Have I been adding too much acid?

[00Seven]

When I'm calculating things in brewers friend for my water additions I will play with the acid additions until I get my mash pH down to 5.2-5.3. Then on brew day I will measure out my mash water amount and start heating then add my salts and acid into the mash water and mash like normal. However I realized just now that there is an option of only adding the acid into the mash water on brewers friend, when I selected that my mash pH dropped from 5.2 to 4.1. I had assumed that as long as I used the total amount of water that everything would dilute out and be fine. My beers have all tasted just fine, and my efficiency has been 68s-73s which is fine for me. But I guess BF assumed I would combine all the water, add the stuff, then separate and go which is a pain when dealing with 9-12 gallons of water. So my questions are, how does a mash pH of 4.1 affect mashing efficiency and flavors in beer, and how does that impact my salt additions if I add everything just to the mash water?

Thanks

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Something seems highly amiss here. My guess is that you were never anywhere near pH 4.1. Did you verify 4.1 pH via a pH meter?

 

[00Seven]

Something seems highly amiss here. My guess is that you were never anywhere near pH 4.1. Did you verify 4.1 pH via a pH meter?

That’s just the number Brewers friend calculater spat out. I was reworking a recipe on a light colored beer I brewed that had roughly 9 gallons of water in it. BF told me I needed 14 grams of tartaric acid to reach 5.2 but that was based on 9 gallons of water. I added 14 grams to 4 gallons of water and started mashing

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Does your water have a very high level of alkalinity? Even for that case, something is still amiss. I can see mashing at a pH of no lower than about 5.0 due to your mistake. Certainly not pH 4.1.

For the case of unmineralized RO water, all of the acid is working to bring the initially high pH (with respect to the target mash pH) grist to pH 5.2. The water is for this case merely a neutral and innocuous carrier. And it would hardly matter from the perspective of mash pH if you mashed in 4 gallons or 9 gallons.

For the case of alkalinity some acid overshoot resulting in a bit of pH lowering (below your target) would be evident, since you are now (in addition to acidifying the grist) neutralizing only 4/9ths of the mEq's of alkalinity, but due to your mistake you have acidified sufficiently to reduce 9/9ths of the mEq's of alkalinity to pH 5.2.

And lastly if your mistake resulted in your inadvertantly a bit more than doubling the mineralization, some additional pH depression would occur due to this, but again, not even nearly enough to mash at pH 4.1.

 

[00Seven]

I’m using RO water with a pH of 7. I’m going to play around on Brun water a bit and see what it says. I also have a pH meter.

And I would think 14 grams of acid added to 4 gallons of water would have more acidity than 14 grams added to 9 gallons of water. Right?

When I click the “just add to mash” option in BF my additions drop to 3 or 4 grams vs 14

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I’m using RO water with a pH of 7. I’m going to play around on Brun water a bit and see what it says. I also have a pH meter.

And I would think 14 grams of acid added to 4 gallons of water would have more acidity than 14 grams added to 9 gallons of water. Right?

When I click the “just add to mash” option in BF my additions drop to 3 or 4 grams vs 14

14 grams of any acid has the same mEq's (weight) of acid regardless of the amount of water it is added to.

Bru'n Water is known to have unresolved issues with regard to the integrity of its output advice for specifically the case of varying water to grist ratios. It may not be your best choice for resolving this issue where the water to grist ratio is the specific problem at hand.

pH is a base 10 logarithmic scale. 10 times more (or less) hydronium ions (H+) are required to see a shift of one full pH point, as would be the case for going from 5.1 pH to 4.1 pH. 3 or 4 grams of difference vs. the original calculation of 14 grams of acid is simply not going to bring a 5.2 pH grist (wort) down to 4.1 pH.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

When Brulosophy intentionally mashed one batch (the control) at about pH 5.3 and another (the test case) at pH 4.34 (from memory) it required adding something on the order of 17 mL (also from memory) of 88% lactic acid to the mash water to drive the wort from what would have been ~5.3 pH to a measured 4.34 pH. Adding 3 or 4 grams more tartaric acid, as for the case where 14 grams were added against only 10 or 11 grams required, is simply not going to depress the pH by 1.1 points.

 

[00Seven]

Ok. Thanks for the info. I’ll adjust some and not worry about it. Thanks