Ph

[Beermaker]

How many people here adjujst there PH to around 5.2? Or do most people just go with the water they have? And have you ever tasted 5.2 ph water.......bleck! But the beer turns out great. Just curious.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I have been, although I don't have a pH meter...just those crappy strips. My water, according to the quality report, is around 8.6 pH. I was using lactic acid to acidify it somewhat in the mash, but I think I may have been taking it too far. I'm brewing today and I am just adding a little over a teaspoon of gypsum to my 5.5g of mash water and seeing if the mash naturally acidifies to where I want it. In any case, I did notice a 5-10 point increase in efficiency with the lactic acid, depending on how much I added.

Once I get into the kettle I don't worry about pH at all.

 

[david_42]

I started using 5.2 pH buffer, after four years of brewing without it, and have been extremely happy with the results. Great extraction rates and no astringency. I buffer the mash and the sparge water for all-grain. The latter is probably more critical, since sparging flushes out components of the wort that naturally buffer the mix.

I also buffer the water for the specialty grains when applicable.

 

[Beermaker]

I also noticed about a 10% gain in eficiency. So I sit around 90% now. And all this time I wondered why I missed my target OG by a few points. The last few batches have been dead on. I will try to brew a Fall Alt from BYO tomorrow and see how close I get again.

 

[ScottT]

I have used the 5.2 buffer every time except this last batch. I filter my water each time and only left the 5.2 out this time because I was using acid malt and didn't want to offset the effect of that.

 

[Sir Sudster]

How many people here adjujst there PH to around 5.2?

I use the 5.2 PH Buffer also. Great stuff.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I also noticed about a 10% gain in eficiency. So I sit around 90% now.

That's amazing efficiency. The best I can get is 75% no matter how I treat my water. I'm getting full conversion and following accepted batch sparging procedures, so I'm suspecting my HBS's mill. I got in on ORRELSE's $15 mill deal, so I'm going to grind my next one myself and try to get it a little bit finer.

 

[eolle]

I also noticed about a 10% gain in eficiency. So I sit around 90% now. And all this time I wondered why I missed my target OG by a few points. The last few batches have been dead on. I will try to brew a Fall Alt from BYO tomorrow and see how close I get again.

Are you calculating efficiency based on calculated expected OG from a BYO or anything like that? If so BYO bases their values on 65% extraction efficiency and most books base it on 70% extraction efficiency. I believe ProMash and other programs allow the user to set brewhouse extraction efficiency but I think the default setting is 70%. If I understand what you are saying (I'm probably lost) your 90% extraction efficiency based on calculated OG from a recipie is an actualy 63% extraction of the possible convertable starch.

Some people use extraction efficiency based on possible convertable starches (most infact) while some used extraction efficiency based on total mass of the grain (the Helles beer style book) and some will use an extraction efficiency based on expected calculated OG. It doesn't really matter which one you use but the % you see will vary. For example expect around 70-80% based on convertable starch, 60-65% based on total mass and 90-110% based on expected OG.

The majority of the time homebrewers worry too much about water pH if you have city water. The pH 5.2 buffer won't hurt....but it doesnt' always help. Taste your water and if you can easily drink it without major treatments and it isn't too soft or hard you propbably don't need to treat with the 5.2 buffer. When you add the grain to the water within 15 minutes you should check the pH it should be easily less the 6 and greater than 5 based on papers (more to the 5). If you are using well water that is really soft or hard...you may need to add the 5.2 buffer or add some gypsum. My buddy has really soft water from a well and gypsum did the trick for lagers but was not required for the ales. Extraction efficiency with the soft, hard and treated waters were all about the same.

-Eric

 

[Walker]

My buddy has really soft water from a well and gypsum did the trick for lagers but was not required for the ales.

I thought ales wanted the harder water and lagers could use softer water?

-walker

 

[Beermaker]

Actually, I use Tastybrew.com. I enter my ingredient amounts and types and it spits out an OG. I then adjust the brewhouse efficiency from the 75% starting default up until I get the OG to match. I have also dried out the grains after mashing and did a comparison weight and had a fellow brewer formulate efficiecy. Both came out around 88%.

 

[eolle]

I thought ales wanted the harder water and lagers could use softer water?

-walker

Yeah...so did I.

All I know is that the lager yeast did not like the softened water at all. I will say that based on well analysis it would have had 20-90X the sodium ions than pilsner. All I know on this is that the primaries took forever (3 weeks...no kidding). The pH never got below 5.8. The addition of gypsum caused the pH to drop to 5.2.

I don't really know why the ales have no problems????? I'm guess that it may be a function of total ionic strength?

-Eric

edit: DOH! I think I figured it out there is a difference between "soft" water (i.e. low mineral content) and "softened" water where sodium or potassium ions replace other minerals.

 

[eolle]

Actually, I use Tastybrew.com. I enter my ingredient amounts and types and it spits out an OG. I then adjust the brewhouse efficiency from the 75% starting default up until I get the OG to match. I have also dried out the grains after mashing and did a comparison weight and had a fellow brewer formulate efficiecy. Both came out around 88%.

Thats some serious extraction efficiency! Most industrial applications are trying to get above 80%! Check out the attached abstract.

BTW. Look at their water:girst ratio! Who says liquid mashes are less efficient

-Eric

Laboratory-Scale Production of High-Gravity Wort Suitable for a Broad Variety of Research Applications. Dawn I. Reilly (1), Cormac O’Cleirigh, and Padraig K. Walsh, Bioprocess Engineering Research Group, School of Biotechnology, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland. (1) Corresponding author. Phone: +353 1 7005281; Fax: +353 1 7005412; E-mail: <[email protected]> J. Am. Soc. Brew. Chem. 62(1):23-28, 2004. Accepted August 18, 2003.

A laboratory-scale high-gravity wort production protocol was developed. Currently, wort production and consequently, much of brewing research, is confined to breweries and specialized research institutions that possess the specialized brewhouse equipment needed to produce wort. A wort production protocol was designed around the nonspecialized equipment found in a typical bioprocess-engineering laboratory. Malted barley was ground in a hammer mill to produce a grist suitable for a mash tun vessel. Mashing and filtration were performed in a stirred, temperature-controlled fermentation vessel fitted with a simple mesh filter. A mash with a liquor/grist ratio of 3.3:1 produced a wort with a specific gravity of at least 22.74°P with an extraction efficiency of 89.7% in less than 335 min. Furthermore, the wort was shown to be fermentable, having a 73% attenuation limit when fermented with Saccharomyces cerevisiae NCYC 1338. The worts produced contained high levels (303 mg/L) of free amino nitrogen, had an average pH of 5.01, a color of 33.85 EBC units, and bitterness of 19.7 BU. This protocol can be used for almost any research application, including the comparative study of fermentations on the basis of all-malt wort, high-gravity malt wort and high-gravity adjunct wort. Furthermore, the protocol will enable researchers outside of the brewing industry to bring their specialized skills to brewing research. Keyword: Wort production