althalos
Active Member
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
- Messages
- 44
- Reaction score
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Hey all-
I was suddenly intrigued by a product I had passed up for years without a second thought. It is supposed to stabilize your strike/mash water to a pH of 5.2. I hadn't given pH in mashing a thought until I listened to some brew strong podcasts and did some research. With a triple decocted doppelbock in the works, I thought it may be a good idea to stabilize the pH. I had read that a certain pH stabilizer commercially sold (ahem) uses phosphate buffers. Sodium phosphate makes an excellent buffering system that is supposed to work between 5 and 8, and I had the reagents in the lab I work in. An online calculator quickly reveals the amounts of reagents to add to achieve the following:
For a 5mM (milliMolar) final buffering solution:
25.57g Monobasic Sodium Phosphate, Monohydrate
1.08g Dibasic Sodium Phosphate, Heptahydrate
Dissolve the above in 100ml final volume, split into two 50ml aliquots.
Each 50ml aliquot will treat 5 gallons of water to yield a final buffer concentration of around 5mM.
I chose 5mM as this yielded around a tablespoon of dry reagent per 5 gallons. Ideally, 10mM may have been a better idea, but I figured this was just an aid, as the phytases in the mash should already be doing a good enough job. pH of the mash stayed around 5 the entire process (as measured by the pH paper [I know they are slightly inaccurate]).
Yes, I realize it's probably not necessary for most water, but some people would also argue that fly sparging is not necessary while batch sparging exists; do with this information what you will. The commercial example probably wouldn't exist without worrywarts like me.
Update: Did some price checking. It's cheaper to buy the commercial version.
I was suddenly intrigued by a product I had passed up for years without a second thought. It is supposed to stabilize your strike/mash water to a pH of 5.2. I hadn't given pH in mashing a thought until I listened to some brew strong podcasts and did some research. With a triple decocted doppelbock in the works, I thought it may be a good idea to stabilize the pH. I had read that a certain pH stabilizer commercially sold (ahem) uses phosphate buffers. Sodium phosphate makes an excellent buffering system that is supposed to work between 5 and 8, and I had the reagents in the lab I work in. An online calculator quickly reveals the amounts of reagents to add to achieve the following:
For a 5mM (milliMolar) final buffering solution:
25.57g Monobasic Sodium Phosphate, Monohydrate
1.08g Dibasic Sodium Phosphate, Heptahydrate
Dissolve the above in 100ml final volume, split into two 50ml aliquots.
Each 50ml aliquot will treat 5 gallons of water to yield a final buffer concentration of around 5mM.
I chose 5mM as this yielded around a tablespoon of dry reagent per 5 gallons. Ideally, 10mM may have been a better idea, but I figured this was just an aid, as the phytases in the mash should already be doing a good enough job. pH of the mash stayed around 5 the entire process (as measured by the pH paper [I know they are slightly inaccurate]).
Yes, I realize it's probably not necessary for most water, but some people would also argue that fly sparging is not necessary while batch sparging exists; do with this information what you will. The commercial example probably wouldn't exist without worrywarts like me.
Update: Did some price checking. It's cheaper to buy the commercial version.