5.6 Mash Ph too high for Saison?

I'm just getting ready to brew my first Saison. I bunged the grain bill and target water profile ( 54 / 8 / 8 / 77 / 60 / 15 - not set in stone or anything just based on my research ) into brunwater to work out the salts but brunwater is calculating the mash ph as 5.6 ... and of course I don't have any lactic acid or acid malt ... or anything that I know of ... except using more salts ( which I don't want to do unless of course that would be preferable to running with the higher PH ) ..

so should I abandon ship and wait for acid malt or lactic ... or will it be probably OK. I'm fine with OK I guess since I'm running out of homebrew and I don't have infinite windows available for brewing either ... but at the same time I'm trying to get my beers tasting better so I don't want to have something really meh either

( recipe pdf attached )

View attachment output.pdf

 

Honestly I wouldn't worry about 5.6. Its on the high end for beta amylase but the low end for alpha amylase. Saison yeast tend to produce more acid than others so your final beer pH will be fine too

 

thanks saltymiry I'll go with that I think

 

5.6 is not ideal for a Saison, but its not terrible. The beer is more likely to lack the crispness that is characteristic of Saison, but it will be beer. Do get some acid. You'll need it in the future.

 

yea I don't know what I was thinking really - went to the trouble of getting salts - even trying to track down pure nacl - but avoiding lactic acid ... hmm ..

 

I agree with martin, I've made 8ish batches of saison over 3 years before I just recently started tinkering with my water. Those old saisons were all mashed around 5.6, and I really enjoyed them, great beers. However, now that i'm tinkering with my water and mashing at 5.3 my saison is clearly superior, love that extra crispness it now has, given the same recipe and process as before.

 

By the way, you can incorporate a post-fermentation pH adjustment into your beer if you find that its a little too flabby or dull. Try it out by dosing in a glass of the beer and scale it to your remaining batch size.

 

wow martin - I love hearing stuff like this

 

What water profile would you recommend for a 5-6%, pale saison?

I did exactly what you said on my last saison because my tap water has high bicarbonate levels, so next time I'm going to go RO and build from there. I'm guessing you don't want a lot of salts, so lactic for pH adjustment, and what else? Yellow balanced profile?

 

I dont have much experience with profiles yet but I just had to add a little CaCl to get to the hengouwen/Hainaut (boiled) profile. This is where saison dupont is made so figured its a good target. The beer turned out great.

 

Saisons are known for their dry finish. Correspondingly, the water across much of Wallonia has a modest sulfate content along with a small chloride content. The Yellow Balanced or Dry profiles would be reasonable for the style.

Definitely lactic for acidification as most continental European brewers use lactic acid in some form. Getting the mash pH into the 5.2 to 5.3 range is desirable.