PlinyTheMiddleAged
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2014
- Messages
- 377
- Reaction score
- 106
All,
I thought I had these water additions and pH figured out - at least conceptually. Thanks to Bru'n Water, I can select my starting water profile (distilled), enter my grain bill, select my target profile, and add salts to approach the target while keeping a close eye on estimated mash pH.
I've been doing that for my last several brews and have ended up with much better beers. In all cases, I've targeted a mash pH of 5.4, and I've gotten really close to that. Perfect, right?
So, then I run across this video of a Q&A session with the head brewer from The Alchemist.
[ame]http://youtu.be/LdfySDN2mF0[/ame]
Watch between 42:00 and 45:00 minutes for Kimmich's thoughts on mash pH. He says that the mash pH should be between 5.1 and 5.3. If you get all the way up to 5.4 you'll end up with a real muddled hop flavor to your beer.
What do all of you think? Maybe what I should do (after my fermentation chamber empties out) is brew a few small batches at different mash pH values to see how the hop expression changes.
Do you think he's talking pH at mash temperatures and we look at pH at room temp? Seems like a big difference between what I read as standard practice and what he supposedly uses for Heady Topper.
Thanks for reading.
Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
I thought I had these water additions and pH figured out - at least conceptually. Thanks to Bru'n Water, I can select my starting water profile (distilled), enter my grain bill, select my target profile, and add salts to approach the target while keeping a close eye on estimated mash pH.
I've been doing that for my last several brews and have ended up with much better beers. In all cases, I've targeted a mash pH of 5.4, and I've gotten really close to that. Perfect, right?
So, then I run across this video of a Q&A session with the head brewer from The Alchemist.
[ame]http://youtu.be/LdfySDN2mF0[/ame]
Watch between 42:00 and 45:00 minutes for Kimmich's thoughts on mash pH. He says that the mash pH should be between 5.1 and 5.3. If you get all the way up to 5.4 you'll end up with a real muddled hop flavor to your beer.
What do all of you think? Maybe what I should do (after my fermentation chamber empties out) is brew a few small batches at different mash pH values to see how the hop expression changes.
Do you think he's talking pH at mash temperatures and we look at pH at room temp? Seems like a big difference between what I read as standard practice and what he supposedly uses for Heady Topper.
Thanks for reading.
Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew