Mash hopping and impact to pH

[cactusgarrett]

With the relatively new interest in mash hopping (thanks to new thiolized yeast offerings) I was wondering if anyone can point to something outlining how mash hopping impacts mash pH. There is very little around here and other forums, and what is present is 5+ years old and ultimately concludes with "probably?" - not solid enough for me to just ignore without digging further.

Does the lack of dissolved of alpha acids in the wort prevent discernable impact? Are the alpha acids in too low concentration to contribute? Do other dissolvable compounds in hops contribute to mash pH change? I could talk myself into something either way, but I was hoping someone knew of recent work to reference more reliably.

 

[cactusgarrett]

For anyone keeping score, I reached out to Scott Janish with this one. His response:

I haven't done a lot of research or testing into heavy mash-hopping and mash pH. I can say that one beer that we mash-hopped at ~2 lbs/bbl. (which is towards the high end) resulted in a mash pH just under 5.2 pH, maybe a little bit lower than what we would typically get. So at least in our low sample size, it didn't have a tremendous impact on mash pH