CleanEmUpIves
Well-Known Member
What pH levels comprise sour tastes from tart to mouth puckering sour? Obviously subjective but what is the generally accepted range? Is it dangerous to go below a certain pH (if it's even possible)?
What is the pH scale for sour beers?
- Thread starter CleanEmUpIves
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3.0 to 3.5 is usual for Sours. 3 will make you need a straw to drink water. 3.5 is about the least accepted as a sour. 3.2 is normal. You can go below that, but it would be vinegar.
CleanEmUpIves
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the explanation.
I've read posts describing 3.6 to 3.9 as "a nice tartness". There must be a gray area in that range which people begin tasting "sour".
This thread also helped to understand the different levels:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/kettle-sour-target-ph.621817/
mashpaddled
Well-Known Member
It's not really worth gauging this by anybody else's opinion. For a really long time sour beer drinkers in the US overwhelmingly wanted as sour as possible and brewers were happy to oblige. There are plenty of sour beers sitting on shelves like that still today. Like everything else, craft drinkers want everything turned up to 11.
The movement towards the end of sour beer being a big part of the craft market was towards less sour to develop more flavor than just lactic acid or unintentionally a lot of acetic acid. That didn't catch on enough but you can still find some brewers out there making a product that isn't just acid flavor. I've always been in this boat of trying to make sour beer that has a lot of flavor instead of beer that has a lot of sour flavor.
I bring this up for a couple reasons. First, you don't really taste ph--titratable acidity is a closer analog to what you taste as sourness--because a beer at 3.5 ph but high in acetic acid can taste more sour than a beer with no detectable acetic acid at 3.0. Different acids taste different, so you can only really make apples to apples comparisons on ph with beers with similar acid profiles. Second, you will find little consistency in what people think constitutes tart or sour and the dividing line between the two. The poster above feels 3.5 is the top end but there are plenty of sour beers in the 3.6-3.8 range on the market. Some beers described as tart venture as high as 4.0 or 4.1 where you can also find some hefeweizens, lagers and stouts. Rather than fixate on ph, focus on what you enjoy drinking and how to develop that beer.
The movement towards the end of sour beer being a big part of the craft market was towards less sour to develop more flavor than just lactic acid or unintentionally a lot of acetic acid. That didn't catch on enough but you can still find some brewers out there making a product that isn't just acid flavor. I've always been in this boat of trying to make sour beer that has a lot of flavor instead of beer that has a lot of sour flavor.
I bring this up for a couple reasons. First, you don't really taste ph--titratable acidity is a closer analog to what you taste as sourness--because a beer at 3.5 ph but high in acetic acid can taste more sour than a beer with no detectable acetic acid at 3.0. Different acids taste different, so you can only really make apples to apples comparisons on ph with beers with similar acid profiles. Second, you will find little consistency in what people think constitutes tart or sour and the dividing line between the two. The poster above feels 3.5 is the top end but there are plenty of sour beers in the 3.6-3.8 range on the market. Some beers described as tart venture as high as 4.0 or 4.1 where you can also find some hefeweizens, lagers and stouts. Rather than fixate on ph, focus on what you enjoy drinking and how to develop that beer.
