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.
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