Here's a question for everyone.
I'm doing my first all grain batch in a few weeks. I have my water report and have been doing as much research as possible. I'm not too interested in adding salts and adjusting my minerals just yet. It appears that all of those are within normal brewing ranges for my tap water. My alkalinity though is pretty high so what I am concerned about is nailing my PH. I will be starting off with approximately 25 gallons of untreated strike water in my kettle and adding half of that along with my grains into my home made 30 gallon mash tun for a water to grist ratio of 1.8. EZ calculator says that My PH will be too high for the mash, so I was planning on adding a little Lactic to get that into range. Then I will be draining my mash tun into 5 gallon buckets after the mash and adding the remaining untreated water for a batch sparge. After doing further reading here it appears that I dont necessarily have to adjust for my sparge water. Hence the beauty of batch sparging. My question is that after I combine my 1st runnings with my second runnings in the kettle, half of my water will have been treated with Lactic and the other half will not have been. Will this throw off my pre-boil PH? My first thought is to measure my sparge PH while it's still in the mash tun right before I drain it and adjust that with Lactic as well before combining that liquid with my first runnings. I'm just reaching out for some guidance. Thanks.
I'm doing my first all grain batch in a few weeks. I have my water report and have been doing as much research as possible. I'm not too interested in adding salts and adjusting my minerals just yet. It appears that all of those are within normal brewing ranges for my tap water. My alkalinity though is pretty high so what I am concerned about is nailing my PH. I will be starting off with approximately 25 gallons of untreated strike water in my kettle and adding half of that along with my grains into my home made 30 gallon mash tun for a water to grist ratio of 1.8. EZ calculator says that My PH will be too high for the mash, so I was planning on adding a little Lactic to get that into range. Then I will be draining my mash tun into 5 gallon buckets after the mash and adding the remaining untreated water for a batch sparge. After doing further reading here it appears that I dont necessarily have to adjust for my sparge water. Hence the beauty of batch sparging. My question is that after I combine my 1st runnings with my second runnings in the kettle, half of my water will have been treated with Lactic and the other half will not have been. Will this throw off my pre-boil PH? My first thought is to measure my sparge PH while it's still in the mash tun right before I drain it and adjust that with Lactic as well before combining that liquid with my first runnings. I'm just reaching out for some guidance. Thanks.