Bru'n Water input question

[bleak]

I hope I'm not reopening a discussion that has already made the rounds, but I couldn't find anything in my search. On the mash acidification page, we input all of the grain ingredients in the recipe at hand, but the categories of grain are only base malt, crystal malt, roast malt and acid malt. Some of these categories are obvious, but when it comes to malts like Munich, Vienna, Melanoidin, Victory, or Carapils-Dextrine, I'm confused. It seems that changing the category drastically changes the estimated pH result. I appreciate any help anyone can provide. Thanks.

 

[Yooper]

I hope I'm not reopening a discussion that has already made the rounds, but I couldn't find anything in my search. On the mash acidification page, we input all of the grain ingredients in the recipe at hand, but the categories of grain are only base malt, crystal malt, roast malt and acid malt. Some of these categories are obvious, but when it comes to malts like Munich, Vienna, Melanoidin, Victory, or Carapils-Dextrine, I'm confused. It seems that changing the category drastically changes the estimated pH result. I appreciate any help anyone can provide. Thanks.

Munich and Vienna are base malts, carapils is a cara-malt (crystal), while victory malt is roasted (albeit lightly at something like 25L), and melanoidin is like a higher-powered Munich malt.

Any malt you use would fit into the categories.

 

[ajdelange]

In order to calculate mash pH one needs to know each malt's DI mash pH and its buffering capacity. For base malts this involves 2 parameters: the DI pH and the slope of the titration curve (the number of mEq of acid required per unit weight of the malt to shift its pH by 1 unit. For specialty malts additional parameters are required (because their pH changes are not linear with acid addition. The malt parameters are generally not available and so the best a program that purports to estimate mash pH can do is attempt to guestimate these parameters from something that is available such as the malt color, the type of malt, the maltster's brand etc. As none of these are particularly good proxies for the DI mash pH or buffering coefficients the pH estimates aren't that good but they really aren't that bad either.

If you find that a program is underestimating mash pH consistently for a particular brew you can fix that by telling the program you are using a malt that is lighter in color or of a lighter type. This is tweaking the simulation to get the answer you want which is what the global warming sorts (and plenty of others too) do all the time but may allow you to use the program more effectively if what you measure backs up your tweaks.

I thought Bru'n water allowed one to input color. Putting in a higher color for base, caramel and crystal malts will result in lower estimated pH and conversely.

 

[bleak]

It does allow you to input color. Thanks for the information.