Minimum pH for bottle conditioning?

[seanppp]

I have an IPA fermenting that I want to put phosphoric acid to get a slightly sour taste. I'm calling it a "Hop Soda" beer, and I see that CocaCola is around 2.2 pH, so I'm wondering if I can acidify my beer to 2.2 and still have the yeast bottle condition the beer? Anyone know what the minimum pH is for yeast to still do their thing?

 

[Warthaug]

Yeast struggle greatly below 3.2; at 2.2 they will be dead.

Bryan

 

[ong]

Also, I think a pH of 2.2 will be significantly more than slightly sour -- straight lemon juice is about 2.0. Without the ton of sugar that Coke has, it would be wildly sour tasting. Check out this link for the pH of various sour beers:

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2011/11/measuring-sour-beer-ph.html?m=1

 

[seanppp]

Thanks for the replies. I was planning on sweeting the beer to around CocaCola levels. Maybe I'll have to force carb it if I want to go under pH 3. :-(

 

[JonM]

If you're adding acid to make it sour, then sweetening to cover the sour flavor - why not just leave out the acid AND the extra sugar?

 

[seanppp]

I'm not trying to mask anything. I'm trying to make a very sweet IPA and I want to *balance* the sweetness with sourness. Just like CocaCola.

 

[GuldTuborg]

Interesting project. You might look into brett or wine yeasts. They tend to be more acid tolerant, as a rule, but they come with their own set of issues, too. If you really want to get this down into the 2.x pH range, force carbing may well save you a big headache.

Besides, if you mean to sweeten it, what are you going to use that the conditioning yeast won't just eat up? If you say enough lactose to make this beer sweet enough to be balanced with a 2.2 pH, you're going to end up with an IPA with a body the size of Texas, tart and heavily sweetened, and, presumably, heavily hopped. It might not be a bad beer, but I wouldn't dream of calling that an IPA any longer. It's something experimental.

 

[ong]

Might be worth just bottling it dry, then serving with syrup to mix in the glass. Otherwise, you'll need to bottle pasteurize.

 

[BigRedBrewer]

Wouldn't it be easier to just make a really strong hop tea and sweaten that? If you're trying to make "hop soda" you're really not making beer anyway.

If you still want to make it a beer, why don't you just make an IPA and under attenuate it? Then you'll have a sweet IPA. If need be, at that point you could acidity it.

 

[seanppp]

I was thinking of sweetning it with an artificial sweetner (Sweet N Low, etc) which isn't sugar and thus won't get fermented.

Anyone know if dry Champagne yeast has a low pH tolerance?

 

[GuldTuborg]

Anyone know if dry Champagne yeast has a low pH tolerance?

According to this basic wine yeast article, typical wine yeasts can get down to 3.0 pH without trouble. Here's the interesting part:

pH: Yeast can adapt easily at typical must pH in the range 3.0–4.0, but at lower pH, yeast can become inhibited, and at higher pH, the vulnerability of microbial spoilage requires larger doses of sulfite that might interfere with yeast metabolism altogether.

Beyond that, I'm sure it's yeast dependent. I know DV10 has good low pH tolerance, but I don't know how low it would go, and under what other conditions. An email to the manufacturer might be in order.