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Author Topic: Acidifying water for yeast  (Read 1906 times)

Offline Andor

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Acidifying water for yeast
« on: April 17, 2017, 01:56:40 pm »
I top crop my yeast to harvest. Currently I boil water then put in ball jar to use the next day. I'm going to start pressuring canning water when I do my starter wort and I was thinking of using acid to reduce ph of the water to 4 so it'd be similar to finished beer ph. Any thoughts on this?

Offline ynotbrusum

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Re: Acidifying water for yeast
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2017, 05:47:19 am »
It really depends on your intended use of the water.  I don't see the need to modify pH if the water will be used to make a starter, because the yeast will alter/optimize the pH on their own during the starter phase.  They are very good at it.  If you start too low, you might actually harm the growth of the yeast.
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Offline Andor

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Re: Acidifying water for yeast
« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2017, 03:28:04 pm »
It really depends on your intended use of the water.  I don't see the need to modify pH if the water will be used to make a starter, because the yeast will alter/optimize the pH on their own during the starter phase.  They are very good at it.  If you start too low, you might actually harm the growth of the yeast.

It would only be used to store top cropped yeast in before I pitched it or used to make starter with

Offline ynotbrusum

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Re: Acidifying water for yeast
« Reply #3 on: April 19, 2017, 07:00:35 pm »
Store it under beer and you will have the best results, I think.  So steal some wort with the top cropping process and don seal the vessel you put it in.  That is probably the best approach.  I store yeast with beer by just leaving some finished beer after fermentation, so grabbing some Krausen and fermenting wort should be good to go as a process.
Hodge Garage Brewing: "Brew with a glad heart!"

Offline JJeffers09

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Re: Acidifying water for yeast
« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2017, 08:34:48 pm »
You're top cropping so any beer you store on your strain would come out if your BH efficiency.  I acidify my distilled water to 3.8-4.2pH an has been fine past 60ish crops across my different strains. Your water is just for storage before building a new starter.  Just remember never build more that 5x your viability in starter volume. 5mL viability, 25mL and so on.  I build my starters slow and make sure they look and smell spot on before I commit the strain to the batch.  Yeast is a cheap fix, dumping a batch is never cheap.  Even though some guys working with trifectas dump as much as they drink😉

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Offline Andor

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Re: Acidifying water for yeast
« Reply #5 on: April 20, 2017, 07:20:41 am »
You're top cropping so any beer you store on your strain would come out if your BH efficiency.  I acidify my distilled water to 3.8-4.2pH an has been fine past 60ish crops across my different strains. Your water is just for storage before building a new starter.  Just remember never build more that 5x your viability in starter volume. 5mL viability, 25mL and so on.  I build my starters slow and make sure they look and smell spot on before I commit the strain to the batch.  Yeast is a cheap fix, dumping a batch is never cheap.  Even though some guys working with trifectas dump as much as they drink😉

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The only time I dump beer is after I drink it. I'm going to try it. Since I'll be canning a batch of water it's not much more work and my thought is it might be a bit more favorable to yeast compared to using plain boiled water

Offline ynotbrusum

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Re: Acidifying water for yeast
« Reply #6 on: April 20, 2017, 11:11:04 am »
Sounds like a plan.  I would think that pH 4.0 is a reasonable target for the water then, with the understanding that the yeast should be going dormant fairly quickly in the water and won't be adjusting the pH/attempting to adjust the pH in the container (especially if cold crashed).

Best of luck - I am sure it will work out for you.
Hodge Garage Brewing: "Brew with a glad heart!"