EZ Water Calculator 3.0

[rhys333]

I meant how can we add it to the EZ Water calculator? I see it's not included while other water calculators do have it. I would like to add chloride without adding sulfate.

I'm very new to water chemistry so please correct me if I'm speaking incorrectly. On my next brew I would like to target a water profile.

You can't with EZ Water. Just use one of the others to get your ppm estimate. Brewers Friend calculator conveniently converts grams or ounces to tsp measurements for you. You don't want much NaCl, and basically 1/2 tsp tossed into the boil will do it for you. This assumes you're building from RO/distilled of course.

 

[kal]

I would like to add chloride without adding sulfate.

Then I'd recommend adding CaCl2 as adding more Ca is better in most cases than adding more Sodium (Na) from adding NaCl.

Not to speak for the author of EzWaterCalc, but NaCl was removed because generally speaking Sodium (Na) is something we want to keep low.

Ka

 

[mabrungard]

Modest sodium levels are OK in many styles. I add sodium to almost every brew I create. In pale styles, keeping sodium below 40 ppm is recommended. But in darker styles, I've found that you can let that level rise up to 70 ppm. If EZ doesn't have table salt as an ingredient, you might want to move to better software.

By the way, high calcium level is actually detrimental to yeast performance. Try and keep calcium at a modest level and your beer will be better. You do want at least 40 ppm Ca in the mash to take out oxalate, but you don't really want much more. Calcium is NOT needed by yeast. The malt supplies ALL the calcium that the yeast need and you don't absolutely have to add it to your brewing water.

 

[kal]

... you might want to move to better software.

Gee, I wonder what you could be referring to?

Martin, I know you don't mean any harm, but please understand that most people on forums consider competition posting that someone's product is "not good" in their official thread is generally considered poor taste.

Kal

 

[rhys333]

Modest sodium levels are OK in many styles. I add sodium to almost every brew I create. In pale styles, keeping sodium below 40 ppm is recommended. But in darker styles, I've found that you can let that level rise up to 70 ppm. If EZ doesn't have table salt as an ingredient, you might want to move to better software.

By the way, high calcium level is actually detrimental to yeast performance. Try and keep calcium at a modest level and your beer will be better. You do want at least 40 ppm Ca in the mash to take out oxalate, but you don't really want much more. Calcium is NOT needed by yeast. The malt supplies ALL the calcium that the yeast need and you don't absolutely have to add it to your brewing water.

Thank you sir for the excellent brewing software. I recently tried Bru'n Water and my beers are benefitting from it.

 

[kal]

Heads up for anyone who wants to use EZWaterCalculator 3: I Put together a simplified step by step guide for water adjustment that uses EZWaterCalculator (though any software will work).

See: www.theelectricbrewery.com/water-adjustment

Cheers!

Kal

 

[ajdelange]

but please understand that most people on forums consider competition posting that someone's product is "not good" in their official thread is generally considered poor taste.

I don't think we should keep from the readership that all of the available programs out there have severe limitations. They cannot do the impossible, the authors aren't aware of all the capabilities of their vehicles (spreadsheets) and most don't understand the chemistry fully. Even if they did a 1% increase in accuracy may have a software cost many times that. Were I to state or imply that my software (especially if I charged money for it) is free of all such limitations that would indeed be in poor taste. But as I don't offer any software, free or otherwise, I feel free to point out the limitations of the existing programs without feeling guilty of exhibiting poor taste but i will never say any one is better than any other.

 

[MoreBeerz]

I would have thought that starting water pH would be worth being able to input if it is available. Why is there no box for this?

 

[kal]

Starting pH of the water doesn't matter. Ignore it. How the water reacts to the various grains, acids, and salts you add is what matters. The goal is to achieve a mash pH that helps convert the starches to sugars. How easily your water's pH drops as you add the various grains, acids and so forth is a function of the residual alkalinity, not the starting pH.

For more info, see my step by step water adjustment guide (it'll walk you through using uses EZ Water).

Cheers!

Kal

 

[ajdelange]

It is (or should be) obvious that in order to accurately determine the amount of acid we need to add to a brewing water to bring it to a desired mash pH we must know the acid/base properties of that water. In the waters that brewers use the acid base properties are those of the water itself and the carbonic acid derived species (bicarbonate, carbonate) dissolved in it. We need to know the total carbo (carbonic, bicarbonate, carbonate) per liter and the pH. In the laboratory we measure alkalinity and use that to determine the total carbo. The alkalinity measurement is a titration and so the sample pH is determined during the alkalinity measurement. As it is needed to determine total carbo and, with that, do acid calculations, it is reported. The amount of acid required to establish a particular pH is given by the difference in charges on water molecules and carbo ions at the desired pH and at the original sample pH. These charges are a function of pH and thus pH is often referred to by water chemists as 'the master variable'. A robust spreadsheet will (and a couple do) require the input of the water's pH. The math is at https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/calculating-bicarbonate-and-carbonate.473408/.

If you take one of those robust spreadsheets, put in some alkalinity level and then calculate the amount of acid needed to reach some typical desired mash pH as a fraction of the alkalinity (remember that alkalinity is the amount of acid which must be added to a 1L sample to bring its pH to 4.5 (ISO protocol) though that number is, in North America, usually multiplied by 50) you would get a curve like this one:

Strong dependence on pH is clear as we approach the pK's of carbonic acid at 6.38 and 10.38. No surprise there. But few of us have brewing water sources with pH that high or low. In the more typical source water pH range the acid requirement is about 90% of the alkalinity. Thus if you have water that comes to you at pH 8.5 you with alkalinity 100 ppm you can quickly see that you are going to need about 0.9*(100/50) = 1.8 mEq of acid per liter of water to be acidified to a mash pH of around 5.5. Thus when someone says that water pH is not a factor it's clear he doesn't understand the chemistry and yet he is not that far off! In the typical range of waters we deal with the dependency on mash pH is a weak one. This fact allows spreadsheet authors to put out products that don't need to contain all the math mentioned in the Sticky linked above. While the math isn't that hairy and, to my way of thinking, anyway, one of the main reasons to use a spreadsheet is that hairy math can be hidden from, but still be available to the user.

Thus the popular spreadsheets do not do the full carbo calculation. You can be 100% certain of that if they do not ask for liquor pH. This is probably because of inertia as much as ignorance of how to do it. When most of these were written I'm guessing the creators did not understand the chemistry but at this point in time they probably do as it has certainly been discussed here and elsewhere extensively and the formulae are certainly online in several places (including the Sticky here). But to go back and rework a spreadsheet that is fairly complex because of the breadth of things it covers is not a trivial task.

A couple of other things should be pointed out. In a typical mash involving water with alkalinity of 1.5 mEq/L or so at pH 7 the water's proton deficit (acid reqirement) calculated as discussed here might be 20 or so mEq while the proton deficit of the malts might be 4 times that. Is, in such a case, a major rework of the water portion of a spreadsheet to render the water component of the acid requirement more accurate justified? To an accuracy freak like me, yes. To the 'better is the enemy of good enough' crowd, no. In this same regard most of the popular spreadsheets use primitive models of malt acid/base properties such that their predictions of mash pH can really only be used for guidance. The robust ones give much more accurate predictions if one has accurate malt data but one doesn't in general and so they really aren't that much better. Thus you could easily argue that errors from poor modeling of malts swamp errors from poor modeling of the water.

To sumarize: you are right. Any spreadsheet should ask you for the water's pH. But given the other limitations of them the fact that they don't really doesn't matter that much, especially if you water's pH falls between, say, 7 and 9.5. You can sail on with any of the spreadsheets you fancy, if you are in this pH range, confident that the error caused by failure to consider source water pH, is small relative to other errors.

 

[ajdelange]

How easily your water's pH drops as you add the various grains, acids and so forth is a function of the residual alkalinity, not the starting pH.

Of course it depends on pH (see No. 410) just not that much over a restricted range of source pH's which happens to, fortunately, be the range into which many, but not all by any means, brewers source liquor falls. What it doesn't depend on is residual alkalinity. Residual alkalinity is a good means for comparing waters in the sense that it enables one to do back of the envelope calculations on how much acid is likely to be needed if one is brewing beers similar to the ones that Kolbach was working with when he observed that at knockout It seems that 3.5 moles of calcium neutralizes 1 equivalent of alkalinity. Given that pH continues to drop in the kettle from, among other things, precipitation of phosphate it is clear that all the calcium based pH reduction does not occur in the mash tun or, IOW, that it takes more than 3.5 moles of calcium to cancel 1 equivalent of alkalinity in the mash tun. When calculating mash pH we tot up the proton deficits and surfeits and find the pH that balances them. We obviously include a term for calcium but know that its denominator should be greater than 3.5. How much greater we don't know but usually use 7 - 10. Thus even when considering mash we don't use RA and I had long conversation with John Palmer to the effect that he should not use it as one of the fundamental principles of water treatment in his book. But it's his book - not mine.

The main point is that your statement doesn't address mash or wort. It is about water. pH reduction in the water has nothing to do with the amount of calcium present and thus the RA unless you are so supersaturated WRT CaCO3 or use so much phosphoric acid for the acidification that precipitation of chalk or apatite is initiated when calcium is added. Thus the way in which your water's pH drops depends on alkalinity and pH. Period. As a consequence a sparge water acidification calculation that used RA instead of (total) alkalinity would, depending on the RA of the water, be in error.

If you want to know how to estimate mash pH see the sticky referenced in No. 410. I tried to convince John to put this stuff in is his book (I mention that because the material at the link you posted references it) but he wouldn't. He did put in the Q(pH) curve for carbo and phospho in, however. You will not find RA used anywhere in these calculations though alkalinity and pH are.

 

[kal]

I should have said:

"How easily your water's pH drops as you add the various grains, acids and so forth is more of a function of the residual alkalinity, and less the starting pH."

I recommend brewers add salts to hit the flavour profile they're interested in, measure the resulting mash + salts with a pH meter to see where they're at, then adjust as needed (usually down with acid). Trying to guess resulting pH with EZWater doesn't (IMHO) work great.

Cheers!

Kal

 

[ajdelange]

I think you are still missing the point that the water's pH drop isn't a function of the residual alkalinity at all but rather of the alkalinity (strongly dependent) and the pH (weak dependence within the golden pH band). The pH drop in a mash depends on alkalinity of the water, the alkalinity of the grains and a term calculated from the liquor's calcium concentration which, when subtracted from the alkalinity gives something like the residual alkalinity but it is not the residual alkalinity.

I too advocate limited reliance on calculations and only for guidance. Test and full mash measurements should determine a brewers acid additions.

 

[dunnry]

I should have said:

I recommend brewers add salts to hit the flavour profile they're interested in, measure the resulting mash + salts with a pH meter to see where they're at, then adjust as needed (usually down with acid). Trying to guess resulting pH with EZWater doesn't (IMHO) work great.

Cheers!

Kal

I assume you are talking about the full mash and not a test mash here? I might be wrong, but wouldn't it be too late to adjust the pH downwards with acid after you have measured your actual mash pH? I mean, it would be like 20 mins in at least and at that point, a lot of the conversion and any 'bad' things from a high(er) pH would have happened.

My understanding is that you should measure it, learn from it, and then adjust the next time you brew same recipe. That, or do a test mash first.

 

[kal]

I assume you are talking about the full mash and not a test mash here?

Correct.

I might be wrong, but wouldn't it be too late to adjust the pH downwards with acid after you have measured your actual mash pH?

That has not been my experience.

Once I know how a grist behaves and how much (if any) acids I need to add after mashing in with whatever salts I've added, I don't need to measure pH on subsequent batches to know how much acid to add (my water's very stable). Instead, I add the acid at the same time as everything else. These subsequent batches haven't tasted any different from the initial batch.

YMMV of course.

Cheers!

Kal

 

[tld6008]

Correct.

That has not been my experience.

Once I know how a grist behaves and how much (if any) acids I need to add after mashing in with whatever salts I've added, I don't need to measure pH on subsequent batches to know how much acid to add (my water's very stable). Instead, I add the acid at the same time as everything else. These subsequent batches haven't tasted any different from the initial batch.

YMMV of course.

Cheers!

Kal

Seems like the question was wouldn't it be too late to adjust with acid after finding out 20-25 minutes after mash-in as the ill effects of a high ph would have already affected the mash. I just had this experience yesterday where the recommended acid additions from multiple water calculators were anywhere from 1.5 to 5.5 ml. I chose to start low so ph wouldn't be too low to start with. First 15 min check shows ph is way to high (at least for the recipe I was making) and by the time I slowly adjust down (3 incremental additions) to the correct ph level the mash is 45 minutes old.

 

[kal]

Seems like the question was wouldn't it be too late to adjust with acid after finding out 20-25 minutes after mash-in as the ill effects of a high ph would have already affected the mash.

Yes. I understood that to be the question. My experience has been that it hasn't been too late. That said, I don't wait 20-25 minutes before measuring pH. Way back when I first started doing water adjustments/measuring pH (more than 10 years ago), I had similar concerns and measured pH ~5 minutes after mashing in with grains/salts, then measured again 60-90 mins later and didn't notice much difference. So today I mash in with grains/salts, measure pH after stirring for a few mins, and add acid (as required). It's always worked for me and produced fantastic beers.

Kal

 

[bitteritdown]

Seems like the question was wouldn't it be too late to adjust with acid after finding out 20-25 minutes after mash-in as the ill effects of a high ph would have already affected the mash. I just had this experience yesterday where the recommended acid additions from multiple water calculators were anywhere from 1.5 to 5.5 ml. I chose to start low so ph wouldn't be too low to start with. First 15 min check shows ph is way to high (at least for the recipe I was making) and by the time I slowly adjust down (3 incremental additions) to the correct ph level the mash is 45 minutes old.

Some of the reasons for adjusting mash pH are:

• Improved enzyme activity during the mash, leading to better conversion of starches to sugars
• Lower pH in the finished wort which improves yeast health during fermentation, and also inhibits bacteria growth
• Improved hop extraction rates in the boil
• Better protein and polyphenol precipitation both during the cold break and post fermentation
• Improved clarity in the finished beer with reduced chill haze
• Improved flavor and clarity stability as the beer ages
• Decreased or no tannin extraction

Another consideration is that the mash is a natural system that takes time to react and stabilize.

Given those facts one may conclude that, if the pH is not properly adjusted upon dough in, you *might* have:

• decreased conversion of starches to sugars
• decreased hop extraction
• decreased cold break
• increased tannin extraction

The extent to which each of this items is affected is up for debate as I'm not aware of any scientific study of real time mash pH adjustment, save the observations of the brewer.

A better reason not to react to mash pH measurements is that the mash, being a natural system, takes time to react and pulls itself towards equilibrium, adding acids or bases during this time simply prolongs this stabilization and creates a ping/pong effect.

 

[ajdelange]

While it's true that pH adjustment can lead to all the improvements in the list let's note that all of them, except

Improved hop extraction rates in the boil

are achieved by lowering pH whereas this one comes from raised pH.

 

[tld6008]

Given those facts one may conclude that, if the pH is not properly adjusted upon dough in, you *might* have:

I must be missing something, how do you propose to have the ph properly adjusted upon dough in unless through trial and error you know exactly what additions to make before hand? I am assuming dough in is the initial mixing of grain and water.

 

[tld6008]

Yes. I understood that to be the question. My experience has been that it hasn't been too late. That said, I don't wait 20-25 minutes before measuring pH. Way back when I first started doing water adjustments/measuring pH (more than 10 years ago), I had similar concerns and measured pH ~5 minutes after mashing in with grains/salts, then measured again 60-90 mins later and didn't notice much difference. So today I mash in with grains/salts, measure pH after stirring for a few mins, and add acid (as required). It's always worked for me and produced fantastic beers.

Kal

I am just getting used to using my ph meter and my process ended up taking several minutes from drawing sample, cooling it, taking reading etc. So the 15 min initial check gave results at the 20+ minute mark. If 5 min into the mash will be enough I will start with that and have plenty of time to react. I also had a problem not knowing how much acid to add to achieve the target ph after the first reading. As I originally stated the estimated amounts from various calculators ranged from 1.5 to 5+ ml. I ended up using with 4.5ml and was still a little high. I thought I had read somewhere that 1 ml of lactic would lower the ph by a given amount but that must depend on the makeup the individual mash, although as I look over my notes each 1 ml addition resulted in a .1 drop in ph. Had I realized that would be the reaction I could have added 3 ml after the first check and then acted like I knew what I was doing.

 

[ajdelange]

I must be missing something,

Don't think so.

how do you propose to have the ph properly adjusted upon dough in unless through trial and error you know exactly what additions to make before hand?

By trial and error! It's not as bad as it sounds. The trials are often guided by the use of calculations involving the acid/base properties of the grains and the carbonic acid system in the water. 'Trials' also include previous batches of the same beer. "I brewed this beer 3 months ago using 2% sauermalz and got pH 5.55. I'd really like to be closer to 5.5 so I'll try 3% sauermalz this time". After enough experience with a particular beer you just know how much acid to add and would only do any calculations or tests if you knew you were using a base malt with DI pH and buffering capacity appreciably different from the one you typically use.

I am assuming dough in is the initial mixing of grain and water.

Yes.

 

[ajdelange]

I am just getting used to using my ph meter and my process ended up taking several minutes from drawing sample, cooling it, taking reading etc. So the 15 min initial check gave results at the 20+ minute mark. If 5 min into the mash will be enough I will start with that and have plenty of time to react.

It isn't. Especially when liquid acid is used the early pH readings are likely to be dramatically low with respect to where they start to settle after 20 minutes or so. Many a brewer has spent a miserable afternoon chasing pH by trying to adjust for an out or range early pH reading.

I also had a problem not knowing how much acid to add to achieve the target ph after the first reading. As I originally stated the estimated amounts from various calculators ranged from 1.5 to 5+ ml. I ended up using with 4.5ml and was still a little high. I thought I had read somewhere that 1 ml of lactic would lower the ph by a given amount but that must depend on the makeup the individual mash,

Yes, it does depend on the individual mash. As a rough rule of thumb you could use 40 mEq of acid (or alkalinity if pH is too low) for each 0.1 desired pH change for each kg of malt. Note that it depends only a little on the water because even though its alkalinity be high originally by the time you are near mash pH most of the alkalinity has been knocked out.

 

[tld6008]

It isn't. Especially when liquid acid is used the early pH readings are likely to be dramatically low with respect to where they start to settle after 20 minutes or so. Many a brewer has spent a miserable afternoon chasing pH by trying to adjust for an out or range early pH reading.

Yes, it does depend on the individual mash. As a rough rule of thumb you could use 40 mEq of acid (or alkalinity if pH is too low) for each 0.1 desired pH change for each kg of malt. Note that it depends only a little on the water because even though its alkalinity be high originally by the time you are near mash pH most of the alkalinity has been knocked out.

The weary ph chasing brewer now opens the can of worms and asks what is an mEq or how can 40mEq be converted to ml of lactic acid? I did search on google but don't understand the definitions.

 

[ajdelange]

A mEq (milliequivalent) is, in this context, the unit we use to measure protons. One mEq means 6.02E20 of them. It's obviously a lot easier to say that you need 1.5 mEq of acid (really meaning that you need that many protons) than to say that you need 9.03E20 protons.

We're simplifying things here greatly but that's the whole idea. There are no protons floating around in your mash but there are hydrogen ions. A hydrogen ion is a cluster of water molecules with single positive charge meaning that an acid has transferred one of its protons to a cluster of water molecules. The actual formula for a hydrogen ion is H(2n+1)On+ with n being some relatively modest integer. It's often written H3O+ and even more frequently H+ which represents a hydrogen atom from which the electron has been removed leaving a proton.

We don't want to be bothered with all this. What we are really interested in is how protons move about and that we can predict pH by keeping track of them. In measuring alkalinity the analyst adds acid to your water until he has 'neutralized' all the bicarbonate (HCO3-) and hydroxyl (OH-) ions. Neutralize here does not mean what you have been taught in your freshman chemistry course but rather neutralize in the broader sense that its ability to prevent the reduction of pH has been neutralized. This happens when enough acid (protons have been added) to convert all the bicarbonate to CO2 gas and all the hydroxyl to water. This is deemed to be the case when the pH of the sample has been reduced to 4.5. The adds 0.1 N acid to 0.1 L of your water. Each mL of 0.1 N acid contains 0.1 mEq protons. Thus the number of mL he uses is simply the number of mEq he has added. Because (for convenience) he uses 100 mL samples and 0.1 N acid the number of mL is numerically equal to the mEq of acid he would have used to treat 1 L of sample. In the US the number of mL is multiplies by 50 and reported as 'alkalinity, ppm as CaCO3'. When you mash you need to neutralize bicarbonate and hydroxyl just as the analyst did. So you take his reported alkalinity and divide by 50 to get mEq/L. Multiply that by the number of liters of water you intend to use to get the total number of mEq you need to 'neutralize' that volume of water.

How much acid does that take? Divide the total required mEq required by the number of mEq provided by each mL of the acid i.e. by its normality. Each mL of 88% lactic acid contains about 10.8 mEq i.e. it is 10.8 N.

Example: You plan to brew using 20L of water with reported alkalinity of 75 ppm as CaCO3.
1)Get alkalinity in mEq/L: 75/50 = 1.5
2)Multiply by volume to be treated: 20*1.5 = 30 mEq
3)Divide by strength of acid to be used (10.8 N): 30/10.8 = 2.8 mL

In fact you only need 90% of this because while the analyst went to pH 4.5 in determining the alkalinity number you will go to mash pH around 5.5 and will, consequently, need a bit less acid than he did.

 

[tld6008]

Example: You plan to brew using 20L of water with reported alkalinity of 75 ppm as CaCO3.
1)Get alkalinity in mEq/L: 75/50 = 1.5
2)Multiply by volume to be treated: 20*1.5 = 30 mEq
3)Divide by strength of acid to be used (10.8 N): 30/10.8 = 2.8 mL

In fact you only need 90% of this because while the analyst went to pH 4.5 in determining the alkalinity number you will go to mash pH around 5.5 and will, consequently, need a bit less acid than he did.[/QUOTE]


Thanks I really appreciate your effort to explain this but it seems the solution to my current issue is to just ask easier questions.

Cheers

 

[ajdelange]

It looks as if you are just starting out with respect to mash pH, water treatment etc. Thus many of the terms that we bandy about here and the science and techniques we discuss will be unfamiliar to you. While you may, at this point, have some difficulty in understanding he answers to your questions the questions themselves are by no means difficult questions. Once you get up to speed a bit you should find the answers easier to digest.

 

[Joon1975]

Im starting to mess around with water chemistry. I only brew with RO water since my water is very hard and not drinkable. Can I use the calculator using RO water? Should I just leave the water profile at zero?

 

[Joon1975]

I’m assuming RO water doesn’t contain any minerals.

 

[kal]

Im starting to mess around with water chemistry. I only brew with RO water since my water is very hard and not drinkable. Can I use the calculator using RO water? Should I just leave the water profile at zero?

Yup. While not all RO water is all zeros, that's generally the assumption you should make. If you're looking for a step by step guide to using EZ Water, check out the one I wrote here: http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/water-adjustment

Good luck!

Kal

 

[Joon1975]

Thank you! Will read the article, very excited about making beer better!

 

[tld6008]

Yup. While not all RO water is all zeros, that's generally the assumption you should make. If you're looking for a step by step guide to using EZ Water, check out the one I wrote here: http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/water-adjustment

Good luck!

Kal

I just read through your water-adjustment article, which was very good, and was surprised to read your recommendations on taking ph readings at or near mash temperatures. I have been using a meter for a while now and although it has temp. correction I have always been lead to believe that the readings should be taken at the same temp. as when the meter was calibrated. To make sure I wasn't mistaken I searched on the subject and did see other authors suggesting to take the readings at mash temp., although this is not apparently good for the meter. Most of the recipes I brew specify mash ph levels but do not discuss what temp. they were read at.

 

[Big Monk]

I just read through your water-adjustment article, which was very good, and was surprised to read your recommendations on taking ph readings at or near mash temperatures. I have been using a meter for a while now and although it has temp. correction I have always been lead to believe that the readings should be taken at the same temp. as when the meter was calibrated. To make sure I wasn't mistaken I searched on the subject and did see other authors suggesting to take the readings at mash temp., although this is not apparently good for the meter. Most of the recipes I brew specify mash ph levels but do not discuss what temp. they were read at.

Standards dictate taking readings at 77F.

You can certainly take measurements at mash temp but:

a.) You'll will accelerate the failure of the equipment (it's not rated or designed for mash readings at mash temps);

b.) You have to invoke equations for correcting the reading based on the temperature.

 

[kal]

Standards dictate taking readings at 77F.

You can certainly take measurements at mash temp but:

a.) You'll will accelerate the failure of the equipment (it's not rated or designed for mash readings at mash temps);

b.) You have to invoke equations for correcting the reading based on the temperature.

Correct! My guide covers all this in STEP 5 (BREW DAY) here: http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/water-adjustment?page=7

I describe how the target pH changes if you measure at mash temp.

The electrode will not last as long either. That is true. That said, I'm 10 years in now of brewing 10-15 times/year on my electrode and it's just starting to get a bit flaky. If I can get 100-150 batches out of an electrode without having to cool down the sample that works for me. YMMV.

Kal

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Your guide says that your personal pH meter is ATC compensated up to 140 degrees F., so it needs no mathematical correction for its pH output up to that temperature. I don't believe that is a correct interpretation of what ATC is doing.

Alll that ATC assures is that the pH reading will be correct.

So if it reads 5.2 pH at 140 degrees F., and 5.4 pH at 77 degrees F. for the same sample, you can rest assured (thanks to ATC) that both pH readings are factually correct.

 

[Joon1975]

Plan on brewing a Golden ale this weekend. How does this water profile look? I’m using RO water. I hope is readable.

 

[kal]

Your guide says that your personal pH meter is ATC compensated up to 140 degrees F., so it needs no mathematical correction for its pH output up to that temperature. I don't believe that is a correct interpretation of what ATC is doing.

Alll that ATC assures is that the pH reading will be correct.

So if it reads 5.2 pH at 140 degrees F., and 5.4 pH at 77 degrees F. for the same sample, you can rest assured (thanks to ATC) that both pH readings are factually correct.

Exactly correct. I believe you may be misreading my guide. Here's a quote from my guide that agrees with you:

pH changes with temperature, so if the sample has been cooled to room temperature, a pH of 5.4 to 5.6 is the target range instead of 5.2 to 5.4. Don't confuse the inclusion of automatic temperature compensation (ATC) in the pH meter to mean that the target range will always be 5.2 to 5.4 regardless of temperature, as that would be incorrect. ATC only compensates for the change in the electrical response of the pH meter probe with temperature. It does not compensate for the chemical/energy change in the water that naturally makes a hotter mash more acidic (lower pH). The pH target range will therefore always depend on the temperature of the sample: 5.2 to 5.4 when measured at mash temperature, or 5.4 to 5.6 when measured at room temperature.

Kal

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I believe you may be misreading my guide. Correction is required higher temps as pH varies with temp. Here's a quote from my guide that agrees with you:

Kal

Oops, I guess I just didn't read enough of it. Sorry about that!!! The information is good for others to know, as many believe that thanks to ATC, a pH of 5.4 at 154 degrees will also be a pH of 5.4 at room temperature, and this is not the case.

 

[kal]

Oops, I guess I just didn't read enough of it. Sorry about that!!! The information is good for others to know, as many believe that thanks to ATC, a pH of 5.4 at 154 degrees will also be a pH of 5.4 at room temperature, and this is not the case.

Yup. It's a common misconception or misunderstanding so that why I included it. I'll have to re-read it however as obviously it's not clear!

Kal

 

[kal]

Ok, so I moved a bit around and also added a blurb about the probe electrode lasting longer if you cool the sample first. Hopefully this is clearer:

Once the grains and mash salts are well mixed, take a pH reading by placing the probe tip of the ph meter directly in the mash. The ph meter we recommend has automatic temperature compensation (ATC) up to 140F so we do not worry about cooling down a sample as any errors introduced will be minimal as we usually measure the mash pH when the temperature is just slightly above 140F. While the probe electrode will last longer if the sample is first cooled to room temperature, ours (so far) has last 10 years when brewing once or twice a month, so we've never bothered cooling down a sample as it's much quicker. Feel free to cool a sample to room temperature if you prefer.

For optimal starch to sugar conversion we want the pH to be around 5.2 to 5.4, but only when measured in the mash temperature range of somewhere around 145-165F. pH changes with temperature, so if the sample has been cooled to room temperature, a pH of 5.4 to 5.6 is the target range instead of 5.2 to 5.4. Don't confuse the inclusion of automatic temperature compensation (ATC) in the ph meter to mean that the target range will always be 5.2 to 5.4 regardless of temperature, as that would be incorrect. ATC only compensates for the change in the electrical response of the pH meter probe with temperature. It does not compensate for the chemical/energy change in the water that naturally makes a hotter mash more acidic (lower pH). The pH target range will therefore always depend on the temperature of the sample: 5.2 to 5.4 when measured at mash temperature, or 5.4 to 5.6 when measured at room temperature.

Cheers!

Kal