[Brewtopalonian]

Hello All!

I'm brewing an Irish Stout tomorrow (not dry, just a nice rounded stout).  I'm currently steeping my roasted malts in room temp RO water.  I'm using Martin's Bru'n Water and trying to come up with a good water solution for this recipe.  I would like to have some RA in the final beer in order to improve body.  If I use the mash profile's provided by Martin for either a Black Full or Dublin, my pH is rather high (5.83) after making the adjustments.  I don't want to add acid and alkalinity.  Should I not worry about the mash pH being that high because the roasted malts are going to add acid to the overall beer?

Here's the recipe:

8.75lb Golden Promise
.5lb Flaked Barley
.5lb Chocolate Malt (250SRM) <--- cold steep
.5lb Roasted Barley (695SRM) <--- cold steep
.25lb Crystal Medium (77SRM)

Thanks for the feed back, hope you all are enjoying a cold one!

[Richard]

The enzymes that turn starches to sugar in the mash work best in the pH 5.2 - 5.6 range, so you need to have the mash pH correct or you may suffer from poor efficiency. Steeped roasted grains are usually added at the end of the mash, when their acid contribution is too late to have any effect.

[Brewtopalonian]

The enzymes that turn starches to sugar in the mash work best in the pH 5.2 - 5.6 range, so you need to have the mash pH correct or you may suffer from poor efficiency. Steeped roasted grains are usually added at the end of the mash, when their acid contribution is too late to have any effect.

Thanks, that kind of steers me in the right direction.  I guess I won't add any alkaline to my mash profile.

[goose]

The enzymes that turn starches to sugar in the mash work best in the pH 5.2 - 5.6 range, so you need to have the mash pH correct or you may suffer from poor efficiency. Steeped roasted grains are usually added at the end of the mash, when their acid contribution is too late to have any effect.

Thanks, that kind of steers me in the right direction.  I guess I won't add any alkaline to my mash profile.

Another question.  Did you look at the possibility of adding some of the dark grains to the mash at the beginning to bring the pH down?  I look at this possibility when designing my water profiles for stouts and porters with Bru'n Water.  The program will predict the mash pH pretty accurately as you add them .  Most of the time I can get there without adding them until the end of the mash but sometimes I have used one or more to control the pH.  That would help eliminate reducing the residual alkalinity.

Just another idea.

[Robert]

As advised above, you need to calculate your water treatment (as always) to get the right mash pH.   If you won't have the roasted grains in the mash, you are essentially calculating for a pale grist that won't need alkalinity.   Bru'n Water has a selection at the bottom.of the grain bill input that allows you to reserve roasted grains from the main mash.  This allows you to calculate the color, while not miscalculating the mash chemistry.   If you want some alkalinity-contributing salts in the beer for flavor effect, you can reserve those and add them directly to the boil.   There's advice on this somewhere in the Bru'n Water documentation.

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[Brewtopalonian]

Robert, Goose,  Thank you very much!  I input the grain bill with the roasted grains and then made the selection at the bottom of the grain input to remove roast from the main mash.  I guess I will add salts to boil for flavor.