Water adjustments for imperial stout

[DuncB]

Yeah, you do you. I have a 7 year old for one thing, and the other is that to properly do this you should use gloves and some amount of eye protection. I often work in a lab and I've seen some interesting accidents. I don't mean scary as in truly frightening, oh my god stuff, cats and dogs living together. But it's far enough down the path of being an actual problem that I didn't find it worth it.

I don't recommend anyone freak out, it's not hydrofluoric acid or anything. I'm just outlining my personal tolerance level for something I can easily substitute. I do suggest caution though, don't treat lime as flippantly as you might treat gypsum.

Suggest your lab looks at Diphoterine and Hexafluoramine.
Made by french company Prevor.
Diphoterine multi aliphatic compound neutralises acids, alkalis, organic compounds, tear gas, safe to drink and wash eyes out with. It's witchcraft.
Hexafluoramine is tuned for HF.
A life and eye saver.
Not an excuse to be slack with PPE of course.
I'd like to have some CaOH in the toolbox, very difficult to get here in New Zealand. Not something I can bring back on a plane either.

 

[marc1]

I’ve always used brun water and even after entering my grain bill/base water, my ph ends up being lower than what brun water says.

I have not yet used BF’s calc

You said you don't check pH at the end, so you don't know how your actual mash pH compares to the spreadsheet. Granted, spreadsheets are estimators so I wouldn't expect them to be dead on all the time, but decent enough.

Copy and great point. Maybe will adjust up front and check every 10 mins. I need to find something to reduce ph, if needed

To reduce mash pH, lactic or phosphoric acid or acidulated malt are generally used (or AMS in the UK)

Also, how are you measuring pH? Using cooled wort sample and a calibrated pH meter?

If you like your beer as-is, there's no reason to change other than to get more accurate readings, but these are some potential areas of improvement if you want to get into that.

 

[RyPA]

I wasn't taking the ph changing during the mash into consideration, I thought once I dough in and give it a few minutes, my ph can be checked and that was it. I use an electronic meter at mash temp, probably another issue.

80% of my brew days are NEIPA's, and while I am happy with them and they get nods from guys at work that I share them with, I am always looking for ways to improve. I switch up the hop bill but I feel like the beers all taste pretty much the same. Not sure if its my yeast, pH, process, or what. I am considering fermenting on peaches or pineapples this spring/summer.

My typical brew
10 lbs 2-row
2 lbs white wheat malt
1 lb rolled oats
1/4-1/2 lb rice hulls

Voss kveik yeast fermented at around 95F

I ferment and serve from a Torpedo 6g keg. My dry hop charges are followed by around 10 o2 purges, so oxidation is not an issue.

 

[DuncB]

I ferment and serve from a Torpedo 6g keg. My dry hop charges are followed by around 10 o2 purges, so oxidation is not an issue.

Think it would be using o2 purges!

Some suggestions that dropping pH at whirlpool below 4.5 with further acid additions helps with a NEIPA.

 

[RyPA]

Think it would be using o2 purges!

Some suggestions that dropping pH at whirlpool below 4.5 with further acid additions helps with a NEIPA.

co2*

 

[marc1]

I wasn't taking the ph changing during the mash into consideration, I thought once I dough in and give it a few minutes, my ph can be checked and that was it. I use an electronic meter at mash temp, probably another issue.

80% of my brew days are NEIPA's, and while I am happy with them and they get nods from guys at work that I share them with, I am always looking for ways to improve. I switch up the hop bill but I feel like the beers all taste pretty much the same. Not sure if its my yeast, pH, process, or what. I am considering fermenting on peaches or pineapples this spring/summer.

My typical brew
10 lbs 2-row
2 lbs white wheat malt
1 lb rolled oats
1/4-1/2 lb rice hulls

Voss kveik yeast fermented at around 95F

I ferment and serve from a Torpedo 6g keg. My dry hop charges are followed by around 10 o2 purges, so oxidation is not an issue.

Taking pH at mash temperature presents some challenges. Not all probes can handle that heat, and there's some sort of temperature correction that they can do to adjust for the probe reading issues at higher temperatures. Check if your probe is OK for those temps - it might read off or it might be OK or requiring calibration at the mash temp. Secondly, the pH of the mash actually changes depending on the temperature (IIRC it's lower at mash temperature than cooled). So you are getting the potential errors of the probe reading wrong (outside of temperature range) and the pH being different at mash temps.

That's a light colored mash. I'd imagine that it would need acid and not baking soda to dial in the mash pH, so you are probably mashing at a somewhat higher pH than normal. I don't know what that does to the flavor, if anything, but I would think that if it was really good for NEIPAs that it would have come up already as something to do for them, given how much brewers have researched the style in recent years.

RE: purging, there's a great chart in this post that shows how much you reduce the ppm O2 in your headspace with each purge depending on the PSI of your purge so you can match the thoroughness of your purges to your O2 tolerance:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/keg-purging-with-active-fermentation.628658/#post-8004741

 

[RyPA]

Thanks @marc1

What do roasted malts do to ph, bring it up or down? I do not have anything on hand to bring ph down so I hope it brings it down, as I have baking soda for that

For this brew day I’ll take a sample to room temp before measuring

 

[day_trippr]

Roasted malts drive pH down...

Cheers!

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Doh, posted something before double-checking, never mind, move along folks...

 

[marc1]

Thanks @marc1

What do roasted malts do to ph, bring it up or down? I do not have anything on hand to bring ph down so I hope it brings it down, as I have baking soda for that

For this brew day I’ll take a sample to room temp before measuring

You can also try taking several pH readings over the course of the mash. This will show you how mash pH behaves over time in your system. The you can pick a time point to use consistently going forward. I like to wait to measure until near the end of the mash so I know that it is at equilibrium, but others have different preferences.

 

[RyPA]

You can also try taking several pH readings over the course of the mash. This will show you how mash pH behaves over time in your system. The you can pick a time point to use consistently going forward. I like to wait to measure until near the end of the mash so I know that it is at equilibrium, but others have different preferences.

What if your pH was off, wouldn’t it then be too late to make adjustments?

 

[tracer bullet]

What if your pH was off, wouldn’t it then be too late to make adjustments?

Yep. My approach is to use a calculator to make a best guess. Add salts accordingly. At end of mash take a measurement. Make a note for next time you brew the recipe for what direction to tweak, if any. Barring any huge mistakes, you should always be in a pretty decent spot even on the first try.

 

[RyPA]

Yep. My approach is to use a calculator to make a best guess. Add salts accordingly. At end of mash take a measurement. Make a note for next time you brew the recipe for what direction to tweak, if any. Barring any huge mistakes, you should always be in a pretty decent spot even on the first try.

Ok, so I likely did not need to add baking soda for all of my past brew days as the hot mash/wort was inadvertently lowering my pH reading. I will trust what the calculator tells me

 

[tracer bullet]

I will trust what the calculator tells me

Definitely as a starting point. Towards the end of the mash is a good time to take a reading and see how you did, then adjust accordingly for the next time, if needed.

 

[marc1]

Ok, so I likely did not need to add baking soda for all of my past brew days as the hot mash/wort was inadvertently lowering my pH reading. I will trust what the calculator tells me

As long as you use a calculator correctly, you are unlikely to be catastrophically off. Since you use the same mash for many of your brews, dialing it in over time should work well for you.

If you really need to know beforehand, you could carefully scale your mash back to tiny (mash in a thermos? you would need an accurate small scale) and then try it out. Measure at the end, make adjustment if needed, and try it again until you get what you want. You could use the wort for starters, or save it and add to your main batch when you brew.

 

[Drunken Monkey]

Why don’t you just use distilled water @ a neutral value? Then just add acid as needed, like lemon juice!

 

[RyPA]

Why don’t you just use distilled water @ a neutral value? Then just add acid as needed, like lemon juice!

Because I have an RO filter with storage tank at the house…convenience.

 

[Drunken Monkey]

Because I have an RO filter with storage tank at the house…convenience.

RO is as close to distilled as possible. Better to distill yourself for sure. But, RO is a close 2nd. So, don’t see the issue unless you RO system is outta whack.

 

[RyPA]

You guys were right, my post-mash pH was spot on based on what the calculator said. So going forward my mashes will no longer be in the 6's due to me adding extra baking soda.


This imperial stout brew-day was a brutal. The mash was so thicc and I undershot the rice hulls so I ended up with a stuck mash. I added another 0.75 lbs of rice hulls and it helped, but still was super slow. I am either switching to a brew bag with false bottom or going with 2 lbs of rice hulls (using a 10.5 Anvil Foundry) for my next big beer.

Only missed my OG my 4 points, so I am happy.

 

[tracer bullet]

Or drop some grain and substitute some DME. In an Imperial Stout I'd bet you will never notice, or if you did might even think it was better (or worse, but I doubt it). It's a great cheat when your grain bill gets a little too big.

 

[RyPA]

Or drop some grain and substitute some DME. In an Imperial Stout I'd bet you will never notice, or if you did might even think it was better (or worse, but I doubt it). It's a great cheat when your grain bill gets a little too big.

Yeah I had thought about that, but forgot to add some DME before submitting my MoreBeer order. I will definitely never do a malt bill this big using the malt pipe in the Foundry.