thehopbandit
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2012
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I've done a number of All Grain brews, but have never bothered to mess with the water chemistry. However, the next beer I'm doing is a huge beer with a ton of Pilsner / Pilsen malt. According to Beer Smith, my estimated (calculated) mash pH is up around 5.69 which is far too high. I'd like it to be <5.4. Shooting for a 10 gallon batch.
Using the mash adjust tool in BeerSmith, it calculates ~18.1ml of 88% lactic acid to bring the mash pH down from 5.69 -> 5.3. The water I'm starting with has a total alkalinity of 23ppm.
Questions:
- Is this too much lactic for a 10 gallon batch?
- Can I just use the lactic by itself? Am I ok to simply add the calculated amount of lactic to the mash water without adding any other salts?
- I'm slightly confused because when typing these numbers, along with the lactic, into calculators like EZ Water and Brewer's Friend, the effective and residual alkalinity numbers shoot down way into the negative hundreds, like -600. Why is this such a huge negative, is this bad, and what exactly does this mean?
- I'm essentially just looking for instructions on how most simply and effectively I can use lactic to correctly bring down my mash pH.
Thanks.
Using the mash adjust tool in BeerSmith, it calculates ~18.1ml of 88% lactic acid to bring the mash pH down from 5.69 -> 5.3. The water I'm starting with has a total alkalinity of 23ppm.
Questions:
- Is this too much lactic for a 10 gallon batch?
- Can I just use the lactic by itself? Am I ok to simply add the calculated amount of lactic to the mash water without adding any other salts?
- I'm slightly confused because when typing these numbers, along with the lactic, into calculators like EZ Water and Brewer's Friend, the effective and residual alkalinity numbers shoot down way into the negative hundreds, like -600. Why is this such a huge negative, is this bad, and what exactly does this mean?
- I'm essentially just looking for instructions on how most simply and effectively I can use lactic to correctly bring down my mash pH.
Thanks.