PH 5.2 stabiliser

[Scroogemonster]

Hi guys, I have just got some of this stuff.
Do I add the "recommended quantity" to all of my brewing liquor before transferring the relevant quantity of mashing liqour (10 litres) into the boiler or do I just add it to the 10 litres of heated water for the mash or do I just chuck it into me home made mash tun?
I'm confused as to whether it needs to be added to both mash and sparge liquor or not

[delboy]

This is were DaaBs alkalinity testing kit comes in handy again. I know using it that my water is low in alkalinity and that it wouldn't require much to adjust the pH.
On last nights brew i went back to using pH 5.2 but in light of what i knew about my water i only used a teaspoon in the mash (about a third of the recommended), my efficency was great.
pH 5.2 is a bit pricey but in one fell swoop i've trebled the amount of brews i can do with it and all from having a bit of information about my water.
Using less than the recommended also means im robbing less of my benefical ions such as Ca from the mash

[WallyBrew]

Use it if you want but does it do what it says on the tin

linky

I was supplied some of this material by a prolific poster on this forum and a 1% solution in distilled water done twice was variable pH 5.6 to 5.8

This was carried out against a calibrated pH meter using buffers at 20C of 3.999, 6.878, 9.227.

Perhaps this sample was an outlier

How much of the stuff do you have to test to get one that works

If you do want to use it, add it to your water and check it with a pH 5.2 test strip first

[steve_flack]

Is that relevant to the mash pH?

[delboy]

Interesting wally, i used it last night simply because it was in the cupboard and was trying to do a million and one other things at the same time so i didn't have time to do any water calcs and thought bunging some of this in was probably a lesser evil than just throwing CaCl and Casulphate in willy nilly
To be far to the makers they do state that it will lock in a mash at that pH.

[WallyBrew]

Is that relevant to the mash pH?

Well, no. But then again is 5.2 relevant to the mash. Re-read their technical page given above and their ad blurb

Depends how you read it but as far as I can see they only claim "to lock in your mash and kettle water at a pH of 5.2 regardless of the starting pH of
your water."

Read that as your mash water and kettle water, not your mash.

[steve_flack]

I agree your results don't seem to tally with the data in their tech sheet.