Promash Still in business?

[ScrewyBrewer]

Your standard isn't everyone's standard which makes discussing ph a tricky one though. That's my point.I say most people are taking the readings earlier than that and my experience with bs3 is its way low at the start of the mash but pretty close at the end. Cheers

Yep a standard is only a standard when everyone adheres to it.

 

[passedpawn]

I used to use citric acid until I did a batch of American Light Lager and some of the character seeped into the final beer. Now I use mostly lactic acid unless I'm trying to do a beer with a fruitier character.

Hmmm... I have 4 carboys of American Light Lager finishing in my ferment fridge right now. All acidified with citric acid.

How much citric acid did you use in yours?

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

I used ProMash for years and really liked it. Began having problems running (as it is older software) in Windows 7. No amount of tweaking, setting compatibility, etc worked. I finally created an XP VM and installed ProMash in the XP VM. After putting up with this setup and discovering ProMash was apparently dead, I switched to BS2. I upgraded to BS3 when it was available (having used BS3 I realize I should have simply continued using BS2 as, at least for me, BS2 handles my brewing needs). I really only use BS for recipe formulation and inventory (and I've had mysterious inventory problems with BS3). All my other calculations (amount of mash water, initial mash temp, sparge water needed, etc) are in a spreadsheet I created.

 

[NeoBrew]

I'm definitely no expert, but here's my 2 cents anyway:

Mash pH is where you want to use the meter. Pick an acid (I use citric acid, but most brewers prefer phosphoric, and some use lactic). Or use acid malt. Use software tools or just kentucky windage and try to hit 5.2pH. If you miss, sadly you'll have to wait until next mash to correct since I don't think it's possible to correct mid-mash.

Measuring pH is tricky because pH is very temperature-dependent. I take some mash wort, put it in a tiny closed tuperware container, and set it in cold water to cool it off. When it gets to room temp, I measure pH. I suppose you could come up with an offset of some sort to correct a "hot" measurement, but I don't trust that.

I use 10g of citric acid in a 10g batch.

I'm even less of an expert than you passedpawn, but I try to measure PH in the first 10 minutes. I've had a few occasions when I'm off enough that I feel I need to adjust. I've both adjusted up with baking soda and down with acid.

The beers turned out, but I have no way of knowing how they would have turned out if I had not made the adjustment. What I can say is that by +/- 20 minutes into the mash I had the PH where it needed to be.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Once you add grains to the mash it’s already too late to change its pH. If you’re off, note by how much and adjust as needed the next time.