Notice: I did post this on Brew-Bros and also on NB so I apologize to anyone who may be seeing this for the second time.
I'll admit that I am new to B-Water but I want to use it because I keep hearing people say that it gets them very close on pH and it takes away a lot of guesswork, etc. You get some very good predictability with it, as they say. So I made an amber lager last night and I had my BNW output ready to go. I'm going to include everything here in case someone sees where I went wrong... no point in being vague because it will lead to vagueness.
Beer: 7.75 lbs Best Malz Pils (2L), 1 lb Best Malz Vienna (4.5L), 8 ounces CaraMunich II (45L) and 2 ounces of C80. I entered all of that into BNW along with my source water and the fact that it was 25% distilled. The source water is Ca 34, Mg 12, Na 13, Cl 21, SO4 27 (that's 9x3) and Bicarb 138. I mash with 4 gallons (3 gals tap, 1 gal distilled) and batch sparge with the same. I added .8g of CaSO4 to the mash as well as 3.2g CaCl. In BNW, I entered into tab 3 (light blue column) that it was .2g of gypsum per gallon of mash water and .8g of CaCl per gallon of mash water. The estimated color of the beer was about 8 SRM. BNW suggested that I needed 3ml of lactic acid 88% to get to a mash pH of 5.2. To be conservative, I added 2ml to the mash water before I heated it. I got everything mixed and took the pH with my meter (which had just read my 4.0 and 7.0 solutions properly as well as my tap water which is always 6.6... no trouble with the meter) and got 4.9. I measured the pH three times and it was 4.9 each time... I also cooled the sample to around 70° each time and one of the measurements was about 30 minutes into the mash). Remember too that this was with 1ml of acid less than BNW suggested. The color of the wort was right around the predicted 8 SRM or so... not darker. I'm not suggesting this is a bug because I'm sure it's not. But I am clearly using this wrong. I have been through the tabs a hundred times. I must have a switch flipped or a setting wrong. I did email the file to Martin (sheepishly) but thought I would post it here. Anyone care to look at this? Thanks guys.
I'll admit that I am new to B-Water but I want to use it because I keep hearing people say that it gets them very close on pH and it takes away a lot of guesswork, etc. You get some very good predictability with it, as they say. So I made an amber lager last night and I had my BNW output ready to go. I'm going to include everything here in case someone sees where I went wrong... no point in being vague because it will lead to vagueness.
Beer: 7.75 lbs Best Malz Pils (2L), 1 lb Best Malz Vienna (4.5L), 8 ounces CaraMunich II (45L) and 2 ounces of C80. I entered all of that into BNW along with my source water and the fact that it was 25% distilled. The source water is Ca 34, Mg 12, Na 13, Cl 21, SO4 27 (that's 9x3) and Bicarb 138. I mash with 4 gallons (3 gals tap, 1 gal distilled) and batch sparge with the same. I added .8g of CaSO4 to the mash as well as 3.2g CaCl. In BNW, I entered into tab 3 (light blue column) that it was .2g of gypsum per gallon of mash water and .8g of CaCl per gallon of mash water. The estimated color of the beer was about 8 SRM. BNW suggested that I needed 3ml of lactic acid 88% to get to a mash pH of 5.2. To be conservative, I added 2ml to the mash water before I heated it. I got everything mixed and took the pH with my meter (which had just read my 4.0 and 7.0 solutions properly as well as my tap water which is always 6.6... no trouble with the meter) and got 4.9. I measured the pH three times and it was 4.9 each time... I also cooled the sample to around 70° each time and one of the measurements was about 30 minutes into the mash). Remember too that this was with 1ml of acid less than BNW suggested. The color of the wort was right around the predicted 8 SRM or so... not darker. I'm not suggesting this is a bug because I'm sure it's not. But I am clearly using this wrong. I have been through the tabs a hundred times. I must have a switch flipped or a setting wrong. I did email the file to Martin (sheepishly) but thought I would post it here. Anyone care to look at this? Thanks guys.