Bicarbonate question

[hamburgeler]

I'm brewing a 5 gallon all grain all Brett Belgian white tomorrow, using distilled water. First brew session with my hach pH meter too. The recipe is great, it is from zymurgy article by chad from crooked stave. Last time I brewed was a partial mash version before I cared about water. This time, as I'm trying to figure out the water additions I realized the 1lb acid malt in the recipe drops the pH down to the low 4 range, the only way I can figure to bring it up is a decent amount of pickling lime or baking soda, which jacks up the sodium level or the bicarbonate really high. From memory, the bicarbonate was in the high 300's or 400's to get a pH of 5.2. I have limited water knowledge. Is this a problem? I can get more specifics on the recipe/water additions if anyone is interested. But I do recall adding the acid malt after the hour mash when I did the partial mash version. Thank you.

 

[mabrungard]

Whoa! Don't add acid malt unless the mash needs it. That recipe was apparently developed by someone with water with much more alkalinity.

 

[hamburgeler]

Whoa! Don't add acid malt unless the mash needs it. That recipe was apparently developed by someone with water with much more alkalinity.

That makes sense! Thanks mabrungard! It actually makes my life easier, I couldn't find pickling lime anywhere and nerd to order it online.

 

[ajdelange]

There's more than meets the eye here and the elephant in the room is the huge amount of sauermalz called for. Normally you want mash pH in the 5.4 ish range. This gives the best flavor and good efficiency. Depending on water and the grain bill you make adjustments as necessary to hit that pH. Either a base (bicarbonate, lime, lye...) or an acid (sulfuric, hydrochloric, lactic, phosphoric, sauermalz...) is used but never both as the result of mixing acid and base is water plus the anion of the acid plus the cation of the base.

In this case, however, you are making a wit which is a tart beer. I'm guessing it's creator intends you to do a normal mash and at the completion of conversion (1 hour) add the sauermalz in order to drop the pH to a level more suited to the beer (and perhaps the yeast - don't know if brett prefers a lower pH). So addition of the sauermalz may indeed by absolutely the right thing to do but if it is you do not want to undo its effect by neutralizing with alkali. I'd re-read the article and make sure you understand the author's intent.

Given that you are working from distilled water it is likely that you will need a bit of sauermalz to get proper mash pH and then the extra pound to get the additional tartness at the completion of conversion.

 

[hamburgeler]

Thanks ajdelange! I used enough sauermalz to get target a pH of 5.3, which I thought would be better for a wit beer. After 5 minutes I was at 5.26 and at 30 minutes I was at 5.34, so I assumed that was good enough. I after the rest of the malt after 60 minutes and I ended up with really high efficiency, 89% batch sparging. Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[ajdelange]

OK on part 1. Now it's time to add the extra pound for souring (assuming my thesis is correct).