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I think that might be done for the simplicity of it. While i think the exact approach is more correct and should be implemented in water calculators it is easy to argue that the difference of 12% is in the noise of all the other factors that determine pH in mash and sparge. Kai

Thanks, Jason. I'm glad the pH prediction works for you. Kai

keep in mind that there are beers that benefit from oxidation. These are mostly dark strong beers like Doppelbock or RIS. Kai

Ken, I would not focus at bicarbonate levels as much. It's more about the amount of acid that you have to add to get your mash pH into an acceptable range. For lighter beers you may find that the amount to add may affect the flavor negatively and thus you would be better off when starting out...

This has more to do with the water's ability to hold on to that pH than the actual pH itself. Using this tool: http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/ try this (keep the default volumes): enter an alkalinity of 10 ppm as CaCO3 and a pH of 10. Then open...

yep. key is to stat with a good mash pH (around 5.3-5.5 is my preference) and keep the sparge water from raising that pH. The later may mean acidification or simply sparging with R/O water. Kai

I think bicarbonate's effect of the taste of the beer has more to do with its ability to raise mash and boil pH than the mere presence of bicarbonate ions. At beer pH there are virtually no bicarbonate ions left. High mash and boil pH can cause the harsh flavors and lingering haze described by...

What was the calcium content and/or RA of the water you added? Kai

To some extent you are correct, boiling will concentrate the ions. But in general the volume reduction during boiling should not be enough that ion concentrations should be calculated for post boil volume. Kai

Carbonate does not matter much in brewing water since it only occurs in significant amounts at fairly high water pH. What is your water pH? You say that your water is high in bicarbonate but low in calcium. Any chance it comes from a water softener? What does the water report look like? Kai

There is no generic profile that would work for all beers, but you can easily work with a limited set. One of the reasons for this is that changes in your grist, largely the use of dark malts, require changes in your water to make sure your mash pH is where you want it to be. You way want to...

Thanks for that pointer. I took a look and it only mentions a taste threshold of 400 ppm for lactic acid. No mention of the source or if there is a dependency on beer strength. Given that this book is targeted towards large commercial brewers i assume that this number is for regular strength (12...

maybe. Someone would have to be willing to subject his/her pH meter probe to high mash temperatures for many different mashes to see what the correlations is and what the variability is. Kai

Thanks. This doesn't apply here. The calculator calculates the temperature depended shift in the probe's response to a given pH. It's the TC function (temperature correction) of a meter that has ATC (Automatic Temperature Correction). The temp dependent pH shift in wort (or any other...

Where did you find this and what is the temp of the correction? Kai

I know from playing with BW's mash pH prediction that it doesn't account for mash thickness. That should be a problem with BIAB. But in this cases mash thickness won't matter since the residual alkalinity is close to 0. But I'm also puzzled about the low mash pH that you observed. Kai

With this tool http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/ and making an assumption of about 10 lb of base malt and a strike water volume of 4 gal I get a mash pH prediction of about 5.4. This includes about 2 tsp of CaCl2 in 10 gal of water. Let's assume that the...

I think it is more practical to express the lactate as lactate per grain weight. With that approach you don't have to worry about boiling (which does not boil off lactate) concentrating your lactate. Furthermore it takes into account that more grain per water usually means higher gravity and...

I actually reuse 2 oz of the buffers in 4 oz bottles. every 6 month I replace it with stock pH buffer solution. The drift over the 6 months is never more than 0.02. Having the pH buffer in small bottles also makes it easier to heat it to 25 C. Kai

Don't trust the sources that want you to measure and adjust the mash temp pH. The best practice to test mash pH is to take a sample, cool it to 25 C and test pH. You are correct that the pH of a substance generally falls as its temperature increases. Kai