What does this mean for my water?

I got a 3 stage filter(1x particles 2x carbon) so I could use my tap water for brewing. I haven't done a lab test on it yet(no water reports available for my city here in Brazil).

I use 2 ph meters I got from China, and got 6.8 pH at room temp for my water, and my mash pH came in at exactly 5.3.

Used 37qt of water for 28.5lbs of grains(1.3qt/lb). Final color was 5.79SRM.


Does this tell me anything about my water or is it impossible to know? What could I expect from the lab report based on this? Does this mean my mash ph will be too low if I brew a darker beer?

I'm not really quite sure what you are asking? I mean it could mean that your water is fairly soft but then again we don't know your grain bill or anything. So really this is a extremely vague question you're asking. Without a proper water report I suppose it means nothing. Also was your PH meter calibrated? Did you take your mash ph reading at a room temp relevant to the calibrated temp of the ph meter? Again, I'm not sure your pH readings mean jack unless you actually know what you are shooting for. Also as AJ will point out, cheapo PH meters are as useful as the PH strips which are very hard to tell what your actual PH is. Invest in one that can take a reading of at least +/- 0.01 units, I'm assuming the one you bought was cheap (being made in china in all). You'll thank us later.

PH calibration:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=302256

I highly recommend getting a water analysis then downloading Martin's fantastic water tool: https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/

Then you'll really be able to dial in your water profile.

Maybe one of the water experts on here will chime in as well.

Cheers!

Hard to say much. It would depend on the details of the grain bill. It appears that the water is low in alkalinity and that suggests that you might indeed experience low mash pH with a lot of dark grains in a grist.

Grain bill was:

23.1lbs Pilsner Malt(1.7 SRM)
2.2lbs Crystal 10L (8 SRM)
2.2lbs Munich(13 SRM)
1.1lbs Melanoidin (20 SRM)


I calibrated the ph meters with the two packets in distilled water that came with them, I realize they're cheap but they're all I have, am probably going to invest in a better one in the future but right now I've got other stuff to buy and budget is a bit tight!

I'm going to get my water lab tested next month and use the spredsheet, was just wondering if there would be anything that could be said from the info I gave in the OP because I was curious.

The store water we usually bought(pretty common to buy 5gal jugs of water here in Brazil instead of using tap water) came with info indicating it had minimal amounts of ions, if that's to say anything about the water sources around me. Can't trust people here to not just fill it with tap water and sell it as if it was from a good source though... lol


Thanks for replying!

With that grain bill a mash pH (room temperature) of 5.3 is highly suspect. At that pH the base malt is going to require a lot more (157 mEq) acidity than those grains can provide - in fact at 5.3 only the Melanoidin malt is likely to supply any. A more reasonable estimate, with distilled water, would be 5.6. A water with a lot of permanent hardness and very little or no alkalinity (temporary hardness) might get that down to 5.56. Thus I think we must be mistrustful of the pH readings (though the fact that they were the same is what led me to accept them at first) and wait until you get data from the lab analysis.

ajdelange said:

With that grain bill a mash pH (room temperature) of 5.3 is highly suspect. At that pH the base malt is going to require a lot more (157 mEq) acidity than those grains can provide - in fact at 5.3 only the Melanoidin malt is likely to supply any. A more reasonable estimate, with distilled water, would be 5.6. A water with a lot of permanent hardness and very little or no alkalinity (temporary hardness) might get that down to 5.56. Thus I think we must be mistrustful of the pH readings (though the fact that they were the same is what led me to accept them at first) and wait until you get data from the lab analysis.

Click to expand...

Great, that's the kind of information I wanted from this thread. Thanks, I'll report back in a few weeks when I finally get the test done.