Mash Made Easy Is Solid

[CodeSection]

I think others may benefit from what I have been experiencing. I have been using MME for sometime and found it very useful in my brews. I like the layout and the recommendations. The results are spot on and it is my goto program.

With that said, last week I was changing a recipe so I decided to compare MME's recommendation to that of BS3's and BF's recommendations on a brew (which I just happened to finished at 4:45AM this morning, btw). To my surprise, there were huge differences...so far off that I thought I had made a mistake somewhere.

MME 6.70 version, showed I needed to add 6g of baking soda to reach my target mash pH of 5.40.

When I entered the same mineral additions into BeerSmith3 I got an estimated pH of 5.59 and it was suggested to add 12.0 ml of lactic acid.

When I entered the information in Brewer's Friend, I got an estimated pH of 5.58 and it was suggested to add 8.96 ml of lactic acid.

When I removed the 6g of baking soda, MME shows pH at 5.28 (would need add 6g baking soda to get to 5.40), BS3 5.49 (would need to add 5.7ml lactic acid) , and BF 5.48 (would need to add 3.42 ml lactic acid).

With the discrepancies above I thought I was doing something wrong. So, I reached out to the developer of MME asking for help. He believed his program was accurate as I was using a lot of caramel malt 90L which is more acidic. I went with MME and added the 6g of baking soda it recommended. I am sure glad I did!

This batch was totally different in mashing. Rather than a single infusion, I had four mash steps. Instead of mashing for an hour, I mashed for 80 minutes. I used 6.00g of baking soda.

pH @ 30 minutes @ 68F: 5.55
pH @ end of mash @ 68F: 5.43
pH @ post boil @ 68F: 5.31

I'm happy with the results, especially since I changed the recipe and my process.

Had I used any of the other two programs, I would have been way off since they were suggesting adding a large amount of lactic acid.

Below is a screen shot of my MME recipe...

I highly recommend you download and check out Mash Made Easy. I think you may be surprised just how easy and accurate it is. This is not a paid endorsement and I do not know the developer.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

When popular and trusted mash pH predicting software programs suggest radically different outcomes from the prediction of a relative newcomer program, one is intuitively likely to reject the new and accept the old, and it is from this perspective that @CodeSection reached out to me via a PM. This all hearkens back to my thread titled "Will it mash at pH 5.00" (found in the 'Brew Science' forum), wherein I comment with regard to my observation that a gaggle of available mash pH predicting software (which is in general agreement for the far more typical light brews which require acid additions) makes radically differing predictions ranging from a need for acid to a need for 17-18 grams of baking soda to move a wort/grist to a mash pH of 5.4 for the case of robustly dark beers with grists that contain loads of dark caramel/crystal and/or deep roasted malts.

 

[balrog]

I'm still testing...

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

That's some seriously nice data collecting @balrog! It pretty much agrees with my above assessment that for most grists that are not weighted heavily on the robustly deep roasted and/or deep and dark caramel/crystal side of the equation most of the software is in "general" agreement (within reason, and for the most part within the generally accepted bounds for acceptable mash pH). It is only when one more robustly transitions over to the dark side (so to speak) that the really problematic differences are more likely to make their appearance.

 

[balrog]

I know it is statistically numerologically incorrect to do so, but the average of 6 calc's root mean square difference from measured pH actually shows more variance at lower SRM

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

It would be interesting to see side by side how each program addresses this specific scenario, which is more representative of a highly acidic grist (such as I jokingly referred to as the dark side):

Robust Stout

4.50 gallons of distilled water for the mash, 4.5 gallons sparge water
3.00 grams gypsum
4.60 grams calcium chloride as the dihydrate (or 3.5 grams as the anhydride)
1.00 gram Epsom Salt
All minerals added to the mash water only

10.25 lbs. Briess 2-Row Brewers, 1.8L
1.00 lbs. Briess 120L Caramel
0.75 lbs. Briess 350L Chocolate
0.50 lbs. Briess 300L Roasted Barley
0.50 lbs. Briess 500L Black Malt

And then also indicate how much of either 88% lactic acid or baking soda each program requires to bring the mash to a nominal 5.40 pH. This would be more indicative of what I mean by a scenario that brings forth their potentially significant differences.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

But what would be even more interesting than merely comparing the programs against each other would then be to take the next logical step and actually mash the above recipe and see how its actual measured mash pH compares with the various programs.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

And what would be best of all would be for multiple people (excluding the software developers, so as to minimize confirmation bias) to all repeat the exact same recipe as I have listed, and perform the same mash pH reading at 30 minutes into a 60 minute mash, and cool the sample to 68 degrees F (20 degrees C.) before reading the pH.

 

[balrog]

For all that to work, in my mind, all brewers would have to have the same lot of "10.25 lbs. Briess 2-Row Brewers".

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

For all that to work, in my mind, all brewers would have to have the same lot of "10.25 lbs. Briess 2-Row Brewers".

For the utmost in precision you are of course correct, but I have analytical DI_pH data from Briess for about 4 lots and they are all very close. And only a few of the programs allow for such input anyway. The rest likely presume all base malt to be in the ballpark of 5.7 DI_pH, or alternatively do not even use DI_pH.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Per the data which Briess provided me the 4 different lots of tested 2-Row Brewers came out as follows:

5.60
5.48
5.53
5.58

Avg = 5.55

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

To show that base malt DI_pH (and along with it, acidity) does not correlate well to Lovibond color, here is the above with their Briess analyzed colors alongside:

5.60, 1.9L
5.48, 1.7L
5.53, 1.7L
5.58, 1.4L