Your 88% Lactic Acid is not likely 88%

[Silver_Is_Money]

Most Lactic Acid is specified as being "88% to 92%", so the safest way to market it without running afoul of potential legal issues seems to be to label it as 88%, but it is perhaps more likely to be on average 90%, and it can potentially be up to 92% by weight Lactic Acid.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Well this explains why all my beer turns out like crap.

 

[mabrungard]

Larry, you bring up a good point. But it doesn't appear that a 92% product is typically available from the actual lactic manufacturers. Its more likely that the stuff we get from homebrew suppliers is closer to 88%.

I guess there are a couple of options available to check acid strength. We could check our acid's specific gravity to assess how it compares to published gravity vs percent. Or we could perform an acid/base titration with a base of known strength and calculate the resulting acid strength.