I generally use one or the other. I had been using acid malt because I originally didn’t like the idea of handling the acid solution. The more I read about it said it was no big deal so I tried it and everybody was right. It wasn’t as big a deal as I first thought.Good point. My normal well water chemistry is highly buffered so I have to acidify quite a lot to get pH down. I like to mash around 4.9-5.0, but I used distilled water for this brew. I’m at a loss to explain it. A quarter to half a pound of acid malt isn’t unusual for me if I use filtered well water however.
Might have been a case of ‘either or’ and I selected “both” acid and acidulated. I doubt that I actually did though since I check pH during early mash, pre-boil, post boil and before packaging. Assuming a pH of 7.0 for distilled water and little buffering, I can’t imagine needing to add 5ml lactic to the mash to bring the pH down much with that grist bill.
Guess I’ll reverse engineer the recipe with Bru’in Water to see if the beer was actually battery acid. I’ve brewed some in the past that probably tasted worse than that!
I brew 3 gallon batches most of the time. If I use acid malt for a light beer lke a lager with no dark grains then it usually ends up being 2.5 or 3 ounces which usually pushes the 3% they tell you to keep it under. If I use 88% lactic acid then its usually 2.5 or 3 ml. I guess yours seems like more because you’re making a bigger batch than I make.
I will say this too - my efficiency really went up once I started using the acid or acid malt. Like from 74% to something like 82% just from that one little change.
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