Making money from Water Calculators

[maisch]

Let us all bash that big bad bully maisch who questioned the status quo. Down with maisch, Down with maisch, Down with maisch!! He's rude, he's crude and he's a jerk!! Down with maisch! Off with his head! Bash the maisch! Bash the maisch!

I had no prior resolutions, but I just made one, and fulfilled it: click "ignore member" on the OP. So much belligerent nonsense the past few days. I feel better already.

If you've really put me on ignore then you've taken the easy way out. Take a stand boy! Take a stand. Better yet, go watch Alice In Wonderland. A ravishing film!

 

[Moose_MI]

He's rude, he's crude and he's a jerk!! Down with maisch! Off with his head! Bash the maisch

OH how I love this game! I only wish it was in the correct field of play.

But how could you know? With no more than 3 weeks experience in our merry band.

As a fellow self identifying jerk I wish only to guide you kind sir...not bash...no no...never that

We’re a civilized bunch here...but there’s a group of us that dabble in Drunken Ramblings where uninformed subject matters are embraced...dare I say encouraged

Please..contribute..we need you there!

 

[Big Monk]

Let us all bash that big bad bully maisch who questioned the status quo. Down with maisch, Down with maisch, Down with maisch!! He's rude, he's crude and he's a jerk!! Down with maisch! Off with his head! Bash the maisch! Bash the maisch!



If you've really put me on ignore then you've taken the easy way out. Take a stand boy! Take a stand. Better yet, go watch Alice In Wonderland. A ravishing film!

It was certainly a semi-valid (if provocative) question. Can’t beat you up too bad about that.

They are all free programs though. So...

 

[Moose_MI]

That’s it...encourage him/her...I want to play more

 

[bob1852]

I don't think we're talking about software bugs here. We're talking about scientific ignorance or neglect if you will.

I place an order on Amazon, I get what I ordered.
I design a graphic in Illustrator, I get what I designed.
I want to know my mash pH, we'll get you close.... maybe in certain circumstances?

Order some of Five Star Chemicals "5.2" from Amazon and let me know if locks your mash in at pH 5.2.

Hint, it doesn't...

 

[Moose_MI]

^^^^ ouch, that had to hurt a little

 

[maisch]

It was certainly a semi-valid (if provocative) question. Can’t beat you up too bad about that.

They are all free programs though. So...

Free as in beer or free as in speech?

 

[Moose_MI]

My little china girl..you shouldn’t mess with me....

She says...

SHHHHHHH

 

[Big Monk]

This has definitely made the transition to drunken ramblings.

 

[Moose_MI]

BOOM. BOOM BOOM

Moderator?

 

[maisch]

Order some of Five Star Chemicals "5.2" from Amazon and let me know if locks your mash in at pH 5.2.

Hint, it doesn't...

Well technically a mono-sodium phosphate and disodium phosphate buffer made with phosphoric acid can buffer @5.2 pH but it would have to be made per the water and the malt being used.

https://www.thoughtco.com/make-a-phosphate-buffer-solution-603665

 

[Moose_MI]

Oooh...science stuff..love it

...blinded me with science...and failed me in geometry

 

[Big Monk]

Free as in beer or free as in speech?

Free as in free! No costy no money.

 

[bob1852]

Well technically mono-sodium phosphate has a pka of 6.8 so when added to the mash (more acidic) it would dissociate to release Na ions but also some phosphoric acid? Of course one needs to know how much is needed, not sure just a teaspoon would always suffice. I believe there's also another phosphate in there but don't have an ingredients list.

tl;dr

The product doesn't work as advertised...

 

[Moose_MI]

TL;DR, short for "too long; didn't read"

For those of us that are drinking...a lot....often

 

[maisch]

tl;dr

The product doesn't work as advertised...

A phosphate buffer does work under the situations for which it's designed to work. I'm not defending their marketing (that it work for all mashes) as in general you'd have to design a phosphate buffer for each and every mash.

https://www.thoughtco.com/make-a-phosphate-buffer-solution-603665

 

[bob1852]

Well technically a mono-sodium phosphate and disodium phosphate buffer made with phosphoric acid can buffer @5.2 pH but it would have to be made per the water and the malt being used.

https://www.thoughtco.com/make-a-phosphate-buffer-solution-603665

Technically or not, the product says it will lock in the mash at pH 5.2, at a dosage of 1 Tablespoon per 5 gallons of finished beer, regardless of grist or water type.

It's garbage and it's sold in nearly every homebrew store and all over the internet.

They're selling a product that doesn't work as advertised.

Last I checked, Martin still advises people to actually test pH (and make adjustments as needed) and not just rely on his calculator, as he readily admits there's lots of variables that coming into play.

Five Star Chemical doesn't even bother with such disclaimers....

 

[day_trippr]

fyi, the DRAMM forum has standards and this troll piece doesn't make the cut...

 

[maisch]

Technically or not, the product says it will lock in the mash at pH 5.2, at a dosage of 1 Tablespoon per 5 gallons of finished beer, regardless of grist or water type.

It's garbage and it's sold in nearly every homebrew store and all over the internet.

They're selling a product that doesn't work as advertised.

Last I checked, Martin still advises people to actually test pH (and make adjustments as needed) and not just rely on his calculator, as he readily admits there's lots of variables that coming into play.

Five Star Chemical doesn't even bother with such disclaimers....

Yup, their marketing is incorrect and the buffer would have to made according the alkalinity and acidity of the water and the mash.

Never used it myself but might have to pick up a tub and see what it does. Why don't you send me yours?

 

[mongoose33]

It seems most see it as a donation for research.

I wonder if the "I got a water calculator and now my beer is great!" crowd is simply confirmation bias.

Are there any commercial breweries trusting their wares to these software?

I'm not reading any further before I reply to this.

I can't figure out why this is a burr under your saddle. I've donated to BrunWater and to EZWater. Not a lot, but as a thank you for having taken the time and effort to make a spreadsheet, and then making it available.

*******

I'm a scientist by training. One thing good scientists know is that measurements are key to studying anything. And sometimes, they're imperfect. I can't believe anyone would think that these spreadsheets would produce perfect results given the limits in measuring everything from the malt to the amount of water additions.

So I put in 3 milliliters of Lactic Acid. Am I perfect in my use of a pipette to do that? No. Measurement error. How does the spreadsheet account for that? It can't. And you can't hold it, or the authors, responsible for what is beyond their control.

How about the malt? Do I know exactly how it will perform, and what's more, does the spreadsheet know that? No. And no. At best I'm going to get an average of what often happens.

How am I doing measuring the salts I add? Or is the water exactly, perfectly, the volume I think it is? How about the quality of the RO water I'm using?

Yeah. You want perfection out of something that cannot be made perfect.

*********

You ask if the "my beer is great" crowd is simply engaging in confirmation bias. I don't know.

What I do know is those spreadsheets give me a level of consistency in my brews, and while I may be off a tenth or even two tenths in pH, it's not enough to matter. I don't expect perfection because the inputs aren't perfect.

And as far as confirmation bias: I have one main criterion for measuring the quality of my beer, besides if I like it. I see if those drinking it have more than one. When they do--and they do a lot--that means they like it. I had two people, literally today, ask to buy my beer.

In fact, I have a local entrepreneur where I live who wants me to brew for that establishment and to sell that beer.

You can call it confirmation bias if you want. I call it excellent beer produced in part by my use of water spreadsheets. And I thank the authors for being part of what I'm able to produce.

 

[bob1852]

Yup, their marketing is incorrect and the buffer would have to made according the alkalinity and acidity of the water and the mash.

Never used it myself but might have to pick up a tub and see what it does. Why don't you send me yours?

Their marketing isn't incorrect.....they just are selling a product that doesn't do what it says it'll do. In fact their marketing is brilliant......one Tablespoon of this dust will you make you hit your pH everytime!!!

I threw it in the trash. After blindly trusting that it worked, I started taking pH readings and discussing the product with others more knowledgeable than me. And then my personal experiences matched what the other chemistry experts said would be the results if I actually tested it.

 

[maisch]

.

 

[Jayjay1976]

I'm not reading any further before I reply to this.

I can't figure out why this is a burr under your saddle. I've donated to BrunWater and to EZWater. Not a lot, but as a thank you for having taken the time and effort to make a spreadsheet, and then making it available.

*******

I'm a scientist by training. One thing good scientists know is that measurements are key to studying anything. And sometimes, they're imperfect. I can't believe anyone would think that these spreadsheets would produce perfect results given the limits in measuring everything from the malt to the amount of water additions.

So I put in 3 milliliters of Lactic Acid. Am I perfect in my use of a pipette to do that? No. Measurement error. How does the spreadsheet account for that? It can't. And you can't hold it, or the authors, responsible for what is beyond their control.

How about the malt? Do I know exactly how it will perform, and what's more, does the spreadsheet know that? No. And no. At best I'm going to get an average of what often happens.

How am I doing measuring the salts I add? Or is the water exactly, perfectly, the volume I think it is? How about the quality of the RO water I'm using?

Yeah. You want perfection out of something that cannot be made perfect.

*********

You ask if the "my beer is great" crowd is simply engaging in confirmation bias. I don't know.

What I do know is those spreadsheets give me a level of consistency in my brews, and while I may be off a tenth or even two tenths in pH, it's not enough to matter. I don't expect perfection because the inputs aren't perfect.

And as far as confirmation bias: I have one main criterion for measuring the quality of my beer, besides if I like it. I see if those drinking it have more than one. When they do--and they do a lot--that means they like it. I had two people, literally today, ask to buy my beer.

In fact, I have a local entrepreneur where I live who wants me to brew for that establishment and to sell that beer.

You can call it confirmation bias if you want. I call it excellent beer produced in part by my use of water spreadsheets. And I thank the authors for being part of what I'm able to produce.

I wish there was a "love" button for posts like this.

 

[ajdelange]

This will go further into rambling but it has to do with Brewing Science. A mix of phosphate salts does buffer. Buffering capacity is the measure of a buffer's ability to resist stress and hold pH when stress is applied. It is well known that the capacity of a buffer is highest one of the pK's of the acid on which the buffering system is based which is phosphoric in this case. For phosphoric acid the two relevant pK's are 2.14 and 7.20. There is a rule of thumb that to be effective a buffer should be designed for a pH ± 1 unit from a pK. The pH 7.00 buffer supplied with pH meters is a phosphate buffer and is clearly pretty close to 7 so it represents a good example of this. It is also well known that the buffering ability is worst half way between a pair of pK's which for a phosphate buffer is 4.67. Thus a phosphate buffer designed for 5.2 would be a poor buffer indeed. But the 5.2 product isn't designed to buffer at 5.2. It is designed to buffer at an appreciably higher pH. WTF?

 

[ajdelange]

Won't that also put to the curb the likes of every other spreadsheet out their except the so called "Gen II"?

I don't think so. Some of the author's of Gen I spreadsheets understand the chemistry and have prepared their offerings based on it with approximations and short cuts made with eyes wide open because, in their opinions, the benefits of dealing with, for example, the non linearity of the pH equation, don't yield benefit worth the additional complexity that would be required of a spreadsheet that did consider non linearity. Those that are based on sound science give approximate but good answers. All Gen II does is offer to those programmers a way to deal with all the common approximations with the complexity hidden in functions they can't even see because they are hidden in an add-in.

Now the spreadsheets written by people who think mash pH is dependent on water volume or that mash pH can be estimated by a weighted combination of malt's DI pH are basing their products on flawed reasoning and their products are going to give poorer answers though, even they, give reasonable answers sometimes. Like the broken clock that is right twice a day.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Simply swap out references to hops with references to mash pH in the quote below to give John's words below new meaning.

"Utilization numbers are really an approximation. Each brew is unique; the variables for individual conditions, i.e. vigor of the boil, wort chemistry, or for losses during fermentation, are just too hard to get a handle on from the meager amount of published data available. Then why do we bother, you ask? Because if we are all working from the same model and using roughly the same numbers, then we will all be in the same ballpark and can compare our beers without too much error. Plus, when the actual IBUs are measured in the lab, these models are shown to be pretty close." ~John Palmer (How To Brew)

And swap out 'entertainment' for 'educational' when referring to today's water chemistry calculators.

 

[Jayjay1976]

Sometimes it pays to look in the mirror. If you are fat dumb and happy then I am too. While writing some of this I realized that I have just spent big bucks on a car rated as second most unreliable car available in the US. But I love it.

I'm curious about the make and model of this fantastically unreliable car? I might be on the brink of buying one myself!

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I'm amazed that many hundreds of hours of study and effort on our part as developers of this type of software (which we are giving away for free) can be laughed off so easily by those with most likely little capability to research and develop their own.

 

[Big Monk]

I'm amazed that many hundreds of hours of study and effort on our part as developers of this type of software (which we are giving away for free) can be laughed off so easily by those with most likely little capability to research and develop their own.

I think you are taking it too personally.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

... the spreadsheets written by people who think mash pH is dependent on water volume.... are basing their products on flawed reasoning and their products are going to give poorer answers though, even they, give reasonable answers sometimes.

There is a single spreadsheet that matches this description based on our current testing results.