Quick question with treated water + mash pH Stabilizer

[red5standingBy]

So my Mash pH is around 5.8-5.9 with my untreated water. It's a bit high, I tend to not get full conversion, I'm usually off a bit with my pre boil gravity.

Im going to brew with treated water, my plan is to treat 7 gallons of my water to get: Ca - 140ppm Mg - 22ppm Na- 19ppm SO4 - 305ppm Cl - 81ppm.

If I use my treated mash water and use Mash Stabilizer, will that affect my adjusted water profile? Or, will I hit my target mash pH of 5.2-5.4 with the treated water and no Mash Stabilizer? Thanks!

 

[h22lude]

Without more information, we can't tell what your mash ph will be. We need grain bill, water report, batch volume, mash volume, sparge volume, what your additions are.

Mash stabilizer is typically not recommended. It is best to get to the mash ph you want from minerals and acid and not use mash stabilizer.

 

[ajdelange]

None of the things you propose (heavy calcium addition, mash pH stabilizer) will get your mash to near desired pH. To do that you must figure out how much acid you need to overcome the alkalinity of 1) your water and 2) your grain bill and then add that amount of acid. Neither salts nor phosphate buffers can achieve the desired effect.

 

[red5standingBy]

Without more information, we can't tell what your mash ph will be. We need grain bill, water report, batch volume, mash volume, sparge volume, what your additions are.

Mash stabilizer is typically not recommended. It is best to get to the mash ph you want from minerals and acid and not use mash stabilizer.

Cool, so stabilizer sucks huh? I'm not looking for an exact calculation of my mash pH, just asking in general, will the additions drop the pH some if I add gypsum, epsom and calcium chloride before the mash.

 

[h22lude]

AJ said it perfectly. You will need to use acid. Mineral additions won't bring your ph down enough.

Also remember it depends on the grains. If you are making a stout, your pH will be lower.

 

[mabrungard]

I think it might be a little overstated to say that Ca and Mg salt additions won't bring mash pH down enough. They can. However, it is true that you wouldn't want to use that option for most brewing. The beer would likely be more mineralized than desirable and flavor would likely suffer.

This is one of those cases where: Just because you can, does not mean that you should. AJ's advice is still sound!

 

[h22lude]

I think it might be a little overstated to say that Ca and Mg salt additions won't bring mash pH down enough. They can. However, it is true that you wouldn't want to use that option for most brewing. The beer would likely be more mineralized than desirable and flavor would likely suffer.

This is one of those cases where: Just because you can, does not mean that you should. AJ's advice is still sound!

That's a great point. I should have been clearer in my statement. It is possible, just not suggested.

When I'm working out my water additions, I don't even look at ph until I'm done. I get my minerals in line with the beer style than I look at what my mash pH would be and adjust it with lactic acid.

 

[ajdelange]

I think it might be a little overstated to say that Ca and Mg salt additions won't bring mash pH down enough. They can. However, it is true that you wouldn't want to use that option for most brewing. The beer would likely be more mineralized than desirable and flavor would likely suffer.

This should doubtless be discussed over frosty mugs rather than here but there has been some recent focus on this. Barth (J. Am. Soc. Brew. Chem. 73(3):240:242, 2015) concludes" The classic Kohlbach formula for residual alkalinity is not even approximately correct under mashing conditions... We find it takes 7 - 15 equivalents of calcium to neutralize one of alkalinity." The Kohlbach formula uses 3.5. Palmer recently did a bunch of test mashes and, while his data were subject to some problems, found similarly high numbers. So yes, if you need to drop the pH 0.02 (why bother) then adding some calcium may do the trick but if you are need to drop 0.1 or 0.2 that's going to take a lot of calcium and the drop you get is going to vary with the malt(s) used. OTOH if you want to add a lot of sulfate and/or chloride it is going to required a lot of calcium to accompany those and you need to think about whether the additional pH drop from it is going to cause you to undershoot.

 

[red5standingBy]

This should doubtless be discussed over frosty mugs rather than here but there has been some recent focus on this. Barth (J. Am. Soc. Brew. Chem. 73(3):240:242, 2015) concludes" The classic Kohlbach formula for residual alkalinity is not even approximately correct under mashing conditions... We find it takes 7 - 15 equivalents of calcium to neutralize one of alkalinity." The Kohlbach formula uses 3.5. Palmer recently did a bunch of test mashes and, while his data were subject to some problems, found similarly high numbers. So yes, if you need to drop the pH 0.02 (why bother) then adding some calcium may do the trick but if you are need to drop 0.1 or 0.2 that's going to take a lot of calcium and the drop you get is going to vary with the malt(s) used. OTOH if you want to add a lot of sulfate and/or chloride it is going to required a lot of calcium to accompany those and you need to think about whether the additional pH drop from it is going to cause you to undershoot.

Interesting stuff. So as I said before, this is my adjusted water profile.Ca - 140ppm Mg - 22ppm Na- 19ppm SO4 - 305ppm Cl - 81ppm. My Ca is 10 ppm, my sulfate is 4ppm, and my chloride is 19. So pretty significant additions I think. I guess I'll just brew and check the mash pH. I would just need it to get it down .5 or so.

Also, I was going to collect my total volume of water and treat that, then pull off my amount for the strike, then the remainder for the sparge.

Or should I just heat my strike, add the proper amount of salts to the lower amount, get the mash going. Then same with the sparge? Does that make sense?

 

[Yooper]

Interesting stuff. So as I said before, this is my adjusted water profile.Ca - 140ppm Mg - 22ppm Na- 19ppm SO4 - 305ppm Cl - 81ppm. My Ca is 10 ppm, my sulfate is 4ppm, and my chloride is 19. So pretty significant additions I think. I guess I'll just brew and check the mash pH. I would just need it to get it down .5 or so.

Also, I was going to collect my total volume of water and treat that, then pull off my amount for the strike, then the remainder for the sparge.

Or should I just heat my strike, add the proper amount of salts to the lower amount, get the mash going. Then same with the sparge? Does that make sense?

No matter WHAT the additions would be, the mash pH is the most critical part.

 

[ajdelange]

Returning to the original post: 5.8 to 5.9 is a rather high pH for a mash made with low alkalinity water like this one so the pH meter ought to be checked (but the pH meter should almost always be checked periodically anyway). One lot of Munton's Maris Otter I checked had a DI pH of 5.84 so assuming you used that alone with distilled water you would expect 5.84 as the mash pH. Adding 7 mEq/L calcium hardness (140 mg/L) would lower that pH to about 5.72 using Kohlbach's published 3.5 mEq calcium per mEq protons. But that is at knockout and people are finding that it takes at least twice that much calcium to get an mEq of protons released into the mash. Using 7 instead of 3.5 the predicted mash pH would be 5.78 IOW your expected drop would be 0.06 pH as opposed to 0.12 as predicted by the Kohlbach formula (no surprise there as the malts are pretty linear over a small pH shift like this). If the Kohlbach coefficient is 14 then the pH shift would be only 0.03. To get to pH 5.4 you would need 19.3 mEq of acid per kg of grain. Lactic acid (88%) will give you 11.4 mEq/mL.