Can 5.2 ph stabilizer go bad?

pjj2ba said:

It will not go bad. If you have been using this all along it is not the cause of your off flavors. Many will debate it's usefulness in brewing. I occasionally use it in my Sparge water to keep the pH under 6

Sour/tart to me suggests an infection. I had problems with this. I brought most everything into work and ran it through the autoclave. Still had some problems. Finally decided it was the carboys. Lactobacillus will form spores that are not killed by Starsan. I soaked all my carboys in Bleach. So far so good.

To get rid of the bleach, I would rinse with some cold water, then add a little camden (as one would to remove the chlorine from brewing water) plus a little water and shake and then rinse. Then Starsan as normal just to be sure.

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pjj2ba said:

Watch the grain dust! You'll hear lots of folks chiming in about grinding your grain away from where you brew. A good idea indeed, but no one ever mentions not cooling where you mash-in. I used to just dump the crushed grain in while stirring. Then I noticed the grain dust cloud that was rising as I did this. Then I noticed that my arms were covered in grain dust. If one did not wash their arms after mashing in, they could easily have dust falling off their arms into the boil pot as they stir while cooling. I now wear gauntlets when handling grain at ANY stage on brewing days. I also add grain gently, scoop by scoop to minimize dust cloud formation. I also remediated any surface around my mash tun to minimize places where dust could collect and possibly fall in.

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mabrungard said:

Yes, 5.2 Stabilizer goes bad the moment you open the container and use it in your brewing. You are far better off learning to measure and adjust your mash pH with proper materials.

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ajf said:

But surely, for something to go bad, it has to be good in the first place.
I've used it three times to try and adjust the mash pH of two lagers and one bitter. In each case, the brews had very noticeable off flavors. In the case of the bitter, I dumped the batch because I had run out of kegs, secondaries, and primaries, and I wanted to keg another batch to free up a fermenter. In the case of the lagers, the off flavors eventually faded, but it took the best part of a year.
I'll never use it again.

-a.

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ajf said:

But surely, for something to go bad, it has to be good in the first place.
I've used it three times to try and adjust the mash pH of two lagers and one bitter. In each case, the brews had very noticeable off flavors. In the case of the bitter, I dumped the batch because I had run out of kegs, secondaries, and primaries, and I wanted to keg another batch to free up a fermenter. In the case of the lagers, the off flavors eventually faded, but it took the best part of a year.
I'll never use it again.

-a.

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wildwest450 said:

Malt conditioning all but eliminates any dust concerns. Plus it aids in lautering, a win-win.

_

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Can 5.2 ph stabilizer go bad?

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blkandrust said:

I'm leaning towards scrapping the 5.2 and going the Lactic Acid route.What were the off flavors that you had in your beers?

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