I'm in the market for a new pH meter and would like some recommendations. Price and ease of use are my main concerns.
I used to brew with a friend who owned a pH meter, but it's been a few years since then and while I have been using Bru'n Water to adjust pH, I haven't actually been measuring. Nothing came out bad, but my most recent IPA (90% 2-row, 6% carahell, 4% acid malt - a small amount of 10% phosphoric acid was used in the sparge water, too) seems a bit more acidic than necessary and appears to have extracted less than expected from the hops and CO2 hop extract. My suspicion is that I should have used 8-10 oz of acid malt instead of 12 oz, and that the acid malt in the mash might have made the phosphoric acid unnecessary in the sparge water. Water was soft Portland water treated with a campden tablet to run off chloramine, then I added just enough gypsum and sea salt to increase the calcium to 60 ppm and get a 3/2 sulfate/chloride ratio.
Clearly I need to be testing my pH.