Is this too much lactic acid?

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nreed

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Hi all.

I'm using the brewers friend water calculator and it says I need to add 5ml of 88% lactic acid to get my pH down to 5.3. I have the settings so I can add the salts and acid to the total water volume at the start to keep things simple - my total water is 13.35l so the addition would be 0.37ml per litre of water - is that a reasonable amount to use?
 
What kind of beer? What grains in the malt bill? How alkaline is the base water?

5 ml in 13.5l would be a bit high for MY water/grain/style average beer, but the real answer to your question is, "Depends."

It’s an APA, 92% pale/maris, 5% carapils, 3% carahell.

Here’s my water profile from BeerSmith
C965548C-7F3E-455F-A5BA-6904F4EAC92C.jpeg


this is Pre gypsum/Epsom additions which I’m using to take the sulphate up to c250 for this one.
 
Back when I was doing biab, I noticed my lactic acid amounts were a lot higher. I feel like one time I had to add nearly 20 ml in a 12 gallon batch. I had an older thread up here somewhere that discussed the threshold for tasting the acid contribution. Some reason 1.5 ml per gallon rings a bell for a threshold to stay under. I could be wrong though.

In short, I don’t think 5 ml is too much in a 5 gallon batch. It all depends on your specific water profile and the grain bill you’re using.
 
Back when I was doing biab, I noticed my lactic acid amounts were a lot higher. I feel like one time I had to add nearly 20 ml in a 12 gallon batch. I had an older thread up here somewhere that discussed the threshold for tasting the acid contribution. Some reason 1.5 ml per gallon rings a bell for a threshold to stay under. I could be wrong though.

In short, I don’t think 5 ml is too much in a 5 gallon batch. It all depends on your specific water profile and the grain bill you’re using.
True, but the OP said he was acidifying 13.35 liters or about 3+ gallons, so using a 1.5 ml per gallon maximum lactic addition would be pushing that upper limit. I agree though that even that amount in 3 gallons is probably not too much. Just depends on a number of different factors.
 
I use 2.7 ml of lactic acid in my mash and 1 ml in my sparge water . Thats for a 5.5 gallon brew and 11.5 # grain bill. So 5 does seem very high to me for 3 gallon batch .
 
It might be right but the advice that I would give you is to add it one drop at a time and keep checking the pH. Brewer's friend it's only as accurate as the data you enter and it doesn't always know the buffering capacity of the water that you're using.
 
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