Low Mash pH Effect on Taste in Pilsner

[Big Monk]

And my question was: "What would one of those objectively identifiable flaws be?"

How about DMS. Canned corn! Yuch!

When LaTrobe, famous for its Rolling Rock "ponies" (sold by the bushel basket in a bar in State College, Pa), was bought by whoever it was that bought them the brewing scientists from the new parent descended on the plant and advised what process changes were to be made to get the DMS out of the product. These were carried out and sales plummeted. Thus we have at least one example of an objective "flaw" (I think most everyone here would agree that DMS is a flaw) that was not a flaw in the opinion of that brewery's customers. Quite the contrary. After the "flaw" was "corrected" they wouldn't drink the beer any more.

I remember another conversation with a craft brewery's master brewer. He stated flat out "There is absolutely no place for diacetyl in lager beer!" My response was to ask him whether he had communicated that to Pilsen.

I think a beer with 400 mg/L sulfate is deeply flawed. Colin Kaminsky thinks a beer without 400 mg/L is flawed. The only reason he doesn't brew them is because he can't sell them.

So here are three examples of things which can be objectively measured (though a GC may be required to do it). But when it comes down to it whether a particular level of any of those things is deemed desirable or not the decision is made subjectively. This is why breweries use tasting panels tuned to their customer base's preferences.

I can’t disagree here.

I guess Ill further clarify and say that I have had beers with flaws that were unreedemable, in constrast with things like DMS and something like diacetyl (which as you correctly pointed out can actually become an acquired taste to drinkers of beers that “feature” it), including bad fermentation off flavors, solvent, etc.

I have to agree with the points you present though.

 

[ajdelange]

Remember "de gustibus non est disputandem". Foul fermentation products? Lambic. I remember a class on same where a wag in the back of the room raised his hand and asked for clarification on how to tell "your fecal enterics from your vomit enterics". Solvents: ever had Tetly's?

In principle, of course, I agree that there are unforgivable flaws. I'm just having a hell of a time coming up with one. Any beer with pH < 1 ?

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

If you want to have a flawless beer, go no further than your local grocery store and purchase a sixer of Bud Light. What’s the PH of Bud Light? I think that’s what we all should be shooting for. Dilly dilly!

 

[Blazinlow86]

If you want to have a flawless beer, go no further than your local grocery store and purchase a sixer of Bud Light. What’s the PH of Bud Light? I think that’s what we all should be shooting for. Dilly dilly!

They do make a very popular light american lager that's one of the hardest styles to nail . Cheers

 

[SoCal-Doug]

Many commercial beers, including some of the best German beers, do have what we consider to be off flavors. However, its in moderation, not overflowing.

A German pilsner smash boiled for 10 minutes may reek of DMS and be undrinkable to many. Whereas a Bitburger or Urquell may have a few PPM and at that level, is very acceptable. Some perceive it as canned corn, to others its more like asparagus (I like corn and asparagus, but not a bunch of it in my beer).

Many styles are considered "ok" if there is a tiny amount of diacetyl. When it gets so bad it coats your mouth and tastes like lard or margarine, now we have a problem Houston.

A lot of Belgian beers are supposed to have some yeast "funk". We expect it and its part of the style. When your cream ale or California common smells like sourdough, something went seriously south.

I draw the line on complete "mishaps". When the beer is obviously lightstruck, throw it away. When it is badly oxidized or spoiled, there is no level of acceptable, trash it. When you ferment your lager yeast at 85F and the esters and phenols can knock a buzzard off of a crap wagon, you belong on timeout. Oddly, some beer drinkers think these taste fine. But we are human and all different. After all, some people actually like kale or rotten duck eggs.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

If you want to have a flawless beer, go no further than your local grocery store and purchase a sixer of Bud Light. What’s the PH of Bud Light? I think that’s what we all should be shooting for. Dilly dilly!

The don't put enough of anything in bud light to generate flaws. It's kinda hard to screw up an OG of 1.020 made with rice. It's basically heavily diluted Asahi or Sapporo

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

The don't put enough of anything in bud light to generate flaws. It's kinda hard to screw up an OG of 1.020 made with rice. It's basically heavily diluted Asahi or Sapporo

True, I was being sardonic which comes across in text even worse than sarcasm. Bud Light is certainly tested to specifications and almost certainly doesn’t have flaws at levels that are perceptible to the vast majority of people. In an effort to try and stay on the topic in this post, I would bet that there are PH monitors through the whole process of making bud light and if the control limits are breached, something is done to bring it back into spec. BL is the result of compromises to sell as much beer as possible. This effort has left it devoid of any character whatsoever.

Once I had a beer that I couldn’t drink. It was a Chardonnay barrel aged sour that tasted to me like drinking apple cider vinegar. The bartender said that people would come to their brewery specifically for that beer and drink only that for hours. There is no good and bad beer only a continuum. On one end is Bud Light which is completely unoffensive and devoid of character on the other is a fecal vomit fest durian sour that one guy in the world will drink with a smile on his face right before he keels over dead from drinking it. There’s so much rich diversity in between that a beer that I don’t like is still just as valid of an experience as a beer that I do. It is this tapestry that is woven where the gold thread is not more important than the linen one.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

here is no good and bad beer only a continuum

Continuum or evolution?

 

[hopjuice_71]

This has become one of the more interesting threads I have read in a while. I haven't always thought that beer preferences are subjective - in my younger years I believed there was such a thing as empirically good beer and bad beer. However, my perspective has changed having realized that as "bad" as a beer may be there always seems to be people who will genuinely like it, excepting the irredeemably contaminated or otherwise fouled brew. On this note, I am reminded of a time when I monumentally messed up a recipe. I can't remember the exact details (I turfed that recipe quickly) but it had some weird combo of hops and amber malt that resulted in a beer that tasted just like tobacco smoke and coffee. To me, it was abhorrent. I felt shame as a brewer and out of a sense of pride I planned to dump it before it hit the palettes of anybody I considered a friend. However, I delayed the dumping and at one summer party some craft beer drinking friends did get into the keg.. ..early on in the drinking as well. I was horribly embarrassed, but wouldn't you know it, they LOVED it. I still never went anywhere near that recipe again.

 

[bierhaus15]

Following the Rolling Rock DMS comment by AJ, it is important to note that many times off flavors in industrial beer are intentional. And often a tremendous amount of time and money are spent ensuring the beer has exactly X amount of that character. Another example of the same is Pilsner Urquell and Sam Adams. Both breweries target diacetyl levels above threshold, to add complexity and achieve a taste target preferred by their consumers.

For what it is worth, a well known craft brewery started adjusting their post boil pH to 5.0 to enhance a supposed "crispness" and the result was determined to be highly detrimental, as the resulting fermentation resulted in an earthier and duller hop character. It was a pretty expensive blunder as the consumers didn't like the change. It was also later learned that the pH change largely prevented the linalool shift of R to S form during fermentation, along with affecting yeast performance.

 

[dmr]

I brewed a Pilsner Urquell clone yesterday. I was doing an experiment to quantify the effects of starter vs. non-starter by splitting my batch into 2 fermentors. Anyway, I've been starting to measure and try to adjust for mash pH. So BeerSmith2 was telling me to add 5 ounces of my 10% Phosphoric acid to bring the predicted pH down from 5.67 to my target of 5.2. My mash way undershot with the following values in my 90 minute mash:

- 18 min into mash: pH=4.41
- 30 min into mash: pH = 4.59
- 90 min into mash: pH = 4.86

I thought that was a lot of acid, but I haven't targeted a pH that low before since tracking my pH, and adjustment predictions from before were accurate so I just dumped it in (actually only had 4.9 oz).

When I pulled the lid off the kettle once the strike water had hit its target temperature, I caught a sweet odor and I thought to myself, "Why did I add so much dumb acid?". Tasting the wort samples, they all tasted fine. My wort sample after boil, when getting my OG measurement tasted good, but I did notice a slightly tart bite to it like an orange juice type of acidity.

My question is, would a low pH like this present itself as a particularly tart finished beer? Anyone have any experience with this?

Recipe for 7 gallon batch:
13.5 lbs German Pilsner
0.5 lbs Cara hell
0.15 lbs Dark Munich
2 oz. Saaz (6.5%) @ 90 minutes
1.35 oz. Saaz (6.5%) @ 15 min
1.35 oz. Saaz (6.5%) @ 5 min
Wyeast #2278 Czech Pilsner Lager
0.71 oz Saaz (6.5%) dry hop

Brew parameters:
- Mash for 90 min @ 151F
- Mashout for 10 min @ 168F
- Boil for 90 min

8.3 Gallons of this Base Water in the mash:
- Ca 24 ppm
- Mg 2.4 ppm
- Na 24.4 ppm
- SO4 0 ppm
- Cl 30.0 ppm
- HCO3 96.0 ppm

Mash water additions:
- 4.1 g Gypsum
- 7.1 g Epsom Salt
- 1.7 g CaCl

This is some really nice mash pH data you have posted here. Would you be willing to post more such data to the thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/wanted-mash-ph-measurements.661544/ ?

If so, it would be of great help to those that are trying to develop mash pH estimation software. Cheers!

 

[Bilsch]

When LaTrobe, famous for its Rolling Rock "ponies" (sold by the bushel basket in a bar in State College, Pa), was bought by whoever it was that bought them the brewing scientists from the new parent descended on the plant and advised what process changes were to be made to get the DMS out of the product. These were carried out and sales plummeted. Thus we have at least one example of an objective "flaw" (I think most everyone here would agree that DMS is a flaw) that was not a flaw in the opinion of that brewery's customers. Quite the contrary. After the "flaw" was "corrected" they wouldn't drink the beer any more.

Ah.. I remember Rolling Rock, con methylthiomethane circa mid 80's, very well. Don't generally care for DMS but in this beer it was actually quite pleasing. The good old days.

 

[ajdelange]

This is some really nice mash pH data you have posted here.

I find to my amazement that I never looked to the left of the decimal point and wonder if others have done the same. Those are 4's. And note that he used 5 Oz of lactic acid. Little surprise then that he got pH this low. I'm guessing that the program advised him to add 5 mL of acid.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I find to my amazement that I never looked to the left of the decimal point and wonder if others have done the same. Those are 4's. And note that he used 5 Oz of lactic acid. Little surprise then that he got pH this low. I'm guessing that the program advised him to add 5 mL of acid.

Actually he said he added 10% Phosphoric Acid. But either way it was an overkill of acid.

 

[micraftbeer]

I'm guessing that the program advised him to add 5 mL of acid.

Nope, BeerSmith 2 told me 4.9 oz of 10% Phosphoric Acid. So several little 5 ml CVS syringes worth...

 

[ajdelange]

If it was 10% phosphoric as opposed to 88% lactic that's not quite so dramatic but it is, as you have demonstrated, way off.

 

[micraftbeer]

Yeah, to me the giveaway was when I took the lid off my heating kettle of sparge water and was hit by a sweet/sour odor. The problem is, BeerSmith is just way so easy to use. I've already got my recipe in there, I don't have to flip back and forth as I type it in one of the other water calculators...