ph level

[neil smith]

hi all, what is the cheapest way to get my ph down as its 7.4 a bit to high to brew i think and much to high for star san,cheers Neil

[Goulders]

have a look at the water treatment section. The pH for liquor is taken during first few minutes of the mash. for starsan use bottle water? A good place for liquor is your water report as regards a guide to the alkalinity. Or just boil it for half an hour first on your first few brews

[Rick_UK]

Calcium chloride flakes worked fine for me. A level teaspoon gets a 5kg grain mash down from about 6 to 5.3 for me.

[neil smith]

so if my ph is 7.4 and i do a 20 kg mash should i use about 5 spoons, also where do you get it and how much dose it cost, i take it is sold in packs if so how big.cheers Neil

[gregorach]

You mean the pH of your water? That's not really relevant... What matters is the alkalinity.

[Capped]

You mean the pH of your water? That's not really relevant... What matters is the alkalinity.

This really freaks me out and is why I stopped fiddling with water a while back. I mean,alkalinity is a measure of pH,right? Acid=low pH, alkali=high pH. Just cannot,cannot get my head around it and this is from a guy who got 100% in the final chemistry exam at school. Fortunately brewing wasn't in the test; even more fortunately I've discovered after years of faffing about that my unmolested tap water gives me the best beer. Yay!

[gregorach]

You mean the pH of your water? That's not really relevant... What matters is the alkalinity.

This really freaks me out and is why I stopped fiddling with water a while back. I mean,alkalinity is a measure of pH,right? Acid=low pH, alkali=high pH.

Not really - in this context, alkalinity is a measure of the buffering potential of the ions in solution. pH is not a measure of titratable acid, it's a measure of the number of free H+ ions. Carbonate will buffer acidity (by binding to the H+ ions), so a high carbonate water will need more acid added to it to achieve the same pH as a smaller amount of acid in a low carbonate water.

Or something like that...

[jonnymorris]

Not really - in this context, alkalinity is a measure of the buffering potential of the ions in solution.

WTF

[Underground Joe]

I think my head just exploded.

[neil smith]

mine too, far above me think i'll just suck it and see on my first brew cheers anyway. all the best Neil

[killer]

I think Dunc is just trying to scare you. You don't need to be a chemist to treat water... Let me clarify his statement a little....

The pH of the tapwater doesn't really tell you about the amount of alkalinity...
Remember, alkalinity is basically a measure of CO3/HCO3 (carbonate)
A buffer keeps a solution roughly around a certain pH (it "buffers a solution") sometimes even if you change the amount of it in solution. In this case the buffer is Carbonate. So, for example, a sample of tapwater of alkalinity 400, might not have a significantly different pH of one of alkalinity 200. So measuring the pH of the tapwater will not tell you what the alkalinity is or how much CRS to add...

The pH of the mash is very important - but - to hit the right mash pH you do need to know how much acid (CRS or lactic acid or whatever) to add to remove the alkalinity. Of course you can boil your tap water for 30 min and rack off and that will give you an alkalinity of about 50.

You can run a salifert test which is quite easy to do and then use a table (or Grahams calculator) to figure out how much CRS to add.
Alternatively you can have your water analysed (by Murphys for example) and someone will give you your alkalinity directly...

Don't be scared off - you don't really need to understand it - just know the numbers. It has made huge improvements to my blonde beers as I have very hard water

[gregorach]

I think Dunc is just trying to scare you.

Actually, I was trying to keep it simple...

[neil smith]

thanks lads, i will take a sample up to the pool shop who have expensive kit to test,cheers Neil

[Aleman]

Alkalinity is the opposite of acidity.

Acidity (pH) is the measure of the number of hydrogen ions in the liquor
Alkalinity is a measure of the number of 'Carbonate' ions in the liquor (it's actually hydrogen carbonate and carbonate).

Acid (hydrogen ions) released from the malt tries to drive the pH lower, a liquor with high alkalinity resists this change (buffers) so the mash pH does not fall as low as would be expected.

[Eric]

pH 7 is neutral, a pH value of less than 7 is acidic, a measure (count) of free hydrogen ions, while one of more than 7 is basic and measures free hydroxile ions.
Mix the two in water and the acid will donate hydrogen ions to the base and the resulting balance can be measured by the pH of the solution.
When it comes to water and beer, we call alkalinity a measurement of the amount of carbonate in the water. Carbonates are not hydroxide bases, but will readily accept any donated hydrogen ions from acids. Carbonates don't supply free hydroxyl ions meaning, I think, that pH readings of typical tap water will not necessarily measure alkalinity. The mash is different, pH readings valid as it will be acidic from the malt and all carbonates gone.
The scale for measuring pH is logarithmic meaning that a solution at pH 5.3 has roughly twice as many free hydrogen ions as one at pH 5.6 while one at 5.0 has twice as many again, a larger variance than what might be thought.