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Author Topic: PH Mind Melt  (Read 4629 times)

Offline Stevie

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Re: PH Mind Melt
« Reply #30 on: March 14, 2016, 05:57:55 pm »



I'm of the opinion that for conversion, mash ph doesn't really matter that much, you'll get astringency before you have a noticeable impact on the conversion rate. I haven't seen evidence otherwise.

This.  Plus, I remember an old thread from the brewing network where one of the guys decided to try a mash without even crushing any of the grains whatsoever.  It took a bit longer, but he was able to make wort with a fairly decent gravity (lower than crushed obviously).
I've witnessed this in person at one of my old clubs. I think he got about 40% efficiency on a planned 1.060 beer.

Offline jmitchell3

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Re: PH Mind Melt
« Reply #31 on: March 15, 2016, 04:14:13 pm »
To OP, did you calibrate your ph meter before the brew?

Nah your beer will be fine. Don't sweat it. I think you may have overshot your acid addition a bit, and as long as your beer doesn't taste minerally you didn't add too much calcium.

Conversion does suffer outside of a range but the range is quite wide, something like 4.7-5.8 or so. I know commercial and home brewers that intentionally mash at sub-5 ph on very light beers to obtain a crisp, just-short-of-tart finish to their beers.

Essentially the important figure which I don't recall you had there is the mash ph in the first 15-20 minutes after dough-in. This is where a vast majority of the conversion of starches occurs and the most vital time when ph must be at the desired range. Remember also that ph is changing pretty steadily during the mash. The purpose of the calculators like bru'n water is to help determine the mash ph during that key 30 minute time frame at the beginning of the mash. The ph will dive during this first 15 mins then start to stabilize and even rise slightly by the end of the mash, before the sparge.

As a general rule ph values can fluctuate by up to .1 just from instrument error. Add to that most of us are not taking ph readings at the exact same time in our mash nor at the same temperature across batches. So some variance can occur there. Really the only reason to take ph readings of preboil and post boil beer is to have an additional set of data points to identify trends when something begins to be out of whack. That's pro territory there though.

Again your beer will probably turn out just fine. If recommend calibrating your ph meter before each brewday, taking samples at the same time during the mash, and cooling them to 70-80F before measurement. If you are consistent in this, your ph readings will be way more useful for mash and water chemistry purposes.

Happy brewing!


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