GrizzlyBier
Active Member
Hello, I brewed 10 gal of IPA yesterday. I used 3 different water calculators that told me to add 1 tsp of lactic acid to bring the pH to 5.4. Well, I should've measured it before I put that in because I measured it afterwards and it was about 4.6 according to the test strips. I made sure to cool it down to room temp before measuring. My conversion efficiency sucked; I was 10 points below what Beersmith predicted. This is the first time I've had poor efficiency. I'm thinking the low pH hurt the conversion. I do have a pH meter but don't have the storage fluid so I just used the strips. Is my conclusion correct? I'm really just learning about H20 chems.
I also added probably too much gypsum trying to increase my sulfate. But now I'm learning that the sulfate to chloride ratio should be close to 1 and mine is about 8 to 1! What's more is it hasn't started fermenting yet (don't know if that's related to these issues or not)
Thanks!
I also added probably too much gypsum trying to increase my sulfate. But now I'm learning that the sulfate to chloride ratio should be close to 1 and mine is about 8 to 1! What's more is it hasn't started fermenting yet (don't know if that's related to these issues or not)
Thanks!