Beer stone remover

[MashBag]

First tasting... There really is the a feel of soft water about it. Not ideal. I think 20ppm for me is too low. Next brew on in a week or two, I will reduce the acid addition.

[Eric]

First tasting... There really is the a feel of soft water about it. Not ideal. I think 20ppm for me is too low. Next brew on in a week or two, I will reduce the acid addition.

Of course, your water's hardness hasn't changed, just alkalinity reduced and, if you used CRS, replaced by sulphates and chlorides, or put in crude terms, brewing salts. Changing the acid addition for your next brew won't change your water's hardnes whichever you choose but will change mash pH.

What will have happened to your beer, as you report it has changed, is fewer astringent components are present. Astringent compounds are released from mashed grains when mash pH is too high.

Without a pH meter or the more expensive pH strips (which are difficult to find these days), one early sign of a potentially too low mash pH can be low attenuation during an otherwise normal fermentation.

Go ahead with your intended changes by all means, but advise you take a longer-term view of this one. Beer flavours improve during maturation, while astringency will not. Then, as beer ages, its beneficial flavours will gently decline, and while astringency can also decline when aged, it can remain dominant.

[MashBag]

Thanks Eric.

I do have a couple of pH meters. Time to revive them me thinks.

The problem is I made too many changes in one go. So I now cannot be certain of the cause.

[MashBag]

Mashbag; Treat yourself to a Hanna alkalinity checker. You won't regret it!

Guy

Ooo getting close.. How long does the reagent last?

[guypettigrew]

The bottle contains 25ml of reagent, so 25 tests. There's usually enough for 26 tests, actually.

I test twice each brewday. Before and after adding AMS to the raw water. So--13 brews. For me, that's 6 months or more.

It adds about £2 to the cost of each brew. A cost I'm happy to bear given the ease of use and accuracy.

Go for it!

Guy

[FUBAR]

Would amount to £4 a brew for me if I had a meter as I treat my mash and sparge liquor separately .

[guypettigrew]

Would amount to £4 a brew for me if I had a meter as I treat my mash and sparge liquor separately .

Oh. Why is that?

I run about 65 litres of raw water into the HLT, measure the alkalinity and treat with AMS to get it down to about 20ppm, then check again.

This is heated to about 85 C and the required volume pumped to the MT to cool before the grain is added. If I want to reduce the alkalinity for sparging I add 2.5ml to the remaining liquor in the HLT. This drops the alkalinity by about 10ppm. I don't bother checking the alkalinity, I know it's going to be good enough.

The rest of the liquor in the HLT after sparging is enough clean out the pumps and tubing.

So, two tests per brew.

Guy

[Eric]

Similar for me, like Guy with sums, a cheap TDS meter and a Salifert KH test once per brew.

From a series of analyses by WallyBrew, a cheap TDS meter was recalibrated to correspond with his findings.
Major ion levels were plotted against TDS in Excel, to provide a curve passing through the origin. viz.

Alk~TDS.jpg (119.35 KiB) Viewed 2336 times

A TDS reading then provides all major ion levels and acid requirement in Excel. A Salifert test after acid treatment confirms the outcome or need for minor adjustment.

Cost circa 10 pence per brew.

[MashBag]

I am around 10 pence per brew at the moment for two tests.

[MashBag]

Had anyone got one of these?

Thoughts?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/394205070468 ... media=COPY

[Eric]

Had anyone got one of these?

Thoughts?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/394205070468 ... media=COPY

No! Both of mine are cream coloured and cost less.

[MashBag]

Less... Cripes...

[MashBag]

This one?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155008315132 ... media=COPY

[MashBag]

Does it read in ppm?

[Eric]

That looks like both of mine. It was possible there was more than one model then, some reporting theirs wouldn't recalibrated as had mine.

Such meters measure electrical conductivity by passing an alternating current between 2 electrodes. The result is then processed to, most frequently, give a readout in ppm of common salt in water. Pure water, a rarity, will not conduct electricity, while all minerals in solution will varyingly influence current flow.

For brewing purposes, ppm and mg/l can be assumed as equivalent.

Such meters are sometimes used to convince people their water supply is unsuitable, even dangerous, without some treatment which they can supply.