I sometimes think the juice is not worth the squeeze with salt additions. I am the guy that cant tell a difference between a $20 box of wine and a $1,000 bottle.
Water adjustments for imperial stout
- Thread starter RyPA
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the main thing with roasted malts is just keep the ph correct, everything else just needs to be balanced, if your adding a lot of flaked grains, it will taste soft anyway
One person's tap isn't necessarily another's. One person's tap in autumn isn't necessarily theirs in spring.
The variance across three years of reports on my local tap water was enough to swing the pH of a simple bitter from too-low all the way to too-high. And those were yearly averages. Seasonal differences of source water would swing that pH across an even larger range.
The variance across three years of reports on my local tap water was enough to swing the pH of a simple bitter from too-low all the way to too-high. And those were yearly averages. Seasonal differences of source water would swing that pH across an even larger range.
In a roasty beer, 90 ppm sodium would not be a problem at all. Sodium is very complementary in those beers.
But since the OP is using the free version of Bru’n Water, it doesn’t account for the fact that the sparging water doesn’t have baking soda in it. The supporters version does calculate the true sodium value in the finished beer which is somewhere around half the mash concentration, depending on sparge amount.
Baking soda is a good way to add alkalinity to mashing water. Pickling lime is good too, but it’s a bit less available and a bit more finicky due to its storage stability. I recommend baking soda.
But since the OP is using the free version of Bru’n Water, it doesn’t account for the fact that the sparging water doesn’t have baking soda in it. The supporters version does calculate the true sodium value in the finished beer which is somewhere around half the mash concentration, depending on sparge amount.
Baking soda is a good way to add alkalinity to mashing water. Pickling lime is good too, but it’s a bit less available and a bit more finicky due to its storage stability. I recommend baking soda.
How are you measuring? A pale beer generally requires a little bit of acid for the mash.
In any case, it takes a while for the pH to come to equilibrium. Generally, you would predict what you need to add and add it all to the mash at the start. Then measure when the mash is well underway/completed. If it was off, you'd adjust for next time. What's your pH when the mash is finished?
I don't check ph at the end, I dough in and get everything stirred in/broken up, wait 5 minutes, then take the ph reading. Based on that reading I add baking soda to get it to 5.4-5.5 and call it a day.
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Considering that the majority of the extract won't have exited the grain kernals that early in the mash, and that the buffering system in wort is directly tied to the extract, its not anywhere near accurate to use an early pH measurement as your guide. My 20 years of brewing measurements show that mashing pH changes during the course of a mash. Its not stable until around 45 minutes after mash in.
Copy and great point. Maybe will adjust up front and check every 10 mins. I need to find something to reduce ph, if needed
If your using brewing software such as brewers friend or any for that matter the software will allow you to get the water correct before you start based on the grain and salts added, after streamlining your system you shouldn't even need to check the mash
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
DuncB
Well-Known Member
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Well-Known Member
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*
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
Roasted malts drive pH down...
Cheers!
Cheers!
Doh, posted something before double-checking, never mind, move along folks...
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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?
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
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.
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
Active Member
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
Active Member
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.
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.
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.
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.
