Brewing Salts with PH 5.2?

According to John Palmer's Water Profile adjustment chart, my next brew, an Amber Ale needs a Residual Alkalinity boost. My local water profile suggests a 4-6 SRM brew, but the Amber Ale is calculating to around 12-13 SRM. Therefore I am considering using some baking soda to raise my RA to see if it will help my efficiency some. Should I use PH 5.2 with my mash if I am going to do this salt addition? Will the 5.2 just stabilize my Ph no matter what salts I add? I know that it is the minerals that count and that the Ph is just a ratio of the mineral effects. Anyone ever tread on this ground or am I just nerding it up

I'm wondering the exact same thing....

I'm currently under the impression that if you're building your water profile correctly for the beer style that you are brewing that session, that your special water + that particular blend of grains = the perfect mash pH all by itself... In other words, I sort of thought the goal to building your own water was to end up with something that would balance out with the grain as far as pH goes. As an example, I assume in Dublin, they aren't messing with the pH to make a Guinness....

I've only done a couple of custom water batches, and only attempted to actually measure the pH on the last one, and found my assumptions above incorrect. I had to add lactic acid to bring the pH down. I was considering getting some 5.2 for my next batch... Wondering if it's necessary though, or if I just picked poorly on my water profile choice. I used BreWater 3 to pick my water from and was very careful in my measurements.

I understand that the 5.2 stabilizer is a fairly powerful buffer. It's not bulletproof, so you could raise the pH with enough baking soda, but that amount probably would affect your beer in negative ways. If making mineral additions for pH reasons, I would not add the buffer.


TL

The 5.2 buffer works to both raise or lower the pH to the the point the buffer was designed, although their website claims it works better at lowering the pH since that's the problem most people have. This is the best no-brainer solution IMO.

That said, if you build your water with other additions, either according to Palmer, BrewWater, etc., and you're in the right SRM range then you shouldn't need to add anything else. The acidity of the mash will bring the pH into the proper range.

Jason, I don't know how long that pH stabilization takes, so that may be why your pH was still reading high.

Do you have a program that you can use to calculate the mineral content of your brewing water based on your water analysis and the salts you are adding?

Yes you can use baking soda, but if you have to add to much, you will also add a lot of sodium. That's why it would be nice to check your resulting mineral levels. Otherwise you may want to use chalk which adds calcium and cabonates. Palmer has a speadsheet for that.

BTW, I prefer this over using 5.2 as you will know what salts are in your water.

Kai

Lil' Sparky said:

Jason, I don't know how long that pH stabilization takes, so that may be why your pH was still reading high.

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That could be. Either that, or I shouldn’t have been messing with making my own water. I guess I should qualify what I said above with my observation from brewing with you this weekend....... I don't know if this is an endorsement for 5.2 stabilizer, or an indicator that there's some leeway in Palmer’s nomograph, but……

Here in College Station, the bicarbonates are published at 459 ppm. That’s the second highest I’ve seen published in the brewing software I’ve looked into. If I followed the nomograph correctly, this water is wayyyyyyy off the charts until you get down to a concentration of something crazy like 3% local water and 97% distilled, and that only got you into the darkest beers.

That’s how I wound up trying to make my own water and complicating my process yet another degree. I’ve been on a quest lately to improve some off flavors, paying more and more attention to things that the “relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew” philosophy had convinced me were ok to leave to chance.

Fast-forward to this past weekend. Lil’ Sparky has me over for a brew day that he put together. I was pretty much expecting to see a science lab, thinking he must have gone down the same path I’m currently on since he has to cope with the same water. While he has a sweet setup, I was honestly pretty surprised to see the mash process. It amounted to roughly 50% reverse osmosis water, and 50% of the “off the chart” College Station water, and a couple tablespoons of 5.2. That was it. No brewing salts, no ColorPhast strips, no milligram scale… Very much the laid back enjoyable brew day that we all think it should be. I was lucky enough to find my way to his kegerator (he didn’t hide it very well) and sampled the two he had on tap. They were absolutely excellent, and I’m not just saying that b/c I know he’ll probably read this eventually. :cross: Far superior to anything I’ve churned out here, and they would be right at home at any fine brewpub. Perhaps the science ahd been worked out long ago and what I witnessed was just a comfort level from those past experiences, but he most certainly was getting stellar results from water that I had written off as unusable.

So, while surprised, I was also very encouraged. I am absolutely going to be giving 5.2 a shot next time around and hope to start removing some of the complications and variables I’ve introduced upon myself (like making my own water).

[steps on soapbox]
In case any newer folks are reading this... if there’s a lesson here, I wish that I had found someone experienced to brew with a long time ago. I'd probably be much happier with my results by now!! I certainly could have skipped a lot of the trial and error that I was going through.
[steps off soapbox]

-jas

Mr. Mojo Rising said:

Will the 5.2 just stabilize my Ph no matter what salts I add? I know that it is the minerals that count and that the Ph is just a ratio of the mineral effects. Anyone ever tread on this ground or am I just nerding it up

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It depends on the salt. Some contribute more to pH than other. Of all the salts one typically adds to a mash, Bicarbonate will affect pH the greatest. It is a buffer, just like 5.2, just at a different pH (8-9). As long as you have more 5.2 present, your pH will be fine. It shouldn't take that much bicarbonate to match the water profile you want

I'm currently under the impression that if you're building your water profile correctly for the beer style that you are brewing that session, that your special water + that particular blend of grains = the perfect mash pH all by itself... In other words, I sort of thought the goal to building your own water was to end up with something that would balance out with the grain as far as pH goes. As an example, I assume in Dublin, they aren't messing with the pH to make a Guinness....

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They aren't messing with the water, they're messing with the grain bill. The acidity of the roasted malts will help conteract the high carbonates in the water to give a good pH for the mash.

That being said, one might think then that using 5.2 would solve all the missmatched water/style problems. Nope. I can dial in my pH with 5.2, but I have high carbonates so if I don't take steps to lower them my bitterness can leave a little bit of a harsh aftertaste in lighter beer styles.

pjj2ba said:

They aren't messing with the water, they're messing with the grain bill. The acidity of the roasted malts will help conteract the high carbonates in the water to give a good pH for the mash.

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That's true for most, but not for all. I know that Dortmunder water is not well suited for brewing Dortmunders w/o water treatment. And those brewers have been some of the pioneers in water treatment.

It is especially off-the chart water where you have to watch out for using 5.2 since you may have to add to much of it to counteract the water.

Mash pH is not only important for the mash, it sets the stage for lauter and boil pH. Lauter pH will control the tannin extraction and boil pH affects the bitternes and bittering quality you get from the hops. All of this are flavors that you may want to improve on or keep the as they are. And unless you are brewing new recipes all the time, you only have to mess with the pH the first few times you brew a particular receipe after that you already know what to add. And even if you choose to use 5.2 you may want to measure the pH to check how well it works (especially with very hard or soft water).

Kai

So all this being said, if I understand correctly, the bicarbonate profile still needs to be changed to suit style, but could raise the Mash Ph beyond an acceptable level if the grainbill is not particularly dark. In that case, adding 5.2 buffer is OK? I don't have a good way to test Ph, so has anyone ever done this successfully. Really, I am only going to 13 or so SRM and my local water suggests 6 SRM. I just don't want to double salt

I'd just add 1/2 Tbsp of 5.2 buffer and forget about it. You're really close as it is.

I agree, but to ask for those following this thread. What if I was trying to build a darker beer and match a high bicarbonate profile. As I add baking soda the Ph of my 9.4 water increases more and more. In that circumstance, should I add 5.2 buffer to bring it down to where I would be closer to where the mash would be if I was matching a water like Dublin, where the natural Ph is 8. Would this be a time to add both?

I don't know if you can answer this difinitively because we don't really know what's in the buffer. We only know what it DOES.

If you're building your water to a certain profile for a certain type of beer, I wouldn't add anything else, though.

Would be a good question for John Palmer...Maybe I will submit it to Basic Brewing Radio.

Just email him. He'll respond. He's a very friendly guy.

Mr. Mojo Rising said:

As I add baking soda the Ph of my 9.4 water increases more and more.

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Is your tap water already at 9.4? If so, you certainly don't need to worry about making it more alkaline, for certain.


TL

Can you post the mineral levels for your water, then we can figure this out here. The pH of the brewing water is actually not that important as you can have high pH water with little buffering capacity, meaning it takes only little acid to get it down. The residual alkalinity, which you calculate from the existing and added minerals, is the important factor.

Kai

Bicarbonate will buffer a solution to a pH of 8.3 (it will bring it up to, or down to 8.3 depending on the starting pH). Adding more bicarbonate will not raise the pH any higher once you reach 8.3. That's what bufferers do. All you get from adding more bicarbonate is more buffering capacity (it will now take more of something acidic to lower the pH).

If you don't have a way to measure your mash pH, go ahead and add bicarbonate to get those carbonate level where you want it and then add the 5.2, mash in, and you should be fine.

A couple of other things:

pH 5.2 is a mix of phosphate salts. It could be either sodium salts or potassium salts, that I can't find out. I suspect potassium as one would want to be a little more careful about adding more sodium to your water.

The pH of your water BEFORE you mash is less critical. As Kaiser said, what is critical is the buffering capacity of your water and the resultant mash pH.

It is possible to have water with a very high pH like 9.5, but if it has very low buffering capacity (residual alkalinity) it won't take much to lower the pH (like pilsen water). The higher your water's buffering capacity the more you have to worry about pH.

Strictly dealing with strach conversion issues and not worrying about hop flavors.......

Just because a water is low in salts, that doesn't mean it is lower in pH. It depends on what salts are present. To repeat it once again, it is not the pH of your water that is critical, it is the residual alkalinity.

There are lots or organic acids etc. present in malted barley such that if it is mashed in distilled water it will automatically bring the pH to the proper range for starch conversion because the water has NO buffering capacity. A germinating seed is already going to create the proper pH for this and we the brewer take advantage of this.

Now if you start adding some minerals to the water, these can affect the ability of the malts to lock in the proper pH. Malts also have their own unique buffering capacity. As long as your water has a lower buffering capacity that that of your malt, your pH will always be fine (for most styles).

Now hop flavors, that's another whole kettle of wort.......

pjj2ba, nice explanation!

Lil' Sparky said:

pjj2ba, nice explanation!

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Agreed! Thanks!


TL

pjj2ba said:

Malts also have their own unique buffering capacity. As long as your water has a lower buffering capacity that that of your malt, your pH will always be fine (for most styles).

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There is actually more to this than just acids from the malt. The redsidual alkalinity is a function of the calcuim, magnesium and cabonate/bicarbonate conmtent of the water. This is because there is a recation between the malt and the calcium and magnesium that actually prodcues acids. The great magic of this is that when you add calcium or magnesium to the mash w/o adding bicarbonates (calcium sulphate or calcium chloride) you can actually lower the mash pH. This works only to some ectend since you don't want to add to many minerals. But your problem is different from this anyway.

Mr. Mojo Rising,
some time ago I wrote a wiki article to povide yet another explanation of the subject (there are many such articles on the web). Maybe it helps you to get some understanding of the subject. However, everything that you need to know for your brew has already been said in this thread so don't get to confused by the complexity of this matter.

Kai

Am I correct to assume that mash salt additions have less of an effect on the beer character (chloride/sulfate ratio, bicarbonate levels) than sparge/boil salt additions?

If this is the case, why worry with tinkering with the mash salt additions? Why not use 5.2 Stabilizer to lock in your mash pH and subsequently use salts to adjust the "character" of your water like so:

1) Use solely 5.2 stabilizer for mash pH adjustment
2) Add salts to the sparge/boil for character adjustment (i.e. chloride/sulfate ratio)

jamest22 said:

Am I correct to assume that mash salt additions have less of an effect on the beer character (chloride/sulfate ratio, bicarbonate levels) than sparge/boil salt additions?

If this is the case, why worry with tinkering with the mash salt additions? Why not use 5.2 Stabilizer to lock in your mash pH and subsequently use salts to adjust the "character" of your water like so:

1) Use solely 5.2 stabilizer for mash pH adjustment
2) Add salts to the sparge/boil for character adjustment (i.e. chloride/sulfate ratio)

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1. 5.2 doesn't work well (certainly not as advertised).
2. You want calcium in the mash.
3. It is simpler to treat all of the water the same way.