Hey Martin! A question about bicarbonate

[xpops]

Thanks AJ and Martin - I appreciate it and hopefully others do as well! Both explanations make sense and clarify things up....I indeed was wondering how the hell I could have a negative value. I'll continue to focus on pH value rather than bicarbonate value!

Cheers,

 

[ajdelange]

So we can at least agree it's useless. Why not, then, take it out? You will confuse no one if you do that I and won't have to write this explanation over and over again (perhaps I should put it in a Sticky). Of course it seems to me that it would make more sense to turn it into something useful by having this field display the proton deficit/surfeit labeled as such in mEq. I find that when planning a mash it is extremely informative to see the proton deficits and surfeits of each of the mash components laid out on the page before you. Helps the user in deciding what to tweak to hit the target.

 

[mabrungard]

So we can at least agree it's useless. Why not, then, take it out?

Agreed. I've toyed with that thought in the past, since its not really germane to imparting flavor in beer.

However, I like seeing that summary that that sort of serves as a surrogate for the proton surfeit and deficit. But I concede that there are other proton sources in the mash (and in the background of Bru'n Water) that don't show up in that bicarbonate tally. So maybe it is time to retire that component from the display.