calculating pH when using malt extracts?

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SanPancho

SanPancho

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my pH meter is unavailable at the moment, as is most of my brewing gear, so to get the kegs full i'm whipping up an extract batch of very basic hoppy beer. is there any way to determine or estimate the ph of the wort? my water is pretty soft, alkalinity 46 / hardness 47 (as caco3) , tds is like 70, etc. etc. so i assume the water is not gonna buffer noticeably.

i considered trying to convert from #dme to #grain and then punching the amounts into brunwater but not sure that makes sense.

anybody have an idea? ive got some golden light and some pils that i'm using. havent been able to find anything online which isnt too suprising.
 
Unless you know the conditions, including the water and any additions, that the extract's mash was done under, I don't think there's any way to make a reasonable estimate
 
You could attempt emailing or calling the extract manufacturer and asking them what level of mineralization and what pH was targeted (plus ask what temperature the pH was measured at) when they mashed the malt that was subsequently dried.
 
a reasonable estimate would be to simply get the DI ph of pilsner malt and use that. given that this is briess DME im pretty sure i could use their numbers based on their pilsner malt.

but i dont have it. and i'd assume that they might acidify a bit as i think pils on its own is usually above 5.6.
 
Silver_Is_Money said:
You could attempt emailing or calling the extract manufacturer and asking them what level of mineralization and what pH was targeted (plus ask what temperature the pH was measured at) when they mashed the malt that was subsequently dried.
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i could. but i'd have to wait until monday. and my kegs are empty. so its kviek dme hop bomb and with a bit of luck i'll be drinking it down by next weekend.
 
SanPancho said:
a reasonable estimate would be to simply get the DI ph of pilsner malt and use that. given that this is briess DME im pretty sure i could use their numbers based on their pilsner malt.
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If they are doing a DI mash, I'd be very surprised. And assuming they're not, knowing the DI mash pH of the grains wouldn't help, i.e. I don't see how that would be a reasonable estimate.

SanPancho said:
but i dont have it. and i'd assume that they might acidify a bit as i think pils on its own is usually above 5.6.
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Let's say they acidify the mash to 5.4. Without knowing their starting water, there's no way to know the buffering capacity of their wort, so IMO there's no way to estimate what that extract will do with your water. OTOH, if you knew their wort pH, you could use distilled water and expect a pH close to their wort pH.
 
You might consider adding about 5 or 6 mEq/Gallon of acidity to the starting boil volume so you are more likely to emerge from the boil at about 5.0 to 5.2 pH. But in the end you really need a pH meter.
 
VikeMan said:
If they are doing a DI mash, I'd be very surprised. And assuming they're not, knowing the DI mash pH of the grains wouldn't help, i.e. I don't see how that would be a reasonable estimate.



Let's say they acidify the mash to 5.4. Without knowing their starting water, there's no way to know the buffering capacity of their wort, so IMO there's no way to estimate what that extract will do with your water. OTOH, if you knew their wort pH, you could use distilled water and expect a pH close to their wort pH.
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they're not doing a DI mash, they already know those numbers. the point is they are treating their water and i can bet you that the only minerals and buffering in the water is what they allow, i.e. the minimum required for optimal mash performance/extract. so no, i dont beleve theres a ton of unused buffering in there. some, yes. but likely very low as they are also the maltster and therefore have the analysis of the grain to dial this in tight. my guess is that you could probably get within 0.1ph by estimate based on their mash ph.

if we knew that. so in the meantime, i'm hoping somebody might have maybe done this at some point.
 
SanPancho said:
the point is they are treating their water and i can bet you that the only minerals and buffering in the water is what they allow, i.e. the minimum required for optimal mash performance/extract.
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From a practical standpoint, I think it's more likely they are starting with their readily available, cheap water, whatever that happens to be, and acidifying. And the point is we don't know what's in that water.

They have no incentive to start with distilled or RO water, or to dilute with it. That doesn't save money and it doesn't enhance mash performance.
 
VikeMan said:
From a practical standpoint, I think it's more likely they are starting with their readily available, cheap water, whatever that happens to be, and acidifying. And the point is we don't know what's in that water.

They have no incentive to start with distilled or RO water, or to dilute with it. That doesn't save money and it doesn't enhance mash performance.
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you think this massive factory operation, which supplies the entire globe with products, just takes what comes out of the tap?

okey dokey. think we're good here.
 
From this ...

SanPancho said:
my kegs are empty. so its kviek dme hop bomb and with a bit of luck i'll be drinking it down by next weekend.
Click to expand...
... and this ...
SanPancho said:
i considered trying to convert from #dme to #grain and then punching the amounts into brunwater but not sure that makes sense.
Click to expand...
... I get the impression you are trying to determine reasonable kettle salt (CaCl, CaSO4, ...) additions for an extract-based recipe.
 
BrewnWKopperKat said:
From this ...


... and this ...

... I get the impression you are trying to determine reasonable kettle salt (CaCl, CaSO4, ...) additions for an extract-based recipe.
Click to expand...
nope. not really concerned with salts and ions at all. mostly i just wanted to make sure my kettle ph is in decent shape to not get super bitter wort and to not get too much lag on the yeast. putting a ton of hops into the kettle compounds the issue as i'll be upping the ph quite a bit, but i have calcs to determine the acid amount to counteract that, so not too worried there. the issue is that if i'm able to neutralize their alkalinity i'm still just back to wherever i started with the dme...and no data on where that is.

i'd have to hope its somewhere in the normal mash parameters of mid 5s, but that's just a guess and wish. and i'm not entirely clear that the typical ph drop seen in regular mashing/brewing would still apply here so another reason to be a bit concerned about letting it go too high.


wont have my regular gear back for probably two weeks more so in the meantime i'm unable to measure it at all.
 
To hit ballpark 5.0 to 5.2 pH post boil and cooling you could work backwards from your beers pre-boil OG and volume to a calculated grist weight estimate in Kg.'s, and from there presume a roughly 32 to 40 mEq/Kg_pH for the grist buffer, and lastly presume 5.4 as the extracts mash pH.

From there:

Delta_pH = mEq's/(Grist_Buffer x Grist_Kg.)

(5.4 - 5.1) * (Grist_Buffer x Grist_Kg.) = mEq's
0.30 * ~36_Buffer * Grist_Kg = mEq's
(where mEq's = acid mEq's required to lower pH from 5.4 to 5.1)
 
Silver_Is_Money said:
To hit ballpark 5.0 to 5.2 pH post boil and cooling you could work backwards from your beers pre-boil OG and volume to a calculated grist weight estimate in Kg.'s, and from there presume a roughly 32 to 40 mEq/Kg_pH for the grist buffer, and lastly presume 5.4 as the extracts mash pH.

From there:

Delta_pH = mEq's/(Grist_Buffer x Grist_Kg.)

(5.4 - 5.1) * (Grist_Buffer x Grist_Kg.) = mEq's
0.30 * ~36_Buffer * Grist_Kg = mEq's
(where mEq's = acid mEq's required to lower pH from 5.4 to 5.1)
Click to expand...

thats the mental pathway i was thinking (although in simpler terms). i just was missing the buffer part.

at this point its moot. i already chilled and am letting settle to transfer some clear wort. given how clear the wort is and how nice of a break i got, im guessing im in the right ballpark. i might have just gotten lucky by taking the acid needed to neutralize the hops (taking into account a theoretical grain amount) and doubling it.

a little for the hops, a little for the grain, a little for santa, a little bit more for santa.....

a favorite of brew mine is basically two row and a few % of light crystal, so im toying with the idea of sticking with this extract kick for a while so i can cycle through different hop and yeast combos until i find the "winner" in the rotation.

but i am definitely going to post these results once i get all my gear back and set up. 1# dme, 1gallon distilled, run the ph.

kind of surprised no one's ever done it and put it out there, but i guess if you figure extract is seen as "beginner's" brewing then maybe not so surprising.
 
If it helps, at a pH target of specifically 5.1, Lactic Acid has the following acid strengths:

88% = 11.14 mEq/mL @ pH 5.1
80% = 9.97 mEq/mL @ pH 5.1
 
Density of 88% Lactic Acid = 1.206 g/CC
Density of 80% Lactic Acid = 1.187 g/CC

1.206 x 88% = 1.0613 g. of pure Lactic Acid per mL for 88%
1.187 x 80% = 0.9496 g. of pure Lactic Acid per mL for 80%

0.9496/1.0613 x 11.14 mEq/mL for 88% = 9.97 mEq/mL for 80% (at pH 5.1 specifically)
 
SanPancho said:
kind of surprised no one's ever done it and put it out there, but i guess if you figure extract is seen as "beginner's" brewing then maybe not so surprising.
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It's likely that not many people have used a pH meter to measure the pH of an extract based wort. Over the years, I'm stumbled into just one article that talks about DME and pH meters in the same article. The (currently inactive) blog "The Hop Soul" has an article on making "an awesome extract IPA" which includes the idea of making pH adjustments (but no published numbers). A question over in "one gallon brewers unite" may result in some anecdotal data.

I suspect that any published numbers would need to include brand, dry, vs liquid, style (pilsen, "golden light", ...), and manufactured / packaged date. LME is known to darken with time, so what other attributes change with time? Brands are made with different sources of water, so different approaches to flavoring (kettle) salts is appropriate. Ancedotally, I have seen that "hot break" (flakes in the wort when heating to a boil) or "no hot break" can vary by brand.

SanPancho said:
but i am definitely going to post these results once i get all my gear back and set up. 1# dme, 1gallon distilled, run the ph.
Click to expand...
Looking forward to it.
 
The pH of a malt extract product is almost immaterial. More than likely, it is within a normal range. The thing that can throw the whole thing into disarray is using an alkaline water to rehydrate that extract. Making sure that the water has little alkalinity or has been neutralized to low alkalinity is the best thing you can do for extract brewing.
 
mabrungard said:
The pH of a malt extract product is almost immaterial. More than likely, it is within a normal range. The thing that can throw the whole thing into disarray is using an alkaline water to rehydrate that extract. Making sure that the water has little alkalinity or has been neutralized to low alkalinity is the best thing you can do for extract brewing.
Click to expand...
I've been using Bru'n Water to calculate the lactic acid needed to neutralize the alkalinity in my water. OP: You can find this in "Special Considerations for Extract Brewers" in the Instructions sheet. Thanks for that Martin!
 
mabrungard said:
The pH of a malt extract product is almost immaterial. More than likely, it is within a normal range. The thing that can throw the whole thing into disarray is using an alkaline water to rehydrate that extract. Making sure that the water has little alkalinity or has been neutralized to low alkalinity is the best thing you can do for extract brewing.
Click to expand...

I fully agree that more than likely it will be (or rather, would have been) in the normal range as to mash pH. But plenty of peer reviewed literature claims benefits for both hot break during the boil and entering fermentation (whereby to assist the yeast in further lowering the pH) at pH 5.0 to 5.2, and (even for the case of extract re-constitution via distilled or very good RO water) one can't be sure (simply by guessing or hoping) that the boil itself will drop wort pH into the generally considered ideal 5.0 to 5.2 pH range. So I can't quite get in line with the pH of extract malts being almost immaterial.
 
Agreed, it’s not immaterial. big question- Would you still see the typical ph drop during boil? Does the dehydration somehow stop that? as I understand they just spray the hot wort through misting nozzles into desiccation chambers, so it’s never t technically boiled, if I understand correctly.

But at the same time, If you only boil the dme wort long enough to get a hot break and use finings (10-15m) would you even still see the ph drop? Probably not. Even more reason to care about the ph In my opinion
 
SanPancho said:
But at the same time, If you only boil the dme wort long enough to get a hot break and use finings (10-15m) would you even still see the ph drop?
Click to expand...

Briess DME has already had the hot break produced and removed.
 
VikeMan said:
Briess DME has already had the hot break produced and removed.
Click to expand...
based on what? cuz I get a full layer of kettle foam as well as break material at the bottom. make a starter and you can see the break at the bottom when it cools.
 
SanPancho said:
based on what? cuz I get a full layer of kettle foam as well as break material at the bottom. make a starter and you can see the break at the bottom when it cools.
Click to expand...

Based on Briess saying so. And based on my experience. A true hot break results in lots of flakes of break material (the "egg drop soup") rolling in the boil. Do you see that in your DME boils? I sure don't. Sometimes there is a small amount of stuff at the bottom of a starter wort. But it's not a significant amount, and certainly does not look like the coagulated proteins from an all grain wort boil in either form or quantity.
 
its still there. not in the same quantity id wager, but its definitely there. and smaller particles. so they may do some level of "boil" if that is in fact what they claim, but its definitely not a "removal" by any means. an interesting question would be how much would remain if you for some reason did a double boil on grain based wort. only thing that comes to mind is a double boil kettle sour, but probably not a great example.
 
SanPancho said:
But at the same time, If you only boil the dme wort long enough to get a hot break and use finings (10-15m) would you even still see the ph drop?
Click to expand...
A while back, when I was playing with variations on "Hop Sampler", I brewed a couple of batches where I added the DME at flame-on (water was around 65F). I didn't measure pH at that point in time.

Different brands of DME, different visual results in the 150F-200F range.

With one brand of DME, I saw what looks like "hot break" (similar to what I see with by BIAB batches). With the other, I didn't.

In a different batch, I added hops at 160F (before reaching a boil) - the "hot break" didn't appear this time.

I didn't measure pH at that point in time. I may revisit these batches (in a month or two) along with a pH meter to reconfirm what I'm seeing.
 
VikeMan said:
Based on Briess saying so. And based on my experience. A true hot break results in lots of flakes of break material (the "egg drop soup") rolling in the boil. Do you see that in your DME boils? I sure don't.
Click to expand...
That's interesting. I get hot break using LME. I assumed DME was the same, but I haven't used DME in a long time and don't remember.
 
the slides dont mention anything about boiling. only that they use typical brewery equipment to make wort. wort appears in the mash tun, so nothing to state here that the wort then goes into a kettle.

they note they use a "gentle" process- vacuum evap at low temps, as low as 95F. so entirely different than the process that was described to me. pretty interesting. but no indication at all this ever sees a temperature higher than what is needed for the mash.

as they never clearly state that the they boil, i'm gonna go ahead and call that a fib unless proven otherwise. i dont doubt they have some way of removing some of the stuff that makes up the break, but they clearly dont get all of it. i have clean soft water so there's nothing else that would precip and cause the break i'm seeing.

unless somebody has audio of this presentation it seems like there is zero reason to believe (from the slide deck) it is boiled before it gets into your kettle.
 
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SanPancho said:
the slides dont mention anything about boiling. only that they use typical brewery equipment to make wort. wort appears in the mash tun, so nothing to state here that the wort then goes into a kettle.

they note they use a "gentle" process- vacuum evap at low temps, as low as 95F. so entirely different than the process that was described to me. pretty interesting. but no indication at all this ever sees a temperature higher than what is needed for the mash.

as they never clearly state that the they boil, i'm gonna go ahead and call that a fib unless proven otherwise. i dont doubt they have some way of removing some of the stuff that makes up the break, but they clearly dont get all of it. i have clean soft water so there's nothing else that would precip and cause the break i'm seeing.

unless somebody has audio of this presentation it seems like there is zero reason to believe it is boiled before it gets into your kettle.
Click to expand...

See the quoted text in the post linked below. The linked Briess page apparently no longer exists...you'll get a redirect. But unless you think Briess was outright lying, or that @ACbrewer was lying, Briess is boiling the wort.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/is-dme-pre-boiled.395630/#post-4980291
 
interesting. so if we understand the process to be essentially a full brew (sans hops) before they do the evap then what is seen in a dme boil is essentially what doesnt precip in their boil process. i wonder if they use finings of any sort or just go straight from whirlpool to evap. so what comes out in the kettle is (i'm assuming) the portion of the break that wont settle until it comes to room temp. (or without fining agents) because from what this process describes the wort is cooled, but never to a temperature at room temp or typical "pitch" temps.

and if they do a full boil, then the ph drop seen in the kettle should already be "in" the extract. so assuming its roughly 5.4 for "ideal mash", then a guess would be 5.2 to 5.3 if the extract was rehydrated with RO/distilled.

anybody making a starter soon that can check the ph oughta be able to give us an answer here. although we are still basing off an assumption that the mash ph is at 5.4
 
that's another good point, i was assuming they dont treat the boil ph. although without hops or the intention of this being a final product, i'd guess they're not adjusting kettle ph.

no idea this was gonna become a bit of a rabbit hole of extract info when i asked if anyone knew the ph. just figured that at some point somebody with a ph meter might have been curious to know, had tested their wort or a starter and could give us an answer.
 
I also remember reading, a long time ago, in the notes for an old version of Bru'n Water, that rehyrdrated DME takes a really long time, like hours, for its pH to stabilize. Perhaps mabrungard has some recollection (or current knowledge) of this.

Edit: I'm thinking now that this may be where I read that:
https://alchemyoverlord.wordpress.com/tag/ph-with-dme/
 
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