I didn't know that the water PH had anything to do with extracting tannins, good to know! So my brewing process goes as such:
1) Fill the mash tun (a 10 gallon Blichmann w/ false bottom) up and past the thermometer and bring to a boil and calibrate thermometer.
2)fill the lauter tun dead space with water, then add 1.25 gallons of water for every pound of grain from there up.
3) Heat mash water to about 170 degrees and mash in to ATTEMPT to get a mash temp of 158. This is where I have problems, as the mash tun thermometer sometimes doesn't touch the mash unless I tip the mash tun, my alcohol thermometer reads 12 degrees low at boil, 5 degrees low at 171 so it's not accurate. I have an infrared but it won't read through the foam and grains. As of right now I really have no way of accurately holding a mash temp, or even knowing exactly what it is and I think this is my biggest problem.
4) while mash is sitting for an hour, I heat sparge water to a boil then let it cool to whatever sparge temp I need. Then depending on the brew I put the mash tun back on the burner and bring the temperature up about 10 degrees for 10 minutes.
5) After mashing, I voorlaf until the wort runs clear then sparge into the boil kettle being careful not to oxygenate it.
6)Bring sweet wort in kettle to a boil and add hops yadda yadda yadda for an hour or so.
7) chill wort with sterilized wort chiller to 68 degrees, transfer to clean carboy and pitch yeast and clarity ferm.
8) while transferring carboy to it's final fermenting place I try to oxygenate it by letting the wort splash around in the carboy.