Mash hops and pH

[skortjorkson]

Hello!

I'm setting out to brew an IPA with some hard water this week, and had been considering adding some of my spare older hops to the mash tun to try to get some flavor out of them and help my lautering a bit.

It's also my first time brewing with this water source, which has a hardness of 261ppm as caco3, and acidifying the water appropriately for a pale beer is going to be tricky. It struck me, though, that the mash hops might help acidify the mash, but haven't been able to find any data on it. Does anybody have any experience or other knowledge about mash hops and pH in the tun?

Unfortunately I don't have a pH meter with me yet, so I'm flying blind and was hoping to find a resource that could help me calculate the deets (Bru'N'Water doesn't have a mash hops input). Thanks!

 

[jerbrew]

When you're talking about gallons of water and pounds of grain vs a few ounces of hops tops I don't think you're going to see much of an effect if any. probably why it's not in the calculators. Of course I have no data like yourself i'm jsut guessing. I would just add enough acidulated malt to get you into the middle of the range you're looking for and hope for the best. especially without a pH meter you'll never actually know what you're working with.

 

[skortjorkson]

Yeah... not having a pH meter in this situation kinda sucks, it would make things a lot easier. I probably will just throw in the hops and calculate how much acidulated malt I need to get in the right range, but in the future might do an experiment (with pH meter) to figure out the effect.

I also realized there won't be much of an effect just because at mash temp and length the alpha acid utilization will be negligible... not that I was doing it for alpha acids, but I suspect they would be the compound messing with the pH, and an hour or so at 140-150F just isn't going to isomerize them and get them into solution. Thanks though!