The 0 Effective Alkalinity Method

[sixhotdogneck]

Those posts were made at pretty much the same time.

Anyway, even zeroing the alkalinity in Bru n water gives only 1ml of lactic required for 8 gal. (As the screenshots above demonstrate).

I'll go back and re-read and re-try - I'm probably still missing something crucial.

 

[sixhotdogneck]

The discrepancy is found in the 8 gallons of water. Do you mean 4gal for mash and 4gal for sparge? That's apparently how you ran it through Brewers Friend to end up with 3.64ml. I took it to mean 8 gallons of strike water (not 4 strike and 4 sparge) as that's how I was entering it into Brunwater (see screenshot).

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

The new Bru'n Water 1.22 should not have the sometimes serious past error involving mash thickness and its impact upon output. Are you using 1.22?

 

[sixhotdogneck]

The new Bru'n Water 1.22 should not have the sometimes serious past error involving mash thickness and its impact upon output. Are you using 1.22?

Yes, see the screen shots.

 

[ajdelange]

The discrepancy is found in the 8 gallons of water. Do you mean 4gal for mash and 4gal for sparge? That's apparently how you ran it through Brewers Friend to end up with 3.64ml. I took it to mean 8 gallons of strike water (not 4 strike and 4 sparge) as that's how I was entering it into Brunwater (see screenshot).

Well that's why I intended but I did screw that up too and had it set 4/4 and that does make a difference. The problem is that it shouldn't as if the water has 0 alkalinity then no acid goes to the water (in reality very little) - it all flows to the grain. With more water it says less acid (0.8L) is needed when in fact just a scosh more is. I admit I don't use the programs much and so may be screwing it up totally.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

The new Bru'n Water 1.22 should not have the sometimes serious past error involving mash thickness and its impact upon output. Are you using 1.22?

I have to ask. How serious is the sometimes serious error under typical real-world mash scenarios? And by typical, I mean in the 1 to 2.5 quart per pound mash thickness range. I'm not calling the error into doubt having kept up with related posts for 3 weeks now. But on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely is it someone will encounter the error at all? And if they do how badly will it skew their pH prediction results 10%? 100%? Finally is the skew in pH prediction greater than that introduced by incorrect grain DIpH, calcium or Lactic acid potency, etc.?

Example: Say a majority of people enjoy listening to music played on a $200 system reproducing sound with 99% accuracy. While an audiophile may spend 10 or more times that amount trying to reach that last 1% of accuracy. Who stands to benefit the most as this relates to brewing beer?

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

My fear is that it really is simple (but maybe it's not) and that I am just unable to explain it clearly.

@ajdelange since the publication of the book 'Water' piked my interest. I have been reading all I can find about brewing water properties while experimenting with mash prediction. I've read many of your posts here and your published papers on this subject. About a year ago I bought the syringes with cc and ml markings needed to run the DIpH testing and buffering titration tests to find buffering coefficients for (a), (b) and (c). At the time you posted how a homebrewer like myself could do this testing and I thank you for that. Fast forward a year later having tested for DIpH of several grains I have yet to test for (a).

The information you provide in my mind is invaluable to someone interested in the finer points of brewing beer. Admittedly I can spend weeks reading and trying to digest most of the information you post. I would like to see a sticky regarding the titration process to find the buffering coefficient values. Similar to the thread you and I had going last year. I also would like to begin an 'open source' approach where brewers familiar with DIpH and buffering testing could share their results, ideas, and questions.

 

[Big Monk]

@ajdelange since the publication of the book 'Water' piked my interest. I have been reading all I can find about brewing water properties while experimenting with mash prediction. I've read many of your posts here and your published papers on this subject. About a year ago I bought the syringes with cc and ml markings needed to run the DIpH testing and buffering titration tests to find buffering coefficients for (a), (b) and (c). At the time you posted how a homebrewer like myself could do this testing and I thank you for that. Fast forward a year later having tested for DIpH of several grains I have yet to test for (a).

The information you provide in my mind is invaluable to someone interested in the finer points of brewing beer. Admittedly I can spend weeks reading and trying to digest most of the information you post. I would like to see a sticky regarding the titration process to find the buffering coefficient values. Similar to the thread you and I had going last year. I also would like to begin an 'open source' approach where brewers familiar with DIpH and buffering testing could share their results, ideas, and questions.

Agreed.

 

[sixhotdogneck]

Well that's why I intended but I did screw that up too and had it set 4/4 and that does make a difference. The problem is that it shouldn't as if the water has 0 alkalinity then no acid goes to the water (in reality very little) - it all flows to the grain. With more water it says less acid (0.8L) is needed when in fact just a scosh more is. I admit I don't use the programs much and so may be screwing it up totally.

Something is definitely amiss with both calculators:

Brewers Friend:

8 gal - strike | 0 gal - sparge = 2.83 ml
4 gal - strike | 4 gal - sparge = 3.64 ml

Brunwater:

8 gal - strike | 0 gal - sparge = 1.0 ml
4 gal - strike | 4 gal - sparge = 0.85 ml

I'm to the point where all these calculators are shams, I mean some people are even making money off these things.

 

[ajdelange]

I have to ask. How serious is the sometimes serious error under typical real-world mash scenarios?

That depends on whether you are in a "sometimes serious" situation or not. The first generation programs give a decent answer lots of the time but sometimes they are way off base. I think this is because they use largely empirically derived models which models are based on what happens most of the time. As an example, declaring bicarbonate to be 61*alkalinity/50 works pretty well if your water's pH is between 6 and 8. Outside that range the approximation's accuracy starts to fall off. Even at pH 9 this particular error isn't serious but perhaps simpler to understand than the more serious errors that have been discovered recently. Thus the question you have to ask yourself is "Am I in a potentially serious error situation here?" With respect to the bicarbonate approximation you at least know that you are if your water's pH is 9.8 but who is going to remember that? With respect to the other errors I don't know how to word a caveat that says "Don't use this program when...." because I don't know where the errors lie. I can look at the models used (or what I think are the models used) ask myself "How is this connected to the underlying science?" and only observe that they seem to fit what the science predicts in a lot of cases and that they don't in others. I have noted here over the years that Bru'n Water, which is, obviously, the most used and thus the most commented on, seems to do better when high colored malts are not involved or are used at low levels and this makes sense because the non linearity of their titration curves introduces larger errors in a forced linear model (which all the first generation programs, AFAIK, use). Thus I often tell people "Use the program to get you in the ballpark but, especially if dark malts are involved, do a test mash." Now if you take that advice then it doesn't really matter how bad the program is as you will catch it out when you do the test mash and still make a good beer (or at least one mashed at the correct pH).

And by typical, I mean in the 1 to 2.5 quart per pound mash thickness range.

Suppose you are a BIAB or no sparge brewer?

I'm not calling the error into doubt having kept up with related posts for 3 weeks now. But on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely is it someone will encounter the error at all?

And if they do how badly will it skew their pH prediction results 10%? 100%?[/QUOTE] I don't see the problem as being in pH prediction but in reliance on these programs for acid addition recommendations. The recent big discovery showed that the most popular program gave a wildly wrong answer for that under some conditions. If those recomendations were folowed it is likely that the desired mash pH would be substantially off. By how much, I don't know nor can I tell you how much worse that is going to make your beer than it might have otherwise been. Nor can I even tell you when this problem will occur. I haven't the time or inclination to check all these programs and publish "flight envelopes" for them. I think a much better short term fix is to tell the author there is a problem and have him repair it. Don't you? The long term fix is to start producing second generation spreadsheets and programs which are not subject to these errors and uncertainties

Finally is the skew in pH prediction greater than that introduced by incorrect grain DIpH, calcium or Lactic acid potency, etc.?

That would depend on those uncertainties. In science or industry if we need to estimate something (here the amount of acid we must add to a mash to get a desired pH) and that estimate is derived from a series of measurements (water alkalinity and pH, malt titration parameters, acid strength, malt masses, water volume) it is clear that an error in any of those measurements will contribute to uncertainty in the estimate. The art of error propagation is used to determine how much each measurement uncertainty contributes to the acid addition uncertainty. These contributions are tabulated in an "error budget" and that list is examined in order to see if there are ways to reduce or eliminate the dominant errors. There is another item on the error budget besides those attributable to measurements and that is error introduced by the algorithm that processes the measurements. To answer your question one needs to have numbers for the error budget and those are hard to get. In this case I can look at the apparent error in Brewer's Friend and propagate that through to an uncertainty in acid amount and propagate that further to an estimate of error in the desired pH. But I have another option and that is to replace Brewer's Friend with a program that contributes 0 approximation error thus removing that item from the budget all together. Now you are quite right to point out, as I think is your intention is asking this question, that if the budget item for program errors is 0.02 pH while the RSS (if you know what that means, great, if not don't worry about it) of the other items is 0.05 pH then the total error is 0.054 pH and eliminating 0.02 program error would only improve things to 0.05 and we might question whether it is worth it to 'fix' the program. But, of course, we don't know what the program error is relative to the rest of the budget and so find it prudent to 'fix' the program if that isn't too expensive (and it isn't).

We've deviated quite a bit from the main theme of this thread and it is doubtful that many will read down this far but right in line with the theme of the thread is that by using the 0 alkalinity method we take a couple more items out of the error budget - those related to the water's volume measurement, pH measurement and alkalinity measurement.

Example: Say a majority of people enjoy listening to music played on a $200 system reproducing sound with 99% accuracy. While an audiophile may spend 10 or more times that amount trying to reach that last 1% of accuracy. Who stands to benefit the most as this relates to brewing beer?

This is a good analogy. Most loudspeakers deliver THD (distortion) of a couple of percent. Modern amplifiers have THD specs of tenths or hundredths of percent. Given this, why do we bother with such good specs for the amp when the speakers are relatively so poor? The answer is that it really ins't that difficult, with today's technology, to build an amplifier whose THD is 10 dB below the THD of the speakers (10 dB is the engineer's rule of thumb - if somethings error contribution is 10 or more dB's below another's then we can ignore its error).

It's the same here. It really isn't difficult too build a spreadsheet that eliminates program error from the error budget. Watch this space!

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Something is definitely amiss with both calculators:

Brewers Friend:

8 gal - strike | 0 gal - sparge = 2.83 ml
4 gal - strike | 4 gal - sparge = 3.64 ml

Brunwater:

8 gal - strike | 0 gal - sparge = 1.0 ml
4 gal - strike | 4 gal - sparge = 0.85 ml

I'm to the point where all these calculators are shams, I mean some people are even making money off these things.

The differences are because the mEq's of available calcium to react with the grist change (as in double) when you go from 4 gallons of mash water with 40 ppm calcium to 8 gallons of mash water with 40 ppm of calcium.

When Mash Made Easy is fed calcium into distilled water until for 4 gallons of mash water its concentration reads 40 ppm and then for 8 gallons it subsequently reads 20 ppm (I.E., when the mEq's of calcium are held perfectly constant) the 4 gallon and 8 gallon 88% lactic acid acid additions required to hit 5.4 pH in the mash are 3.33 mL and 3.34 mL respectively, or essentially identical. But when one is not building water from scratch on top of distilled, but rather is using existing water (such as tap) with 40 ppm of calcium through and through, the mEq's of calcium fully double when using 8 gallons of said water as opposed to only 4 gallons. This alters the results in Mash Made Easy to 2.95 mL of lactic acid for 8 gallons and 3.33 mL lactic acid for 4 gallons. The double shot of mEq's of calcium present within 8 gallons (twice as much as for 4 gallons) result in more downward pH shift due to mineralization for this specific case. So one needs to beware of this matter, as I tried to discuss on the "thought experiment" thread, to little avail. I.E., the matter of mEq's of minerals added vs. ppm's of minerals added, wherein the two must be viewed as mutually exclusive when one decides to alter the gallons of mash water. And particularly when one transitions from mash with sparge to BIAB with no sparge, wherein the mash water may be doubling for BIAB.

 

[ajdelange]

Yes. The calcium was responsible. Kai understands the chemistry better than most so I was very surprised when I came up with this apparent error in his program. FALSE ALARM!

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I have to ask. How serious is the sometimes serious error under typical real-world mash scenarios? And by typical, I mean in the 1 to 2.5 quart per pound mash thickness range.

I can't speak for Bru'n Water 1.22, having not downloaded it yet, but for earlier editions the error was greater than 50% with respect to the quantity of acid required to move the mash to 5.4 pH for the mash and sparge case vs. the BIAB case.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Am I asking about the doubling of mash water without mineral additions? Is that what you mean by the mash vs sparge case? Being a BIAB brewer myself using a 1.0 to 2.5 quarts per pound mash thickness and mineral additions is typical. So again does the sometimes serious error occur when using a typical mash thickness with mineral additions or not? And if it does how 'serious' is the error when using a typical mash thickness?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

The error was not present for 3.2 quarts per pound. It was present for 1.6 quarts per pound.

Scenario 1, 12.5 lbs mashed into 40 quarts, or 3.2 qts./lb., as I recall took 6.2 mL lactic acid, and this was in reasonable agreement with the others.

Scenario 2, 25 lbs mashed into the very same 40 qts., or 1.6 qts./lb., took 5.8 mL lactic, when it should have taken closer to 12.4 mL (if one assumes 6.2 mL to be correct for scenario 1)

So only those who mashed extremely thin were getting decent advice. Far more mainstream mashing was far more catastrophic. It didn't really matter though, as the masses of fans were all mashing within 0.1 pH points of their desired target regardless of mash thickness. Reality is like that sometimes. It's called confirmation bias. A form of psychoses in which (for the sufferer) the software must always be right, even when it isn't.

In all fairness, until version 2 came along, Mash Made Easy had issues essentially as serious, but for dark brews instead of mash thickness. The darker the brew, the more serious the issue. And just as 1.22 fixes the serious issue for Bru'n Water, version 2.xx fixed this most grievous (to date) of MME's issues. But if you have an abject fear of adding baking soda to your dark beer recipes mash water, then 'MME' version 2.x may not be for you. And from what I've seen, ditto fro Bru'n Water. Neither of these two spreadsheets are afraid to tell you to add baking soda.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

The error was not present for 3.2 quarts per pound. It was present for 1.6 quarts per pound.

Scenario 1, 12.5 lbs mashed into 40 quarts, or 3.2 qts./lb., as I recall took 6.2 mL lactic acid, and this was in reasonable agreement with the others.

Scenario 2, 25 lbs mashed into the very same 40 qts., or 1.6 qts./lb., took 5.8 mL lactic, when it should have taken closer to 12.4 mL (if one assumes 6.2 mL to be correct for scenario 1)

So only those who mashed extremely thin were getting decent advice. Far more mainstream mashing was far more catastrophic. It didn't really matter though, as the masses of fans were all mashing within 0.1 pH points of their desired target regardless of mash thickness. Reality is like that sometimes. It's called confirmation bias. A form of psychoses in which (for the sufferer) the software must always be right, even when it isn't.

But once a minimum amount of calcium was added to the mash water didn't the seriousness of the issue become less notable in all scenarios.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

But once a minimum amount of calcium was added to the mash water didn't the seriousness of the issue become less notable in all scenarios.

I just tried it. and the exact same error is present, Instead of doubling vs scenario #1, the required acid still goes down for scenario #2, for the case of 5 grams of added calcium chloride. This for a pre 1.21 version. 1.21, and now 1.22 are supposed to fix this.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

I admit I haven’t had the time needed to keep up with you AJ and Scotty. It’s finding time more than believing in the new approach keeping me from coding or testing.

 

[Big Monk]

I admit I haven’t had the time needed to keep up with you AJ and Scotty. It’s finding time more than believing in the new approach keeping me from coding or testing.

I’ve been working with some testers from lob.com on bugs and adding some extra convenience code to the macros.

I’ve had the time so I’m trying to get it ready for release. I need to double check the malt classes and their values tomorrow.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I’ve been working with some testers from lob.com on bugs and adding some extra convenience code to the macros.

I’ve had the time so I’m trying to get it ready for release. I need to double check the malt classes and their values tomorrow.

Does it require the zero alkalinity method?

 

[Big Monk]

Does it require the zero alkalinity method?

No. Sorry. I thought I was posting in my software thread. Damn Tapatalk and these convenient feeds!

 

[ajdelange]

Does it require the zero alkalinity method?

No but there is a connection. It was the fact that you have to calculate proton deficit for the water and its carbonate/bicarbonate ion load separately from that for the malts that put the bee in my bonnet that you might just as well eliminate the water/ion part and simply set the water's pH where you want it.

 

[Dustin_J]

At the risk of further frustrating A.J., I wanted to try to post a summary of the basic steps here to check on my understanding and, perhaps, provide a more digestible summary for other chemistry-impaired users. Is this correct?

--------------
1) Add enough acid (assuming water pH is > pHz, which is essentially a given) to the mash water to bring it to pHz (desired mash pH). This is done simply by making small acid additions and checking the brewing water pH until it matches pHz.
- This directly addresses acid additions required to satisfy items 1 [H+ and (OH)- ions] and 2 (H2CO3, HCO3- and CO3-- distributions) for desired water at pHz.

2) To address item 3 (distribution of malt acid system ions), we use a water calculator tool/program with pH set to 7 and alkalinity set to 0 (basically, set water profile as distilled/0s across the board) to estimate mash pH given our malt bill.
- If estimated mash pH is > pHz, we calculate necessary acid additions ABOVE AND BEYOND those needed to get water to pHz on its own (see step 1 above) to bring estimated pH = pHz. We can do this by letting the program “solve” it for us (i.e., set the desired mash pH), or by manually trying different amounts of acid to make these converge, depending on our chosen program and its capabilities.
- If estimated mash pH is < pHz, which we mean we need to add base (aka negative acid), we either:

A) abandon the 0 Effective Alkalinity method and kick it old school with our chosen brewing water/mash pH estimation tool. OR
B) Use the calculations/procedure described in A.J.'s first post, after “What follows is for the rest”.​

------
A few thoughts.
- From a planning standpoint, it seems to make sense to start with the malt-bill related acid calculations. That may impact (i.e., if predicted mash pH < pHz) whether one continues with this method or reverts to using the water spreadsheet/tool in the more "traditional" manner, as we may not want to discover this after already acidifying our mash water to pHz on brewday.
- The "challenges" associated with using the 0 effective alkalinity method when predicted mash pH < pHz may be mitigated in some (many?) circumstances by simply adding dark grains at the end of the mash, as many others have suggested one does when dealing with low alkalinity water. The specified grain bill would need to be altered for relevant calculations, but this is fairly straightforward.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

If we agree that mashing Pilsner malt in 100% RO or distilled water will result in a mash pH higher than 5.60 then yes you are correct. And similarly mashing Roasted Barley in 100% RO or distilled water will result in a mash pH lower than 5.20 then yes you are correct.