how to crank out fast beers._

[Yooper]

Yooper is so full of good information! :rockin:

I'm full something............I'm not sure it's information.

One thing I just remembered! When I first decided to acidify my sparge water a bit, I didn't have a good pH meter. AJ deLange suggested doing a poor man's test to see how much lactic acid to use.

I put 5 gallons of water in a bucket and added 1 ml at a time to it. I tasted it. I got up to 5 ml before I tasted any twang at all. That meant that 5 ml was under the flavor threshold so that's what I used and calculated it using spreadsheets (I knew my water profile) to be "ok".

I would suggest something similar to the OP. Consider the amount of mash water you are adding 10ml of lactic acid to. And divide in half (or thirds or whatever), divide the lactic acid by the same amount, and taste that. If it tastes sour, like your beer, and it's the same type of sour, then you've nailed the issue. The fix then is simply to stop doing that.

 

[hunmojo]

Im starting to believe that its my water issue here.

my actual process is this... I biab. I have a 20 L stock pot. Which gives me about around 13L after boil. I usually have something like 9L of water to mash with and another 8 or so to sparge my bag with.. I get 80% eff this way. I would take my tap water and run it through a britta filter once.... then I would take the filtered tap water and cut it 50/50 with ion'exchanged bottled water from the gas station. (this is where my process has changed the salt 2 bathes).... I would add then lactic acid till my mash water dropped to 5.4. NOW however I have just left the mash water as is letting the grains drop my ph to proper range.... when I tested the mash the mash ph was right at 5.2. I did still add about 2ml of lactic to my 8 liters of sparge water...

I didnt use to use ion exchanged water to cut my tap water i just filtered more times with the britta, and I do remmember that thats when I used more lactic acid.... and to tell you the trouth I just couldnt wait any longer and from my last to batches with ion water, I tried a cream alre 2.5 weeks into priming, and an english pale that is one week into priming. and they are both grea. heck the english tastes better than the cream. So i think it was my lactic acid adition.

what do you guys suggest for water that looks like this....

arsenic .002-.003
calcium 70
K .5
magnesium 18
Na 14
sulfate 50
HCO3 310

 

[Yooper]

That's really high Hco3, so I'd use more RO water (maybe all RO water since you have some arsenic in there as well). Instead of 50/50, maybe try one batch of all RO water.

I think having your mash water at 5.4 meant that your mash pH would have been very low and that 10 ml of lactic acid in 9l water is where a sour flavor came from.

How are you testing pH? With a meter at room temperature?

 

[hunmojo]

yes. I have a digital ph meter, and i usually test with strips as well. I am going to use i think 50/50 ro with bottled water from the store to see how that works out. I just thought that i could just use a filter and get away with using my tap water...... but you dont even need tests to know that the tap water here in Budapest is pretty bad.... iv had a water heater internal heating element get eaten away inside in a year........

 

[thejaxx]

hunmojo,

I'm down in Tukwila and looked at your recent water report, located at http://www.edmondswa.gov/images/COE.../Water_Utility/pdf/Water_Quality_Bro_2012.pdf

Its pretty identical to me down here. In the few batches i've done, i've used half tap and half spring from the bottled water company and have had good results.

I'm still pretty new and not all grain yet, but we could compare notes and you can try one of my last batch which has been conditioning now for 3 weeks.