Announcing 'Mash Made Easy', a mash pH adjustment assistant

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Silver_Is_Money said:
You've talked me into 6%. Completely "free form" entry can lead to huge errors if the end user does not fully understand.
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Right, but ultimately the goal IS to help people understand what they might otherwise not fully comprehend. That's kind of what we are doing by constantly posting in the Brewing Science forum.

Silver_Is_Money said:
But if Weyermann is to be believed, 2.4% should be their own target norm. It's almost as if they have little wherewithal by which to control this in their process. It's likely better to just use Lactic Acid if that is the case.
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It's not whether Weyermann should be believed or not, as they are 100% a credible source, but rather that we are aware of the variables in the process that can change what we see batch to batch.

Error Source #1: Sauermalz isn't Lactic Acid. A.J. has shown the graph a number of times that shows the curves for Lactic and for Sauermalz and they are not even close.

Error Source #2: There are a number of similar but slightly different calculations for weight based Sauermalz pH prediction using Lactic Acid % as an input.

Error Source #3: Since Sauermalz is a malt, it's properties are affected by the specific pilsner malt lot used as it's base.

Error Source #4: The specifications and Acid % of the Sauergut used in making the Sauermalz can vary as well.

Even Weyermann (and for that matter anyone making Sauermalz) concedes that there is likely to be variation from the standard 1%/0.1 pH ROT.

I can say that much of this futzing around with Acid % numbers has been avoided on the last few batches I've made using the Gen. II engine and Sauermalz as a malt, with full titration info.
 
Having never used Acid malt to lower pH and choosing to use Lactic acid instead. Am I missing out on any other benefits using Acid malt would add?
 
From Weyermann:

Sensory studies show that acidulated beers receive higher sensory ratings and consumer acceptance than do non-acidulated beers.
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Biologically (naturally) produced lactic acid results in better flavor stability in the finished beer than does artificially produced lactic acid.
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Importantly, Acidulated Malt NEVER imparts “sour,” acidic notes to the finished beer, as long as its portion of the grain remains below 10%!
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@RPIScotty I just found out my LHBS only carries 'meussdoerffer sour malt' listed under acid malts. I'm not at all familiar with this malt or using any type of acid malts for that matter. Any insight would be much appreciated.
 
ScrewyBrewer said:
@RPIScotty I just found out my LHBS only carries 'meussdoerffer sour malt' listed under acid malts. I'm not at all familiar with this malt or using any type of acid malts for that matter. Any insight would be much appreciated.
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I'm not RPIScotty, but all you have to go with (until you discover differently) is Weyermann's long standing advice that 1% by grist weight should give you ~0.1 points of downward pH shift.

RPIScotty seems to be inferring that he is getting twice or more the anticipated downward pH shift with his particular lot of Weyermann's Sauermalz.
 
Silver_Is_Money said:
I'm not RPIScotty, but all you have to go with (until you discover differently) is Weyermann's long standing advice that 1% by grist weight should give you ~0.1 points of downward pH shift.
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Larry my question is 'meussdoerffer sour malt' interchangable with 'acidulated' or 'acid' malt?

The specs say "Produced with natural lactic acid bacteria. Used to adjust mash PH and for sour beers. AKA Acidulated" so I guess it is?
 
Remember that acid malt requires saccharification, so it is best to grind and add it right along with the rest of the grist.

It is the same stuff, but no one knows if different manufacturers are shooting for the same general acidity level as for Weyermann. You must initially presume that they do. A quick test batch might help here. Make up one base malt mash with 50 grams of Pilsner base malt and 100-150 mL of DI water, and another with 48 grams of the same Pilsner base malt, 2 grams of your acid malt, and the same water. Mash, cool, and compare pH's. That will indicate how much pH suppression 4% by weight will bring with it. You should see about 5.8 pH and 5.4 pH respectively.
 
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Silver_Is_Money said:
Remember that acid malt requires saccharification, so it is best to grind and add it right along with the rest of the grist.

It is the same stuff, but no one knows if different manufacturers are shooting for the same general acidity level as for Weyermann. You must initially presume that they do. A quick test batch might help here. Make up one base malt mash with 50 grams of Pilsner base malt and 100-150 mL of DI water, and another with 48 grams of the same Pilsner base malt, 2 grams of your acid malt, and the same water. Mash, cool, and compare pH's. That will indicate how much pH suppression 4% by weight will bring with it.
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Ok thank you. I'm brewing a 10-gallon batch of Kolsch this weekend and may need to hold off on using acid malt until I get more information.
 
ScrewyBrewer said:
Ok thank you. I'm brewing a 10-gallon batch of Kolsch this weekend and may need to hold off on using acid malt until I get more information.
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Without test mashing, where would you expect to find more information? Even if it doubles the pH depression, you should still be OK. Or cut the calculated amount in half. But since pH is logarithmic, you are at this juncture ballparking it by assuming linearity where none is to be found.
 
ScrewyBrewer said:
Ok thank you. I'm brewing a 10-gallon batch of Kolsch this weekend and may need to hold off on using acid malt until I get more information.
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Prior to committing to the Gen. II approach, I was using weight based Sauermalz calcs and using Acid % (Lactic Acid by weight) for Sauermalz. Similar to what Larry and many others before had done.

What I would do is buy a 2 lbs of base malt. I would run a test mash with one pound to obtain the DI pH for the base malt. Id buy a quantity of Sauermalz that would last me a while and make sure it was from the same bag at the LHBS.

I’d run the test mash parameters through my spreadsheet using the other pound of base malt and a specific weight of Sauermalz and assume an acid % for the Sauermalz. I’d take that pH prediction and compare to the actual for the test mash. I would then adjust the acid % until the pH numbers matched and use that acid % for all subsequent batches until I purchased new Sauermalz.
 
Silver_Is_Money said:
Without test mashing, where would you expect to find more information? Even if it doubles the pH depression, you should still be OK. Or cut the calculated amount in half. But since pH is logarithmic, you are at this juncture ballparking it by assuming linearity where none is to be found.
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No actually I meant test mashing. I picked up citric acid yesterday but tomorrow I'll be brewing but I do plan on doing a bunch of test mashes over the coming months.
 
Announcing 'Mash Made Easy' version 5.00 in both Standard and Metric formats. Major revisions!!!

Details:
1) Per a users request, MME now allows for the selection of your calcium chlorides percent concentration (purity) across a broad span of available purities for CaCl2 Prills (crystal), and also allows for the use of liquid calcium chloride solutions at any concentration. For liquid CaCl2 solutions you must simply measure and input your solutions specific gravity. These changes are due to the fact that crystalline CaCl2 prills pick up additional moisture every time they are exposed to air, and as such the percent concentration (purity) of such CaCl2 declines steadily as it absorbs water from the air. Moving to a liquid calcium chloride solution eliminates this nagging problem, but MME now allows for the end users accommodation of this phenomenon both for solid and liquid CaCl2.
2) Major engine change to accommodate my recent direct brewing day observation that dark recipes such as Stouts and Porters mash at noticeably lower measured pH's than the previous version of Mash Made Easy would predict.
3) Removed Acid Malt as a "drop down" selection choice for the grist. As always, it is still available as one of the 3 acid addition choices offered to bring your mash to your selected mash pH target. I will consider adding this feature back in at a later date once I learn to incorporate it properly as a drop down selection within the math model dictates of the new MME engine.

As always, Mash Made Easy is both free and complete, and it can be downloaded at the website seen below.
 
Announcing the release of Mash Made Easy version 5.10 in both the standard and metric formats.

1) Eliminates odd Boolean logic descriptors such as "FALSE" that mysteriously appeared for those using exclusively and specifically Excel, and the same for which I had been unaware as to these nagging and unsightly yet otherwise harmless visual issues until quite recently, since I develop this spreadsheet using LibreOffice Calc under Linux/Unix, and I do not use or have access to Excel.

2) Minor improvement made for the utilization of the "Brown / Mid Roast" classification.

As always, Mash Made Easy is both free and complete, and it can be downloaded at the website link seen below.
 
Announcing the release of 'Mash Made Easy' version 5.20 in both standard and metric format.

Corrects an error discovered in 'Sparge Water Acidification' output for the highly specific case of lactic acid at anything other than 88% concentration, whereby lactic acid was formerly defaulting to 88% on only the sparge water adjustment page of the spreadsheet, regardless of the actual percent concentration of lactic acid selected by the end user. Version 5.20 correctly adjusts sparge water acidification output to reflect your desired input selection for lactic acid concentration.

All users of both standard and metric MME are urged to transition to version 5.20
 
Announcing the release of 'Mash Made Easy' version 5.30 in both the standard and metric formats.

Changes include:

1) Far more radically separates the DIpH values computed for Roasted Barley (plus Black Barley) and Roasted Malt, after more closely reviewing the data I have on hand from Briess. Roast Barley and Black Barley (which are not malted) now retain a fixed DIpH of 4.7 across all color levels, whereas Roasted Malt has a DIpH which changes appreciably in conjunction with roast level and Lovibond color changes. This change allows for well more acidity to be exhibited for the darkest representatives of the deep roasted malt class, while holding roasted barleys acidity at a noticeably more modest and fixed level with respect to color. To my knowledge no other software solution offers this flexibility, as the others all seem to conflate the two classes of deep roast into one, as if there is no observed acidity difference between them.

2) Given that most of the other available mash pH prediction software (with the potential exceptions of Bru'n Water and the Kaiser Water Calculator) appears to be more linear math model based, and that MME 5.20 was 100% base 10 logarithm based, MME 5.30 now lets you easily dial in an output that blends any percentage of the two radically differing approaches. The 100% log based engine within MME calculates deep roasted and high caramel/crystal containing recipe mash pH's which are noticeably lower and in line with the need for added (or inherent) mash water alkalinity, which has clearly historically been the observed and documented case for such beer recipes, whereas the 100% linear based engine within MME delivers output in line with many recent pH prediction software solutions and in violation of most all of past documented history, presuming all of it to be incorrect, and thereby exhibiting output in line with no need (or desire) for alkalinity for most all dark roast and caramel/crystal containing recipes. The ability to choose one or the other, or any percentage of blend of the two approaches, permits the end user to dial in MME to conform with end user measured and observed mash pH output, in strict keeping with MME's philosophy of easily permitting a broad range of methods whereby its output can be modified to conform to observed and measured reality.

3) Cleaned up a bit of the internal code.

I highly recommend that all current users of 'Mash Made Easy' transition to this newly updated version.
 
is there any sort of database for mash ph values for malts out there? not all maltsters have this info available freely.....
 
SanPancho said:
is there any sort of database for mash ph values for malts out there? not all maltsters have this info available freely.....
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Weyermann is really the only maltster I know of that makes malt data easily accessible, including pH DI.
 
Announcing 'Mash Made Easy' version 5.40 in both the Standard and Metric formats:

Adds "Slaked Lime" (also known as Ca(OH)2, Pickling Lime, and Calcium Hydroxide) as a means of upward mash pH adjustment for those wary of using Baking Soda due to a concern for increased levels of sodium.

CAUTION: Slaked Lime is quite hazardous, so read the SDS, wear all requisite personal protective equipment, and use all due precautions.

Mash Made Easy may be downloaded at the site linked below.
 
Announcing the release of 'Mash Made Easy' version 5.50 in both the Standard and Metric formats.

Changes are as follows:
---------------------------
1) Adds my implementation (my take, spin, or derivation) of user variable grist buffering with a default applied multiplier factor of 0.60 per recent information provided on the HBT forum by D.M. Riffe. The end user can change this multiplier to any fraction up to and including 1.00.

2) Changes the default Kolbach multiplier to 65% to reduce the downward shift in mash pH induced by mineralization. This is intended to bring the downward pH shift impact of Ca++ and Mg++ ions more in line with A.J. deLange's observations. The end user is free to set this Kolbach multiplier factor to any percentage ranging from 50% to 100%.

3) And lastly this version splits Flaked Oats and Flaked Corn into their own separate grist component categories due to their vastly different buffering characteristics as observed by D.M. Riffe in a recent paper he published.

Downloads are available at the website link seen below. As always, MME is free and complete.
 
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Silver_Is_Money said:
AAdds my implementation (my take, or derivation) of user variable grist buffering with a default applied multiplier factor of 0.60 per recent information provided on the HBT forum by D.M. Riffe. The end user can change this multiplier to any fraction up to and including 1.00.
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I'm not sure this is the correct interpretation Larry. My thought was that Riffe was saying that that multiplier applied to each malts a1 value. It looks as though you use a total grist buffering value. I'm not sure that is the correct application of what he was saying.

Also B5:H5 are whited out in the downloads.
 
RPIScotty said:
I'm not sure this is the correct interpretation Larry. My thought was that Riffe was saying that that multiplier applied to each malts a1 value. It looks as though you use a total grist buffering value. I'm not sure that is the correct application of what he was saying.

Also B5:H5 are whited out in the downloads.
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You may be correct, so I edited my post above to indicate that this is my "spin" on dmr's revelation.

Cells B5:H5 include conditional information in relation to the end users optional use of Ca(OH)2 instead of Baking Soda. the information pops up for the case of a grist that requires its pH to be raised to meet the desired mash pH target. Since I used the very latest LibreOffice 6.2 to implement this, it may be that I have boxed myself into a corner that only permits the proper operation of version 5.50 (and likely also 5.40) within LibreOffice. And perhaps even more restrictive, within LibreOffice 6.2 or higher. Do you have a version 6.0 of LibreOffice to run this in to see if it functions there? Since I do not have access to EXCEL I may not be able to fix this for that environment. That plus my spreadsheet building skills are not at your level by any means.
 
Silver_Is_Money said:
You may be correct, so I edited my post above to indicate that this is my "spin" on dmr's revelation.
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I wouldn't be so quick to want to implement something that is admittedly (by Riffe) not so well understood.

Silver_Is_Money said:
Cells B5:H5 include conditional information in relation to the end users optional use of Ca(OH)2 instead of Baking Soda. the information pops up for the case of a grist that requires its pH to be raised to meet the desired mash pH target. Since I used the very latest LibreOffice 6.2 to implement this, it may be that I have boxed myself into a corner that only permits the proper operation of version 5.50 (and likely also 5.40) within LibreOffice. And perhaps even more restrictive, within LibreOffice 6.2 or higher. Do you have a version 6.0 of LibreOffice to run this in to see if it functions there? Since I do not have access to EXCEL I may not be able to fix this for that environment. That plus my spreadsheet building skills are not at your level by any means.
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After adjusting with a big portion of roasted malt, the conditional stuff is working.
 
Announcing the release of 'Mash Made Easy' version 5.60 in both the standard and Metric formats.

Several bug fixes and corrections, with a few nagging ones exclusive to the Metric version.
Better buffer modeling has been applied to both versions. The default grist buffer multiplier is now 0.67.
The default setting for the Kolbach downward shift in pH due to mineralization has been restored to 100%.

Edit (3/1/19): I forgot to mention that MME's calculated Acid Malt addition quantity is now indexed to, and regulated by the grists calculated buffering value. Formerly it had been calculated more in line with Weyermann's published ballpark estimation method.

I recommend that both Standard and Metric users upgrade to this new revision. The download is free, the spreadsheet is both free and complete, and it can be accessed at the web link seen below.
 
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Announcing the release of Mash Made Easy version 5.70 in both the Standard and Metric formats.

Adds a new page (or sheet) for your hop schedule and the computation of bitterness IBU's, with added features such as BU:GU Ratio and Relative Bitterness Ratio.
A minor error correction was also made.

As always, the download is free, the spreadsheet is both free and complete, and it can be accessed at the web link seen below.
 
I caught a small error on the IBU sheet and fixed it. If you had downloaded a copy of my new version 5.70 of Mash Made Easy prior to 3:00 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time) today, please delete it and download a fresh copy, as the minor bug I discovered has been fixed.
 
Silver_Is_Money said:
I caught a small error on the IBU sheet and fixed it. If you had downloaded a copy of my new version 5.70 of Mash Made Easy prior to 3:00 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time) today, please delete it and download a fresh copy, as the minor bug I discovered has been fixed.
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I’m looking forward to scrutinizing this!
 
Silver_Is_Money said:
If it helps, I can detail the error to you in a PM.
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No that’s okay.

Your adaptations of the Tinseth equations are foreign to me and I can’t make heads or tails of them but it seems to give values on par with what I’d expect.
 
Announcing the release of 'Mash Made Easy' version 5.75 in both the Standard and Metric formats:

After discovering and correcting yet additional bugs within the formulas of the new IBU bitterness calculation sheet, I have decided to revise the version number to 5.75 to properly reflect my corrections.

With due apology to all who previously downloaded version 5.70, please replace it with corrected version 5.75. Users of any previous version of MME should also replace it with version 5.75.

As always, the download is free, the spreadsheet is both free and complete, and it can be accessed at the web link seen below.
 
Announcing 'Mash Made Easy' version 5.76 in both the Standard and Metric formats:

With yet more due apology on my part, I have made additional (and hopefully this time the last) critical bugs fixes on the new IBU's page.

Once again, if you have downloaded version 5.75 (or earlier) in either the Standard or Metric format you are strongly urged to replace it with version 5.76.

I sincerely thank each and every one of you most kindly for bearing with me on this one. It has been a grueling (and sleep killing) ordeal for me. I need some rest now.

As always, the download is free, the spreadsheet is both free and complete, and it can be accessed at the web link seen below.
 

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