaCl2 (Halite) or CaSO4*2H20 (Gypsum) depending on the beer. Gets the pH to 5.2 with test strips. Even diluted 2:1, using 5.2 only gets down to 5.4 with P-ville water, which is 430ppm off-the-freakin'-charts bicarbonate. Last few mashes I calculated my mash eff. at 95-100%.

When I sparge with tap water I add 3ml of phosphoric acid per batch infusion to keep the runnings <6. Without the acid the last runnings end up over 6.2 (tannin leaching danger zone).

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I've been handling all of my brewing water nearly the same way as you treat your mash water. I think our bicarbonate numbers here are around 490 ppm! :cross:

I used jugged spring water and 5.2 buffer for my first all-grain batch along with a digital thermometer to keep the temps in check and hit 74%. I never even used tap water for my extract batches when I was first starting out, it's crap, don't use it.

Yup. I wouldn't think of diluting 1:1 unless I was doing a stout. I'm doing an imperial porter this weekend and I still plan to dilute 2:1, though I will take a pH measurement with the 5.2 only and see if I need to add CaCl2 or not.

i sat in on a brew session down at the (512) brewery on tuesday. they are located in south austin, lamar and radam. the only water treatment they are using is a carbon filter and some phosphoric acid based on the pH of the tap water, which varies greatly.

also, i don't know why i never calculated this before, but my (davis water plant austin tap water) bicarbonate level is a whopping 59ppm. i guess there's a big difference between here and you guys up north.

It's probably coincidence. I got 85% on my last 2 batches 1 with and 1 without 5.2 and only use it for its effect during the boil instead of water treatment.

I started using 5.2 stabalizer 3 or 4 batches ago, and it has definitely increased the quality of the beers

slim chillingsworth said:

i sat in on a brew session down at the (512) brewery on tuesday. they are located in south austin, lamar and radam. the only water treatment they are using is a carbon filter and some phosphoric acid based on the pH of the tap water, which varies greatly.

also, i don't know why i never calculated this before, but my (davis water plant austin tap water) bicarbonate level is a whopping 59ppm. i guess there's a big difference between here and you guys up north.

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Austin proper gets its water from the lakes. The bicarbonates are somewhere between 35ppm and 70ppm. Outlying areas still get water from the Edward's aquifer which is about 440ppm bicarbonates. Until very very recently our water was Edward's. In the last few months we have started getting our water from Lake Pflugerville, so our water is now 140ppm bicarb, still quite a bit more alkaline than yours. I dilute with less RO water now, and add some calcium to get over 50ppm, but I have found I no longer need to use 5.2 nor do I use acid in the sparge water anymore.

How did you find out about sitting in on the brew session? I will take a vacation day to do that! Hell, I'll even shovel the mash tun. I want to ask Kevin about his wit. Word is that Pierre Celis himself has been helping perfect the recipe, and I'm trying to match the original Celis recipe which is kind of hard considering it isn't made anymore (Michigan brewing has a Celis White but it is not the same as the Celis original, I am told)

kevin and nate are more than happy to show you around anytime. e-mail kevin through the website. i've been down there twice now.

as far as their wit is concerned, it's a basic wit recipe with unmalted wheat. they use grapefruit peel rather than orange. they have met with pierre and he's been by the brewery from what i understand (his daughter still lives in austin).

you are right about the celis white that is made in michigan. i have a bottle, and i can save it if you want to come down and try it. are you going to the draught house 40th anniversary party today?

slim chillingsworth said:

kevin and nate are more than happy to show you around anytime. e-mail kevin through the website. i've been down there twice now.

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Cool. I'll happily volunteer to help them out for a day just for fun once I am no longer gimping around from my brewing injury. (Incident with my immersion chiller last weekend)

as far as their wit is concerned, it's a basic wit recipe with unmalted wheat. they use grapefruit peel rather than orange. they have met with pierre and he's been by the brewery from what i understand (his daughter still lives in austin).

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I used Seville orange marmalade for flavor in my latest batch. It tastes and smells a lot like grapefruit. I then added orange zest for aroma. It will be interesting to do a taste comparison between his and mine.

you are right about the celis white that is made in michigan. i have a bottle, and i can save it if you want to come down and try it. are you going to the draught house 40th anniversary party today?

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I would but I'm not in any shape to drive very far right now. I'm going to head over to Soperbrew's for awhile since he lives close by.

It would be great to meet up and exchange some homebrews sometime. I have never had the Celis white, so it would be nifty to compare side by side with my "clone" attempt. It will be fully bottle conditioned and ready in about a month. Unfortunately too late for the next Zealots meeting.

well, let me know when you're feeling up to it. i have plenty of beer on hand so i can put the celis aside for a while. maybe you can come down for a brew session.

high bicarbonate in the finished beer would probably be most evident in having a really low efficiency (which you have...). Have you considered adding calcium chloride to your mash? The calcium binds the bicarbonate and precipitates it, thereby lowering your mash pH. If you have lots of calcium in your water already, this precipitation would leave a mineral scale or sediment in a pot after being boiled for ~10 minutes. If this is the case, you could fix your water by boiling it for 10-15 minutes, cooling overnight, and then mashing. Hope that helps!

slim chillingsworth said:

i just used the 5star 5.2 stabilizer in my mlt for the first time, and i got some of the worst efficiency i've ever hit, around 52%.

i usually use 10% phosphoric acid to bring my 9.7 pH water down to a proper level. i get consistent results with this, but wanted to give the 5star stuff a try, so i used 1 tablespoon for a 5 gallon batch, as recommended on the package (and in beersmith).

it was kind of a sloppy mash-in because the markings on my mlt were more faded than i thought, and i may have ended up mashing a bit thin. i hit my 154* mash temp and held it for an hour, then batch sparged (2 batches with recirculation).

has anyone else had trouble with the buffer? there is a good chance that it was a coincidence and something else was the problem, so i'll give it another chance.

Click to expand...

Well, I don't have much experience, but I used 5.2 buffer yesterday on my first AG brew and achieved 85% efficiency.

I was using a 10 gallon rubbermaid round cooler and a stainless steel false bottom. I batch sparged 2 times to get my boil amount of 7.5 gallons.

I mashed at 152 for 60 minutes and even though this wasn't on purpose, my first batch sparge was only about 156 and got the second one up to 160.

I don't think my thermometer was accurate on my sparge water, but maybe this helped in some sort of way.