Brun' Water Mash Ph

[Hayden512]

So I've used brun water countless times in the past. However, I feel like the estimated mash ph for this brown porter isn't making sense right now. Here is my grain bill.

10 lbs 5.0 oz Golden Promise (Simpsons) (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 81.3 %
1 lbs Pale Chocolate (225.0 SRM) Grain 2 7.9 %
12.0 oz Crystal, Medium (Simpsons) (90.6 SRM) Grain 3 5.9 %
10.0 oz Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM)

I build all of my beers from distilled water. Before any additions brun' water is giving me an estimated ph of 5.03. This seems way to low to me. It is a 5 gallon batch.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Did you mean SRM or Lovibond? (nitpicking here, but they are not the same)

Using my own 'Mash Made Easy' spreadsheet, and assuming Lovibond, my educated guess is that in pure distilled water (with no mineral additions) your recipe should mash at roughly 5.5 pH. And with mineralization sufficient to achieve 50 ppm of calcium in the strike water it should mash at roughly 5.4 pH.

 

[dmtaylor]

Your three specialty malts are bringing the mash pH way way down. Save the pale chocolate malt for the last 10 minutes of the mash, then the pH will not fall for most of the mashing process and you'll be just fine.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Even if your three dark malts all had measured DI_Mash pH's of a very low 4.2 (and a perusal of various maltsters DI_Mash pH data for similar malts will indicate that they don't) your recipe should still for this radically extreme case not mash at below 5.2 pH, even if also presuming that the Golden Promise base malts DI_Mash pH is coming in potentially somewhat low at 5.6, and also assuming that any calcium added to the distilled water is held to 50 ppm max, and that there is also no magnesium mineral addition. 'Brewer's Friend' agrees with 'Mash Made Easy' on this.