Chronic attenuation issues

Yakima 728
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You may as well have a calcium issue,and if my beer had low or not right fermentation I would not repitch that yeast. I tell people that move into my hood that 50/50 house/RO is good for stouts and porters bur RO for lighter beers. I found this out by getting a water test.....don't waste grain funds on water if you don't need to get it tested! I have the meter that came with Palmer's water testing kit and it has never failed me, has .02 accuracy and a temp read out. A 100 gram scale is a must if your using salts,I add enough for 75-100 ppm of calcium.
 
hottpeper13 said:
You may as well have a calcium issue,and if my beer had low or not right fermentation I would not repitch that yeast. I tell people that move into my hood that 50/50 house/RO is good for stouts and porters bur RO for lighter beers. I found this out by getting a water test.....don't waste grain funds on water if you don't need to get it tested! I have the meter that came with Palmer's water testing kit and it has never failed me, has .02 accuracy and a temp read out. A 100 gram scale is a must if your using salts,I add enough for 75-100 ppm of calcium.
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I ordered the PH meter for the next brew.

I did get BSG Amylase Enzyme. How much should I add to my fermentor? Its a 10 gallon batch. Also, do I just add it directly to the fermentor? or should i mix it with water, than add.

thanks
 
OldSkrecz1 said:
I ordered the PH meter for the next brew.

I did get BSG Amylase Enzyme. How much should I add to my fermentor? Its a 10 gallon batch. Also, do I just add it directly to the fermentor? or should i mix it with water, than add.

thanks
Click to expand...
Is it liquid or powder? If liquid, I would just dump it in. If powder, I dissolve it in some warm water (that had been boiled to sanitize) before adding it. Be sure to use good sanitization procedures when adding.

​
10 gal is about 0.4 hL, so 1 mL of the liquid should be enough for your fermenter. Expect it to take a few days to work.

Brew on :mug:
 
doug293cz said:
Is it liquid or powder? If liquid, I would just dump it in. If powder, I dissolve it in some warm water (that had been boiled to sanitize) before adding it. Be sure to use good sanitization procedures when adding.

​
10 gal is about 0.4 hL, so 1 mL of the liquid should be enough for your fermenter. Expect it to take a few days to work.

Brew on :mug:
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its dry powder.. 1 tsp?
 
1 - 2 tsps is probably a good place to start. I don't think having excess will dry the beer out any more than a little. More will just work faster.

Brew on :mug:
 
OK everyone. I used the enzyme got it down to 1.012.
Also, bought myself a fathers day gift. Milwaukee MW102 PH meter and some Phosphoric Acid. I downloaded the Brewcipher xls.. So I need some help with the salt additions. I'm going to brew sometime next week.


Im going to go straight RO water.

Red ale. 11 gallon batch. Does this look right to you?
1592575014542.png
 
OldSkrecz1 said:
OK everyone. I used the enzyme got it down to 1.012.
Also, bought myself a fathers day gift. Milwaukee MW102 PH meter and some Phosphoric Acid. I downloaded the Brewcipher xls.. So I need some help with the salt additions. I'm going to brew sometime next week.


Im going to go straight RO water.

Red ale. 11 gallon batch. Does this look right to you?
View attachment 685668
Click to expand...

That looks fine. I see you have the Sparge Water Acidification set to "Y" to show its result on the recipe tab. You really don't need to acidify sparge water when using distilled/RO. It has no buffering capacity, so there's no danger of tannin extraction/astringency in the runoff.
 
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I have a HERMs setup too. I have to keep the water in the HLT 1-2F above my target mash temp. I believe that if you are recirculating wort for an hour through a herms coil that is sitting at 158, then you are basically mashing at 158.
 
Hey guys.. Getting ready to brew tomorrow with my new PH meter. I went to Walmart and filled 18 gallons of water from the Primowater machine. It suppose to be RO water. I measured my water its at 6.2. Isn't it suppose to be 7.0? since its RO water? Can this be my problem?
 
OldSkrecz1 said:
Hey guys.. Getting ready to brew tomorrow with my new PH meter. I went to Walmart and filled 18 gallons of water from the Primowater machine. It suppose to be RO water. I measured my water its at 6.2. Isn't it suppose to be 7.0? since its RO water? Can this be my problem?
Click to expand...

The water is probably fine. It absorbs CO2, which influences the pH.

ETA: pH readings of distilled/RO water aren't necessarily reliable anyway.
 
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OK.. just finished my red ale. With my new PH meter. I went real detailed with the readings. I added 8 grams of Cacl2 and 4 grams of Gypsum in the mash. I used all RO water for mash water and sparge. How does it look? My PH seems very low. Should I worry?

Mash timePH reading
7:50​
5.05​
8:00​
5.12​
8:05​
5.15​
8:11​
5.15​
8:20​
5.12​
8:32​
5.14​
8:48​
5.13​
9:00​
5.13​
started sparging
after 6 Gal of sparging:
5.00​
after 10 gals of Sparging
5.35​
last 1/2 gal of sparging
5.5​
total kettle PH (13gallons)
5.1​
 
So, I also found out about my temperature issues. My Blichmann Brewmomtor gets messed up after I mash in. I calibrated it last night. I couldn't believe that my mash temp drop so quickly. so I double checked with another thermometer. It Seems that the the grains are compacting in the 1/2 coupling that my Brewmometer is screwed into. Has anyone experienced that? WTF?





20200628_082241.jpg
 
OldSkrecz1 said:
OK.. just finished my red ale. With my new PH meter. I went real detailed with the readings. I added 8 grams of Cacl2 and 4 grams of Gypsum in the mash. I used all RO water for mash water and sparge. How does it look? My PH seems very low. Should I worry?
Click to expand...

Did you measure the mash pH at mash temperature? If so, add about 0.3 to get the pH at room temperature. It's actually better to cool the sample down and measure at room temp, if for no other reason than it's less wear on your pH meter's probe.
 
Gotta ask, you are using a hydrometer correct? Not a refractometer?

Everything stopping at about 1.020. I been there.
 
I found that using more than one thermometer is a good idea. Several of my digital ones started to give bad readings, but not necessarily in an obvious way. For both brewing and coffee roasting I now switched back to an old analog meat/baking thermometer, and I occasionally cross check with a digital one.
(A baking thermocouple thermometer started to read intermittently high, due to an intermittent short where the wire left the metal probe housing. Several encapsulated NTC thermometers turned out to be not all that encapsulated after all; they went bonkers, also reading a few degrees high, after maybe ten hours of liquid immersion.)
 
VikeMan said:
Did you measure the mash pH at mash temperature? If so, add about 0.3 to get the pH at room temperature. It's actually better to cool the sample down and measure at room temp, if for no other reason than it's less wear on your pH meter's probe.
Click to expand...
Even if its an ATC probe? Its a Milwaukee MW 102. Do you think it would be off by .3?
 
Quick question.. If I wanted to raise my mash PH. How much Baking soda do I add (roughly)? Ive been reading that its hard to dissolve Baking soda into the mash. Would you add it into the mash water before adding the grains? Maybe circulating the water? Any thoughts?

thanks
 
OldSkrecz1 said:
Even if its an ATC probe? Its a Milwaukee MW 102. Do you think it would be off by .3?
Click to expand...

Yes. The ATC feature corrects for the fact that the meter itself behaves differently depending on temperature. But it doesn't correct for the fact that the wort has a different pH at different temperatures.

The 0.3 is a rule of thumb. I've seen anywhere between 0.25 and 0.35 cited. The reason it's a rule of thumb is that the actual value will be different depending on the makeup of the solution, and also because mash temps and room temps also vary.

In the case of your mash pH on this batch, celebrate success! We'll never know exactly what your mash temp was, but clearly you were in the ballpark.

OldSkrecz1 said:
If I wanted to raise my mash PH. How much Baking soda do I add (roughly)? Ive been reading that its hard to dissolve Baking soda into the mash. Would you add it into the mash water before adding the grains?
Click to expand...

Just add NaHCO3 in the calculator to determine how much. Any of the mash salts should (ideally) be dissolved in the strike water before mashing in.
 
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OldSkrecz1 said:
Quick question.. If I wanted to raise my mash PH. How much Baking soda do I add (roughly)? Ive been reading that its hard to dissolve Baking soda into the mash. Would you add it into the mash water before adding the grains? Maybe circulating the water? Any thoughts?

thanks
Click to expand...
Baking soda dissolves pretty quickly. What doesn't dissolve well is chalk (calcium carbonate.) If you don't want the sodium that comes with baking soda, you can add pickling lime (calcium hydroxide), which dissolves much easier than calcium carbonate.

Brew on :mug:
 
I use RO water because my well has 400 ppm of CaCO3 and that is even too high for stouts. So when i need to add back some alkalinity I just mix RO and house water to get what I want. The math for water is easy since it's linear, so half house water gets me to 200 ppm which is close enough for dark beers, 25% for amber, and guess what ........it dissolves just fine. LOL
 
hottpeper13 said:
I use RO water because my well has 400 ppm of CaCO3 and that is even too high for stouts. So when i need to add back some alkalinity I just mix RO and house water to get what I want. The math for water is easy since it's linear, so half house water gets me to 200 ppm which is close enough for dark beers, 25% for amber, and guess what ........it dissolves just fine. LOL
Click to expand...
That's because you aren't dissolving anything - the CaCO3 is already in solution. Diluting a solution doesn't require dissolving anything new. Dissolving solid CaCO3 in water takes some effort.

Brew on :mug:
 
hottpeper13 said:
I use RO water because my well has 400 ppm of CaCO3 and that is even too high for stouts. So when i need to add back some alkalinity I just mix RO and house water to get what I want.
Click to expand...

When you see a Total Alkalinity of 400 ppm "as CaCO3," that means total alkalinity (whatever the source) would be 400 ppm if you expressed it as if the ions making it up were instead CaCO3. Most alkalinity is HCO3.
 
hottpeper13 said:
The point is if you're using RO water because your tap is high in alkalinity just dilute it!
Click to expand...

As long as the remaining (diluted) profile fits the style (or brewer preference), that's a great idea.

Sadly, from a flavor/mouthfeel perspective, ions can't be diluted individually at different rates, which makes building up from distilled water the way to go for almost all of my batches.

But from a pH perspective, any water (with high alkalinity) can be diluted to hit any alkalinity/mash pH desired.
 

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