[quote=“kcbeersnob”][quote=“dannyboy58”] It was more crisp, dry and tart than the 1469 that I normally use for bitters. [/quote]That statement sounds like treason to me.[WINKING FACE] I’m blindly loyal to 1469 in bitters. Also makes a beautiful stout.
I’ll be going to the UK for work in July. My #1 priority is to find Timothy Taylor Landlord on tap. Apparently 1469 descended from their yeast.
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It didn’t feel treasonous at the time but I didn’t care for the results. I thought my 1469 slurry was infected. I had a bad batch of esb I had to dump so I tossed the slurry. It wasn’t available when I wanted to brew so I tried the 1318. It didn’t suck but it wasn’t the ESB I wanted. I won’t be brewing ESB again until I get 1469.
[quote=“mabrungard”]Finished beer pH doesn’t really tell the story. You need to concentrate on the kettle wort pH. That is where the action is at.
The carbonation only affects pH a little bit (maybe a tenth), so that isn’t a big deal. But degassing and warming the beer to around room temp would be a good practice.[/quote]
I have been keeping track of boil pH, and it is usually 5.4-5.6 at 25C. What I have been unable to do is predict where the finish beer pH will wind up. In my experience once you get below 4.4 an IPA starts tasting more like a pale ale. This is the only reason I am concerning myself with finish beer pH. Different yeast strain, water +salts, and grist are very hard to predict so it usually takes 3-4 brews of one IPA to get it where I want it. Most don’t bother taking it this far, but I really enjoy turning a good beer into a great beer.
As far as yeast strains go I really like WY1098 and WL028. I find with these maltier yeasts that the grain bills become very simple and require very little crystal malt.
Dannyboy, are you concerned that your post boil pH is lower than your last? I would like to know what your finish beer pH is like on this beer, as it looks like it may end up under 4.4
Actually, I wanted to take it to 4.3 so I was trying to knock another .1 off. And if KC and Martin are correct and my in the glass 4.4 is really 4.5 then I could get to 4.3 if my yeast performs as it did the first batch.
Based on similar IPA water discussions in other threads I wanted to see if the 4.3 IPA had a cleaner, crisper profile. The last 2 batches that were 5.1 post boil got to that pH from different angles as well. One has really elevated levels of sulfates and chloride with less lactic acid. The other kind of pushes what some folks recommend as the upper limit for lactic acid.
And that’s how you learn. I think you are spot on, lower IS cleaner/crisper.[/quote]
Sorry but I’m gonna have to disagree here. Lower in my opinion favors the malt and muddles the hops which is ok in an English IPA. For those hops to truly pop you need it above 4.4 or IMO 4.5-4.6 which favors the American IPA category. I’m very opinionated all of the sudden after judging beer all week. :shock:
One thing that I did not expect was for so many of my favorite IPA’s to come in above 4.6, so much so that I recalibrated several times. On retesting they tested exactly the same as the first test.
And that’s how you learn. I think you are spot on, lower IS cleaner/crisper.[/quote]
Sorry but I’m gonna have to disagree here. Lower in my opinion favors the malt and muddles the hops which is ok in an English IPA. For those hops to truly pop you need it above 4.4 or IMO 4.5-4.6 which favors the American IPA category. I’m very opinionated all of the sudden after judging beer all week. :shock:
One thing that I did not expect was for so many of my favorite IPA’s to come in above 4.6, so much so that I recalibrated several times. On retesting they tested exactly the same as the first test.[/quote]
Interesting. Thanks for that perspective. I should be able to taste my results in a couple weeks. Maybe I’ll brew up a couple batches at a higher pH in the mean time. So much beer to brew, so little time…
Yep, best to see for yourself. My testing was limited to Chico so maybe that’s a factor. I think Chico is quite forgiving since all the beers I brewed with the large range of pH were still basically the same beer in the end. The different pHs basically accounting for only a small change in the final product. Perhaps other yeasts are more affected or affected differently by pH.
I do agree with you here, as I said in my first post there is a little bit of wiggle room. The last few IPA"s have come in around 4.45 and while they were very tasty they didn’t have that nice slap of bitterness up front, and then the smooth pleasant bitterness lingering in the aftertaste. I think anywhere from 4.4 up to 4.8 is probably fine, I just prefer it in the upper range. In the end it is only a small change though. :cheers:
Sorry but I’m gonna have to disagree here. Lower in my opinion favors the malt and muddles the hops which is ok in an English IPA. [/quote]
I don’t get the impression that its an issue of ‘muddling’. I feel that its more a result of less hop flavor and bittering due to the lower pH wort being less of a conjugate base and therefore being less effective at extracting those hop components out of the hops. I do find that for hop forward beers, a slightly higher wort pH of around 5.4 is helpful. Reducing the wort pH to as low as 5.2 helps de-emphasize the hopping and therefore accentuate the malt.
Wort pH is a very helpful tool for fine tuning beer flavor.
Thanks for explaining that for me. I had not put to much thought into the reasoning, just that the bitterness didn’t linger at all in lower pH beers. :cheers:
Fascinating thread & topic. Wish I could comment more, but it looks like a lot of speculation and not a lot of answers…
If I want to start measuring this parameter to compare with others’ values, is it decided where we’re measuring? Kettle pH? Post-fermentation pH? Post carbonation (but allowed to off-gas) pH? Post-carbonation (with no off-gassing) pH?
[quote=“Silentknyght”]Fascinating thread & topic. Wish I could comment more, but it looks like a lot of speculation and not a lot of answers…
If I want to start measuring this parameter to compare with others’ values, is it decided where we’re measuring? Kettle pH? Post-fermentation pH? Post carbonation (but allowed to off-gas) pH? Post-carbonation (with no off-gassing) pH?[/quote]
I had a discussion with a Wyeast microbiologist earlier this year about the impact of yeast strains on finished beer pH. His recommendation was to measure when fermentation is complete. He noted that pH can actually rise after fermentation if the beer is sitting on a bed of yeast.
My preference is to measure finished pH using my FG sample. Low carbonation level is a benefit of this method.
Of course in order to determine the impact of a given yeast strain, you also need to know the pH of the wort after the boil. So I measure this too.
So I’ve had this IPA in the keg for a couple of weeks. It came in at pH of 4.4 prior to kegging and carbonating. I forgot to DH is prior to kegging but DH’d in the keg for 5 days then pulled the hops bag out. It has no where near the same aroma or flavor as the previous batch which was a little higher pH.
I have another batch in the fermenter now that came in at a lower pH post boil I’d like to raise it a couple of tenths but I can’t find any pickling lime locally. I’ll probably order some but wanted to raise this prior to DHing it. Could I just use baking soda to raise the pH? I figured I’d use Brunwater to calculate how much I need. Put it in the fermenter and wait a couple days before I DH?
Raising beer pH is not going to produce similar effects as raising the kettle wort pH prior to boiling. I wouldn’t bother with raising the beer pH. Just chalk this up as a lesson and drink it up ASAP.
pH is probably not the ‘final frontier’ in brewing, but it is a relatively new frontier in terms flavor and character adjustment.
Thanks for the input Martin. I drove by a little country store nearby today and found some pickling lime. So at least I have that in the water arsenal now. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that place before.
Maybe I’ll just increase the DH on this one and look to get the kettle pH higher on this next batch. I don’t feel like the malt is really prominent in these beers with the lower pH but it’s just 91% 2 row / 9% C40.
I think the pH becomes a compromise. Higher might be better per se but at the sacrifice of flavor stability. The one I did higher faded FAST. I can never keep a beer more than a month here, but that IPA was half as good as it first was after a few weeks. If that beer sat 90 days at room temp there is no doubt in my mind something nasty could grow in it. Something I never did since I consider it cheating would be to deliberately brew and ferment with a higher pH and dose with acid to hit 4.5. Maybe this could “lock in” the hop magic.
My most recent all centennial IPA was4.6 going into the keg. It’s darker has a fuller mouth feel and nicer malt flavor to backup the hops. For my taste it’s much better than the lower pH. It’s not quite 2 weeks in the keg now and just needs a little more carbonation. The hop flavor holds up better in the glass and I think the aroma will too as the carbonation improves. For me 2-3 weeks in the keg an IPA peaks but I don’t care for the brassy grassy flavors that zwiller loves.
