Hi folks. New here. Tremendous amount of great info in these forums. I'm just graduating from extract to all-grain and trying to understand why my mash pH is so high. I'm using RO water, since my unsoftened well water is pretty nasty. So I used Bru'n Water to adjust to a London profile, and followed Jamil's Special Bitter recipe. The details:
Maris Otter 9.5 lb.
Aromatic 20L 0.5 lb.
Crystal 120L 0.5 lb.
Special Roast 50 L. 0.25 lb.
Mashed at 151 F. at 1.85 qt/lb grist (5 gallons total). I adjusted the mash water according to Bru'n water, but left out the pickling lime, planning to check the mash pH first. So what I actually added to the 5 gallons of mash water was:
1.0 grams gypsum
1.2 grams epsom salt
0.6 grams baking soda
1.3 grams calcium chloride
This gives 32 ppm Ca, 6 ppm Mg, 16 ppm Na , 54 ppm SO4, 32 ppm Cl., 31 ppm alkalinity. Bru'n Water predicts a mash pH of 5.2, and estimates I would need to add 1.0 grams of pickling lime to bring the pH up to 5.4.
Well ..... I was pretty surprised when my first pH reading (after 15 minutes) was 6.3. I gave it another 10 minutes and it had dropped to 6.1. At that point I began adding lactic acid in 1 ml increments, waiting 5 minutes or so after each increment, and ended up adding 5 ml total to get the pH down to 5.5. The pH drop was pretty linear, at 0.12 pH units/ml lactic. By that time I was 45 minutes into the mash and had lost significant heat from all the opening and stirring. I gave it another half hour before draining off the wort and batch sparging. My efficiency was actually pretty good, at 76%. Except for the pH issue, everything else went OK. I bottled yesterday and it tastes pretty good at this stage. How much lactic can I safely add before affecting the taste?
All this leaves me perplexed why the pH was so much higher than expected. I now realize that my mash was very thin, so maybe that's part of it -- but still, the alkalinity of the water was very low. The RO water was pH 7, my meter was well-calibrated, and samples were cooled to room temp before measuring pH. Actually, this is the 2nd time I had this problem. My first AG batch was a porter, and I added the pickling lime up front. It went off-scale (>6) on pH paper. That's why I left the lime out of the mash water on this batch. I'm uncertain what to do the next time to get closer to the target pH up front.
Maris Otter 9.5 lb.
Aromatic 20L 0.5 lb.
Crystal 120L 0.5 lb.
Special Roast 50 L. 0.25 lb.
Mashed at 151 F. at 1.85 qt/lb grist (5 gallons total). I adjusted the mash water according to Bru'n water, but left out the pickling lime, planning to check the mash pH first. So what I actually added to the 5 gallons of mash water was:
1.0 grams gypsum
1.2 grams epsom salt
0.6 grams baking soda
1.3 grams calcium chloride
This gives 32 ppm Ca, 6 ppm Mg, 16 ppm Na , 54 ppm SO4, 32 ppm Cl., 31 ppm alkalinity. Bru'n Water predicts a mash pH of 5.2, and estimates I would need to add 1.0 grams of pickling lime to bring the pH up to 5.4.
Well ..... I was pretty surprised when my first pH reading (after 15 minutes) was 6.3. I gave it another 10 minutes and it had dropped to 6.1. At that point I began adding lactic acid in 1 ml increments, waiting 5 minutes or so after each increment, and ended up adding 5 ml total to get the pH down to 5.5. The pH drop was pretty linear, at 0.12 pH units/ml lactic. By that time I was 45 minutes into the mash and had lost significant heat from all the opening and stirring. I gave it another half hour before draining off the wort and batch sparging. My efficiency was actually pretty good, at 76%. Except for the pH issue, everything else went OK. I bottled yesterday and it tastes pretty good at this stage. How much lactic can I safely add before affecting the taste?
All this leaves me perplexed why the pH was so much higher than expected. I now realize that my mash was very thin, so maybe that's part of it -- but still, the alkalinity of the water was very low. The RO water was pH 7, my meter was well-calibrated, and samples were cooled to room temp before measuring pH. Actually, this is the 2nd time I had this problem. My first AG batch was a porter, and I added the pickling lime up front. It went off-scale (>6) on pH paper. That's why I left the lime out of the mash water on this batch. I'm uncertain what to do the next time to get closer to the target pH up front.
