How much acid or acidulated malt is too much? Need to lower only pH

[str8jkt]

First time trying out Bru'n water or doing anything with my water other than adding a campden tablet.

It appears that my numbers are great right out of the tap..... Except that my pH is really high. I'm showing an estimated mash pH of 6.04.

It looks like adding 13 ml of Lactic acid will bring down my pH to 5.3 (brewing a blonde so want it on the lower side). Alternatively adding 1.5 lb of Acidulated malt would have the same effect (other than adding a bunch of grain to the order).

Both of these sound like big amounts. The 1.5lb of Acidulated malt would account for 9.7% of the grain bill and 13 ml of Lactic acid also sounds high. (14lb grain bill without any acid malt, 9 full volume BIAB so have entered 9 gallons for the mash and 0 for the sparge under total water additions (9 gallons total batch volume)).

Has anyone dealt with numbers like these before? My Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Sulfate and Chloride levels are all close to a Yellow Balanced profile. Just the damn pH that is coming out high.

Any suggestions?

 

[z-bob]

pH of the water isn't really the problem, it's your bicarbonate level (HCO3-) My tap water tastes good, but has 317 ppms of HCO3-, so most brewers around here don't even try to brew with it. You can do full-volume BIAB if you use phosphoric acid instead of lactic. 9.7% acid malt or the equivalent in lactic acid is going to taste funny -- at least mine did when I went that high. (I only tried once and maybe that beer would have tasted funny anyway, so I know I'm putting way too much emphasis on one data point)

What I have started doing a fairly thin mash and acidifying all of my mash water with lactic or phosphoric acid (I have both), then sparging with cold water w/o acid. I've also acidified the mash with lactic acid or acid malt and then used phosphoric to acidify the sparge and that worked well.

You can also dilute your tapwater with RO water, so you don't need so much acid.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

No one can speculate as to what is going on without knowing the full details of your water analysis, your recipe, your added minerals, and the quantities of your strike and sparge waters.

 

[str8jkt]

Apologies. Here is a screencap from Bru'n - https://imgur.com/iXEnHNx

14lb Grain bill (11lb 2 row, 2lb vienna, 1lb crystal 10).
BIAB full volume no sparge - Requires 9 gallons of water.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

If you insist upon using this water and also upon targeting 5.3 as your mash pH, then in my opinion your best bet would be to add 10 mL of 85% phosphoric acid. Or alternately add 132 mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid if that is all you can get your hands on. Add before heating the water.

Other alternatives are 12.4 mL of 88% Lactic Acid, or 15.7 Oz. of Acidulated Malt. But these quantities are at the level where you will taste the lactic.

 

[JimRausch]

My well water is similar- pretty good on calcium, chloride and sulfate levels, but fairly high in bicarb. Except for my darkest beers, I often dilute 50:50 with RO water and add back a little CaCl2 or CaSO4 as needed. I do usually also need to add a little lactic acid or acidulated malt, but it's in the range of 2-3 ml acid or maybe 3-4 oz. acidmalt.
All based on Brunwater, of course!

 

[ajdelange]

The amount of lactic acid or sauermalz that defines too much is the amount where you decide that it has a detrimental effect on the flavor or the finished beer. This is a matter of taste but I must say that nearly 10% sauermalz is very probably too much. As I recall Weyermanns has a recipe for a pseudo-Berliner Weiße on their website that uses about that much. Thirteen mL of lactic acid supplies, to pH 5.3, about 147 mEq of protons. Your malts are going to require about 56 mEq to pH 5.3 and that means the alkalinity of your water must be about (147 -56)/34 = 2.7 mEq/L (135 ppm) which really isn't that high. But it's clear that you would reduce your acid requirement by decarbonating the water to some extent (as by diluting with RO) or shooting for a higher mash pH such as 5.4 which is more reasonable than 5.3 unless you want it that low for some reason. pH 5.4 reduces the malt's acid requirement to less than half of what it is at 5.3 and reducing the alkalinity of the water by 50% (as by 1:1 dilution with RO) obviously reduces its requirement by 50% so that making these two moves would get you an acid requirement about half what you are calculating now or around 5% sauermalz. That's still a bit more than the usual 3% used for pH control but probably not detrimental to flavor. In fact you may find it a flavor enhancer as many brewers do.

Edit: Just noticed that you posted an image of a Bru'n water page. From the bicarbonate number we can estimate that your alkalinity is about 3.2 mEq/L (not too far off from my previous WAG). That's getting up there so you might want a bit more RO dilution but the fact remains that if you do 1:1 the water's acid demand will be cut in half.

Another approach is to use a less flavorful acid (phosphoric) but water as alkaline as 3 or more mEq/L is definitely a candidate for decarbonation (by boiling, lime or dilution).

 

[DownHillonWater]

A simple RO system is $200 and will save you a lot of hastle with your water. Check out Buckeye Hydro who sponsors this forum. I'm very pleased with my system.