Low mash pH

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by killer » Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:15 pm

guypettigrew wrote:
Thu Nov 21, 2019 8:40 pm
Very interesting. Looks like pH 5.6 at about 66°C is good. Also looks like my 5.1pH mash might produce a weird beer!

Guy
You probably won't even notice the difference. One of the reasons to correctly control mash pH is to avoid a high mash pH which will give you an astringent beer. I've found slightly low mash pHs to be more forgiving than high pHs - including a couple of Russian Imperial Stouts that were less than 5. I'm presuming you have a 3 vessel setup ? If so your sparging liquor may have even raised your preboil pH slightly to a more "acceptable" pH.

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by killer » Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:29 pm

PeeBee wrote:
Thu Nov 21, 2019 4:51 pm
Cobnut wrote:
Thu Nov 21, 2019 12:33 pm
… I have a desire to take my beers to a higher standard, and received wisdom tells me pH measurement should be part of the process, but I'm still not sure exactly how to go about a) measuring accurately; b) understanding what it is telling me; c) using the readings to adjust/improve my process. …


pH adjustments are an interesting "side-line" in beer brewing, but you've done right leaving it as a "next step" to create beers to a higher standard as pH isn't a panacea for any of your brewing problems. pH adjustments cannot make a bad beer good, but it might make a good beer a bit better.


This is entirely untrue. Scientific articles have been published on water chemistry since the middle of the nineteenth century id not before. Several books exist on the subject. I can list more than thirty French breweries who made terrible beers because their alkalinity was way off - this is particularly true for small micros and brewpubs using 5hL and 10hL Braumeisters where grist:liquor ratios are higher. But water treatment is incredibly important to breweries of all scales - why do you think so many breweries buy Reverse Osmosis systems ? Why do you think many German brewers use slaked lime to precipitate alkalinity ? Lots of people have water that is fine for brewing but many brewers quit because of the astringent beers they continually produce because they have alkaline water.




Not bothering with it still allows you to create decent beer, messing about with it and messing it up can create awful beer. Worrying about it and taking your eye off far more important aspects of brewing will also create awful beer (which then gets blamed on the water or a duff pH meter). More people taking up this hobby need to take heed of this instead of whinging about it while repeating the same water/pH unrelated foul-ups; there is the saying; "don't run before you can walk".

No, no, and no... I have seen breweries close because of this. There are a lot of regions all over the world where you will simply not be able to make a good (especially pale) beer without pH adjustment - even if that is simply to adjust alkalinity. I have seen one expanding "organic" brewery throw away tens of thousands of euros of beer because he could only use lactic acid to control alkalinity and pH because of regulations not allowing other acids. When his shiny new 25 hL kit gave terrible beer he realised that it was because his alkalinity had jumped from 150 ppm to 300 ppm in his new brewery location and the quantity of sauer malt made his beer taste like sauerkraut or fermented yoghurt. You can't oversimplify a subject or make off-handed remarks because you are fortunate enough to have suitable water at home.


But, assuming you "walking just great and want to take some steps at a run":

a) measuring accurately:
Cool your sample (15-20C) before popping in a meter. You can compensate for warm samples, but hot samples is trashing your pH probe and you lose accuracy in future usage.

Check calibration if not done so for a couple of weeks. Calibration will wander. Recalibrate if necessary. Recalibration will get trickier; when it starts being a pain, change the meter. Eventually it will become impossible to recalibrate so bin it! Some probes last for years, some for six months: It's a bit of a lottery.

The linked meter has single point calibration: Aim to adjust the two calibration liquids to fit between the labelled values (pH 4.0 and probably 6.9, not 7.0? E.g. you might have to calibrate them to read 4.1 and 6.8?), so the pH5 to 6 range should be good. Expensive meters, and even cheap pen type these days, may have 2 or 3 point calibration to make it easier and more accurate over a bigger range.

b) understanding what it is telling me:
Firstly, see that second decimal digit? Ignore it! Or perhaps round it to the nearest single decimal digit. They just aren't that accurate, unless you fork out obscene amounts of money.

pH doesn't directly inform you how much of something (hydrogen ions) there is, but more how the salts "buffers", or "resists change of", those ions. So you seem to have fairly alkaline water (judging by your use of CRS) with plenty of buffering power. I have very soft water with low buffering: I can add 1/2 millilitre of 81% Phosphoric Acid to 60L of pH8 tap water, and the pH drops to <6. I guess your water is around 8? Imagine what the same acid addition would do for you.

You are muddling things up here. Theoretically - pH is a measure of the Hydrogen ion concentration whereas it is alkalinity which is a measure of the Bicarbonate/ Carbonate species in the water and as such is a way to directly quantify the capacity of your water liquor to absorb protons/ acidity and buffer pH to higher than wanted values. Correctly controlling alkalinity, having suitable Calcium levels and having a general understanding of malt acidity will allow you choose

Which also illustrates: The pH of your tap (source) water is meaningless.

c) using the readings to adjust/improve my process:
You were getting very close there! Use the readings to improve your process (next time), not adjust your current (today's) process. The latter results in either self-deception or madness (if you don't fall for the self-deception)!


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Re: Low mash pH

Post by PeeBee » Fri Nov 22, 2019 2:33 am

killer wrote:
Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:29 pm
Blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, yeah; I set the tone of my post especially for the likes of you. People have such strong opinions of water treatment, and the main intention appears to be to terrify new home-brewers into thinking it's so important, and distract them from paying attention to what really matters - making beer! Far better to muddle these terrified beginners with talk of "carbonate species", "absorbing protons", "calcium levels", etc.

The majority, if not all, the readers here do not deal with the water used by some French breweries, or German breweries. They generally use UK municipal water supplies. For example, I use lime to increase alkalinity, no-one will have UK municipal water supplies where you can actually decrease alkalinity with lime, they don't even have to know (or want to know) it's possible. Although that seeming contradiction with lime is a great one for muddling unsuspecting brewers (it was used on me a while ago). Brewers should not have to worry about water. Let them get the basics right without all the clap-trap about salts and so on. Then, when everything is going smoothly, mess about with the water. If they really want to.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by Cobnut » Fri Nov 22, 2019 11:49 am

PeeBee wrote:
Fri Nov 22, 2019 2:33 am

Brewers should not have to worry about water. Let them get the basics right without all the clap-trap about salts and so on. Then, when everything is going smoothly, mess about with the water. If they really want to.
Hear! Hear!

So far the only water adjustments i make is to add roughly sufficient CRS to reduce the ridiculously high residual alkalinity levels I have in my local water supply. It has given me two benefits:
- little or no scale in my equipment (compared to my domestic kettle Eugh!);
- improved beer ( I occasionally brew a beer which deserved to be tipped down the drain, but I have brewed beers this way which have won me medals in National competitions, so on the whole I think I'm in the right zone).

As per my earlier post, I am trying to learn about the merits of measuring pH at various stages in my brewing process, together with other potential water treatments to - I hope! - make my (seemingly) good beers into great beers.

btw, loving the debate. As ever, JBK is a great source of information and entertainment!
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Re: Low mash pH

Post by guypettigrew » Fri Nov 22, 2019 12:36 pm

Bit confused, Cobnut! You support PeeBee in his thought that home brewers shouldn't have to worry about water treatment. Then you say you brewed beers which went down the drain until you treated your water with CRS. Now you win medals in national competitions.

Firstly, congrats on the medals. But, secondly, how is treating your water with CRS not treating your water?!

Guy

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by killer » Fri Nov 22, 2019 12:51 pm

Cobnut wrote:
Fri Nov 22, 2019 11:49 am
PeeBee wrote:
Fri Nov 22, 2019 2:33 am

Brewers should not have to worry about water. Let them get the basics right without all the clap-trap about salts and so on. Then, when everything is going smoothly, mess about with the water. If they really want to.
Hear! Hear!


My point, which I am failing to get across, is that unfortunately brewers do need to worry about water. That's why you are already adding CRS. You are also adding Chloride and Sulfate (in your CRS). For many - whether that's in France or the UK - and I can assure you that the profiles of the range of treated waters coming from a tap are the same


So far the only water adjustments i make is to add roughly sufficient CRS to reduce the ridiculously high residual alkalinity levels I have in my local water supply. It has given me two benefits:
- little or no scale in my equipment (compared to my domestic kettle Eugh!);
- improved beer ( I occasionally brew a beer which deserved to be tipped down the drain, but I have brewed beers this way which have won me medals in National competitions, so on the whole I think I'm in the right zone).

So we are agreed that you need water treatment to make good beers ! If you remove the water treatment your beers are bad... Your alkalinity is too high. So pH adjustment is necessary - you are doing it by lowering alkalinity

As per my earlier post, I am trying to learn about the merits of measuring pH at various stages in my brewing process, together with other potential water treatments to - I hope! - make my (seemingly) good beers into great beers.

To repeat a bit what has been said by Kev and others...The merits for checking your pH are:
1) Correct mash pH for enzyme activity and especially not making astringent beers. (5.2 - 5.6/5.7)
2) Correct pH for sparge water so as not extract tannins during the sparge. (Ideally less than 6.) - I do know several breweries that don't correct sparge water pH but do correct pre-boil. They make fantastic beers. They do have a lot of Calcium in their water.
3) Correct pH before the boil to check the mix of mash and sparge liquors in the right ballpark (5.1 - 5.4)
4) Correct pH after boil to assure that post fermentation beer won't be too high - this is for microbiological stability - bacteria can compete with yeast more easily at higher pHs.
5) Correct pH post fermentation (beer and yeast dependant) Many modern breweries end up with around 4.2 to 4.4 not necessarily by choice but because of the yeast that use - the ubiquitous US05 for example. Overly low pH can be an indication that there bacteria growing. Some strains, including some English strains can drop the pH quite low (3.9 - 4)


btw, loving the debate. As ever, JBK is a great source of information and entertainment!

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by killer » Fri Nov 22, 2019 1:33 pm

PeeBee wrote:
Fri Nov 22, 2019 2:33 am
killer wrote:
Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:29 pm
Blah, blah, blah.
Sorry Peebee, Didn't mean to intrude on your blah blah blah monopoly.

Yeah, yeah; I set the tone of my post especially for the likes of you. People have such strong opinions of water treatment, and the main intention appears to be to terrify new home-brewers into thinking it's so important, and distract them from paying attention to what really matters - making beer! Far better to muddle these terrified beginners with talk of "carbonate species", "absorbing protons", "calcium levels", etc.

The likes of me ? most people who have read a water report know what Calcium levels are.. The same is true for Carbonate. It's just a quantity in mg/L or parts per million - ppm. I'm just trying to clarify things that you clearly know little about or misunderstand.

The majority, if not all, the readers here do not deal with the water used by some French breweries, or German breweries. They generally use UK municipal water supplies. For example, I use lime to increase alkalinity, no-one will have UK municipal water supplies where you can actually decrease alkalinity with lime, they don't even have to know (or want to know) it's possible. Although that seeming contradiction with lime is a great one for muddling unsuspecting brewers (it was used on me a while ago). Brewers should not have to worry about water. Let them get the basics right without all the clap-trap about salts and so on. Then, when everything is going smoothly, mess about with the water. If they really want to.
Actually the majority of Brits have water that is very similar to some region of France or Germany (or Ireland etc.). In spite of what your Prime Minister might want you to think :=P
Increasing alkalinity with lime is ok for you because you have nothing in your water but people with lots of alkalinity will likely lower their alkalinity.

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by Kev888 » Fri Nov 22, 2019 1:42 pm

To consider some of these issues more generally: If one is very lucky with the water and only brews pale beer (or doesn't sparge), then not very much treatment may be needed. In all other cases the beer will benefit from basic treatment, in some cases just a little but in others hugely - water is very important to brewing 'especially' if it isn't already suitable. So much depends on circumstances and how bothered one is about making better beer.

But unless one is fairly unlucky with the water available, basic treatment of it need not be difficult or complicated. There is a great deal of extra complication, discussion and disagreement between people who are knowledgeable or keen on the subject (or who have software to sell), but much of this can usually be ignored if wished.

Like many things, water treatment has diminishing returns; just the basic measures will get homebrewers 99% there, if you aren't there already, and these things can be built up as one progresses. 1. Remove chlorine if present, 2. adjust total alkalinity if necessary, 3. make sure there is enough calcium - that will do a lot of people, although in an ideal world progress to 4. making sure the chloride/sulphate levels are sensible.

I would consider those things normal or routine once one has got to grips with things. But IMO much beyond that is starting to get into water-enthusiast levels, by home brewing standards.
Last edited by Kev888 on Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Low mash pH

Post by guypettigrew » Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:09 pm

Umm, a bit picky of me, but did you mean 1. Removing CHLORINE if present? Just a thought.

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by Kev888 » Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:29 pm

Eeek yes, well noticed!
I corrected it now
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Re: Low mash pH

Post by Jocky » Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:39 pm

The difficulty with talking about water treatment is that both your approach and results from it are going to be affected by lots of different factors:
What your local water is like
What you like to brew
Your brewing system and technique
Your brewing ability and experience
Your personal taste.

Some people will be lucky and not ever think about touching their water and brew award winning beer, others (as killer has mentioned) will ruin a business with that approach.

Personally my view is that as a beginner brewer there are more important areas to get right first (e.g. clean fermentation, avoiding oxidation), but if you really want to brew the best beer you can then you do need to know what is in your water and figure out if you need to adjust it. If you're a commercial brewer of any size then not having a basic understanding of this stuff is idiotic and risking your business.

As Kev has said, for me the 4 key steps are:
1. Remove chlorine
2. Adjust alkalinity for mash and sparge liquor
3. Make sure there's enough calcium
4. (Optionally) Adjust chloride/sulphate balance to personal taste.


Water calculators further muddy the water. While they are useful in doing the sums of ion concentration and alkalinity adjustment, any pH predictions should be taken with a pinch of salt as they tend to either only be accurate in specific circumstances (e.g. using low ion water with a pale grist) or they require a lot of very specific and accurate input (e.g. specs around the acidity of the malt you are using, which varies by maltster).
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Re: Low mash pH

Post by PeeBee » Fri Nov 22, 2019 5:06 pm

guypettigrew wrote:
Fri Nov 22, 2019 12:36 pm
Bit confused, Cobnut! You support PeeBee in his thought that home brewers shouldn't have to worry about water treatment. Then you say you brewed beers which went down the drain until you treated your water with CRS. Now you win medals in national competitions.

Firstly, congrats on the medals. But, secondly, how is treating your water with CRS not treating your water?!

Guy
Don't bother Cobnut too much about those techniques, he's probably already practicing what I'm trying to preach (i.e. doesn't need to be bothered with it! Exemplary!).

But what he says high-lights where I may have over-simplified things. If you do have a lot of temporary hardness, you do need to do something. Several years ago the advise was easy; just boil the water and leave it to stand until cool. Waste of fuel, not really that effective, but anyone can do it even those with soft water as the implications of doing it un-needed isn't really an issue. Had the added advantage of driving off all the chlorine, although that happened if the water was just left standing overnight (chloramine? That's new in UK water!). Alkalinity? That's also a new concern, back then it was about "temporary hardness" (alkalinity = temporary hardness? Well no, but for UK tap water thinking "temp. hardness" in place of "alkalinity" was near enough the same thing).

Now-days boiling is popularly replaced with "CRS" (AMS). Which is a bit of a faff to work out, but only needs roughly following once: I dug this up from Colchester Homebrews Website: https://www.colchesterhomebrew.co.uk/co ... tment.html. This procedure probably also benefits from a bit of sodium metabisulphite to see off the chlorine (and chloramine if you have it).

Kev and Jocky fill in a bit more should you feel the need to further mess about with the subject. The subject is captivating, and you really can make noticeable (if small) differences to your beers.



A passing shot on the "lime" nonsense: Using lime is quite an "advanced" subject, but you do not have to worry about the screwier aspects of using it (i.e. when it starts working about face). We are simply not allowed to have drinking water that will act like that. But if you want fetch your bucket and dip into a suitable supply, and then try to learn the screwy water chemistry surrounding it … don't let anyone stop you. Word of warning, the knowledge wont improve your brewing one little bit, and afterwards to pick up the pieces … well they closed all the lunatic asylums some time ago.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by Jocky » Fri Nov 22, 2019 5:49 pm

PeeBee

"We are simply not allowed to have drinking water that will act like that"

What's missing from our drinking water?
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Re: Low mash pH

Post by Cobnut » Fri Nov 22, 2019 6:03 pm

Guy, I do treat my water, but only with CRS/AMS as stated.

I was supporting PeeBee's "don't over-complicate it" attitude.

As to the beers I've poured away...some have been since I've used CRS/AMS, but for reasons more related (I think) to infection.

I had to pour away a keg of my weissbier which had a rather nasty medicinal aftertaste. The few bottle conditioned I had from the same batch were much less affected, but it was still there in the aftertaste. Just. A friend of mine took a mouthful and pronounced it "lovely" and then 30s later said "oh! I get it now, but I'd drink a pint of it". The kegged version was undrinkable. Especially embarrassing as this was a beer I submitted to a local homebrewers festival. Suffice to say, the punters didn't get to drink it!

Half the problem (in my mind, at least) is that there are so many variables at play that it's very hard to determine what is having an effect. And whilst water is the largest component of beer, as long as it's not "utterly wrong", I'm not sure my tastebuds are good enough for me to be able to determine whether that extra bit of residual alkalinity or change in the chloride/sulphate ratio or whatever has a noticeable effect.

It would probably take an awful lot of re-brewing the same beer whilst changing variables between brews to determine the effect. If I could.

And I think I'd get bored of always having ALMOST the same beer.

For me much of the joy in homebrewing is being able to brew lots of different beers to both drink myself, but also to share with friends and family.

Maybe I'll try brewing a beer with some "utterly wrong" water to see how "wrong" the beer turns out? I have a load of demineralised water which I suspect ought to be rather wrong for brewing with (pretty much zero residual alkanity and little or no calcium). But it won't be a full batch!

For this evening, I think I shall simply drink some of my beers!

Cheers,

Cobnut.
Fermenting: nowt
Conditioning: English IPA/Bretted English IPA
Drinking: Sunshine Marmalade, Festbier, Helles Bock, Smokey lagery beer, Irish Export StoutCascade APA (homegrown hops), Orval clone, Impy stout, Duvel clone, Conestoga (American Barley wine)
Planning: Dark Mild, Kozel dark (ish), Simmonds Bitter, Bitter, Citra PA and more!

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Re: Low mash pH

Post by PeeBee » Fri Nov 22, 2019 6:56 pm

Jocky wrote:
Fri Nov 22, 2019 5:49 pm
PeeBee

"We are simply not allowed to have drinking water that will act like that"

What's missing from our drinking water?
Okay? Did I post a bad choice of phrase there? I can do things like that, but the worrying bit is I haven't clicked what you mean!

But I don't know of any water company that (knowingly) allows water out that is pH10 or higher. And the process that causes lime to act that way needs the high pHs. It is most likely what is behind the recommendation to never add lime directly to the brewing water, but to add it to the dry grain before mashing. Added that way it can increase the pH of the mash which sodium bicarbonate can't do very well. Chalk is still used for this purpose, even though it is completely insoluble and will do nothing of the sort.

Anyway, many brewers will be completely perplexed by the need of a few wanting to increase pH! And I originally started this line of conversation because I didn't want to see the topic descend into geeky speculation.
So, I guess that worked then :bonk
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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