For sparging, Martin recommended focusing on alkalinity instead of pH in a recent thread discussion. I was also under the impression that batch sparging avoided this issue until reading it. Since I don’t know how to measure alkalinity on my own and also dilute with distilled, I trust Brunwater… :cheers:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=120939&start=15Ken, with the alkalinity of your tap water, acidifying the sparging water will be very helpful for all beers. Not just the pale ones. I prefer to bring the alkalinity of sparging water down to less than 25 ppm as CaCO3 to help avoid tannin extraction. If you sparge with ‘good’ RO water or distilled water, its alkalinity is already low enough and doesn’t need acidification. If you are diluting enough with that water, it could offset the need to acidify.
Just remember that regardless of the sparging water alkalinity, if you oversparge, you can end up extracting tannins. I prefer to end runoff at about 3 Brix to avoid tannin extraction. I had been stopping at 2 Brix and ended up with slight tannin astringency in a few brews.
[quote=“mabrungard”]Ken, with the alkalinity of your tap water, acidifying the sparging water will be very helpful for all beers. Not just the pale ones. I prefer to bring the alkalinity of sparging water down to less than 25 ppm as CaCO3 to help avoid tannin extraction. If you sparge with ‘good’ RO water or distilled water, its alkalinity is already low enough and doesn’t need acidification. If you are diluting enough with that water, it could offset the need to acidify.
Just remember that regardless of the sparging water alkalinity, if you oversparge, you can end up extracting tannins. I prefer to end runoff at about 3 Brix to avoid tannin extraction. I had been stopping at 2 Brix and ended up with slight tannin astringency in a few brews.[/quote]
Thanks Martin. Batch sparging here so no chance of oversparging but I’m going to be looking closer at the pH of the sparge water to try to keep everything in check. I have another batch coming up by the weekend. Thanks gang.
What pH should the sparge water be when batch sparging? The last brew I checked, my sparge water was 7.35, after dumping it in and mixing it up the mash was 5.7
My Monster mill is set to .030". I am using a bazooka tube in an Ice Cube and recirculate maybe a gallon tops. I make sure no large chunks or floaters but I am not overly fixated on clarity. That said, I typically have only a slight haze in the first run off (I can see my finger through line tho) but 2nd and 3rd are crystal clear (I can see my finger print). On a 5.5G batch it takes me about a half hour to complete. For some reason I have efficiency issues with a single sparge. BTW I now put the run offs into the kettle right away and bring to boil while I continue (saves me a half hour!)
Another point to consider is mash thickness and sparge volume liquor. I mash at 1.6qt/lb and this reduces sparge volume a bit less than half of total liquor. I believe the German brewers go as far as 2qt/lb. If someone used a 1qt/lb ratio and did not acidify sparge the problem could be exacerbated since the volume would be larger. I think sparge acidification provides some latitude to the process. I add boiling water to raise mash temp/mash out and have gone over in the tun around 180F before, as well as, I have miscalculated and over sparged and I have not run into astringency issues.
I think the easy answer is that your sparge pH (water mixed with grains) do not exceed 6.0. I personally shoot for 5.5 but it could also depend on the beer. In your example, was your grist pale, amber, dark, etc? Darker grains have natural acidity and can help to lower mash and sparge pH. Again, I go back to Kai’s pH page where he shows the two worts… one boiled at 5.5 (clear, pale, gold) and one at 6.5 (cloudy, dark, gray) and just shoot for 5.5. My goal on some upcoming beers will be to check the pH of my sparge water at room temp and then add acid so I can see it under 6.0 before I heat it and add it to the MT. By doing that, I should be safe not to approach 6.0 in the sparge. Remember too that my issues were in pale beers. I will still look at this for amber or darker beers but I probably won’t wring my hands over it because those grists will help me and… I have never had this nasty character in any beers other than ones around SRM 6 and lower. Cheers guys.
That should be OK AFAIK.
Beerheads: First off, thanks for the help. Second, I had two beers on deck that I was going to make: A pale-colored pale ale and then Jamil’s Vienna with 2308. I am making the pale ale this morning and I am pushing Jamil’s Vienna off in favor of a pilsner-like beer (Best Malz Pils, Best Malz Vienna, Magnum for bittering, Hallertau late) so I can employ some of this information. Jamil’s Vienna will come up later. On this pale ale, I got the mash pH to 5.3 and then futzed with the sparge water which originally clocked in at 6.8. I added 2.0ml of lactic acid to that water and it went down to 5.3 (I am told that adding acid to water alone will get you quicker and more abrupt results because there is nothing there [grains, etc] to buffer it). I will will proceed and I expect that the kettle pH won’t need adjusting. The pilsner I make over the weekend will follow the same procedure.
I’m going to say right here that I feel a little sheepish not getting a handle on this earlier. At this point, I don’t know that this was my issue but it seems very probable. I was fixated on the mash pH and kettle pH and assumed that anything that happened in between could be adjusted. That still may be true but I am going to find out. When I get these beers to a spot where I can sample them, I guarantee I will climb to the highest roof and scream the results… or I could just post them here… seems safer. If I get a good result from these, then the idea that you can’t extract tannins in a batch sparge can be debunked. Also, I have often had commercial beers and wondered about various characteristics of those beers. It could be pale ales, pilsners from Europe, American Red Lagers, etc. I think I now know that the character I have been trying to pinpoint is the flavor you get when the pH of the beer is low. I had some Stiegl Goldbrau last night which is a wimpy Austrian gold lager. It’s well made and has a distinct crisp, snappy flavor. I also took the pH of some finished beers over the weekend as an experiment. Many of mine were around 4.3-4.4. Some commercial examples were in the same area. But two beers that have a distinctively snappy, acidic bite to them (Stiegl from Austria and also Pacifico from Mexico) had a finished pH of around 4.0, 4.1. This is not a goal for all beers, clearly. But this is a flavor component that I had overlooked in the past. Another tool in the toolbox. Cheers gang.
Wow your arms must be a little Popeye-esque, eh Ken? I think I’ve only milled with my BC by hand once. I still have the handle just in case but I grind at full speed with my drill and haven’t noticed any difference. I only really pay attention to my pH in the mash and sparge with tap water. I’m pretty lucky with soft water/low alkalinity. Sometimes my clarity is a bit off but nothing the time and/or gelatin won’t fix.
I mill on the fast side (low speed on electric drill) and have no issues.
Many a good beer has been brewed without such attention to pH of mash or sparge, but it is highly unlikely that said beer would win when judged against one made with such adjustments.
[quote=“zwiller”]I mill on the fast side (low speed on electric drill) and have no issues.
Many a good beer has been brewed without such attention to pH of mash or sparge, but it is highly unlikely that said beer would win when judged against one made with such adjustments.[/quote]
Same here. I once heard that the faster you mill the more it increases the shear angle at which the grain hits the rollers, leading to a finer crush. That’s what I want so I run the drill at full speed.
Is it the PH of the sparge water or the Ph taken after the water is added that matters for tannin extraction? I use 100% distilled and build up with bru’n water. I’ve never paid much attention to sparge Ph and haven’t had any problems. If I remember right the one or two times I’ve checked it was close to what my mash PH was. Maybe its not Tannin extraction?
I agree with you that it’s strange. Stranger still is a pils I have on tap right now that was made with 8 gallons of water, 7 of which were distilled. This is not a good beer. It has that grainy, husky, harsh flavor and a pesky haze. It doesn’t seem possible for the sparge to have caused this problem in that beer. Yes, it was a very pale beer and yes there was some tap water/bicarb/alkalinity in that water and yes it was a full 4 gallons of untreated water (no salts, no acid). I can’t say what caused it if it wasn’t something in the sparge. But I will say this: I made another beer last Friday that was very pale and I got the mash pH correct and then acidified the sparge water. When the batch was done, the wort was the clearest and most pale wort I have ever made. Something was different. Sometime this weekend (possibly tonight) I am making another pilsner. It will have a mash pH of around 5.2, the sparge water will be acidified to around 5.5 and the kettle pH will be in the low-to-mid 5s and then we will see.
Was the good beer made with the same batch of grains?
Sorry but I’m not understanding that question.
Gang: Here’s an update. I have this blonde ale that I made with Rahr Pale Ale malt, 50% distilled water and my notes say that the mash pH was 5.2, the sparge pH was 5.7 (safe right?) and the kettle pH was 5.5. The good news is that this beer did not have the funky, harsh, grainy & husky flavor that some other pale beers had. The so-so news was that the beer was sort of flat-tasting and bland. I mentioned earlier that I had taken the pH of some finished beer so I thought… Hey, what if I tried to ‘back-acid’ this beer? Everything else about it was okay but it was just a little bland and some people might call it flabby. So I took a pint glass, put a drop of lactic acid in there and tapped a glass of this blonde ale. It was noticeably better. Crisper, brighter, snappier. I figured there are 40 pints in a 5-gallon keg so I went and dropped 40-45 drops (using a milliliter dropper) into the keg. It made the beer much, much better. At some point today I was watching a little Cactus League action and thought, Hey, I’ll take the pH of the beer! It came in at 4.1. Much like the others I mentioned. So in the past I might have made pale beers where I watched the mash pH and maybe the kettle pH but I wasn’t looking at the sparge pH and I probably wasn’t trying to lower the kettle pH for pale beers. It’s possible that if I get the mash pH and sparge pH correct, the kettle pH might take care of itself. This is another tool in the toolbox and something I’ll be looking at in future pale beers. Cheers Beerheads!
Gordon Strong mentions this in his book “Brewing Better Beer” about taking finished beer pH and adding back acid to get it in the right range. He said he rarely has to do it, but that he still checks. So it sounds like a good plan. I don’t do this…just really don’t want to get a pH meter.
Strong rarely adds acid to finished beer because his brewing liquor is acidified to 5.5 a la SN.
Happy to read of your success Ken. I am in the dial in mash and sparge pH and kettle should be fine camp.
I hadn’t heard that Strong mentioned this but it makes sense that you COULD do this if the beer needed it. I wouldn’t want to do it post-fermentation on a regular basis and it should be mentioned that a real problem during the mash, sparge, recirc, runoff or boil is not going to be corrected by this. This is just a ‘flavor enhancement’ and my goal is to have mash & sparge pH correct, get kettle pH right for the style and let the rest take care of itself. Very interesting and I probably should have connected these dots earlier.
[quote=“zwiller”]Strong rarely adds acid to finished beer because his brewing liquor is acidified to 5.5 a la SN.
Happy to read of your success Ken. I am in the dial in mash and sparge pH and kettle should be fine camp.[/quote]
Yeah, makes sense. I have back-chloride a beer, back sulfated, back-sweetened and now back-acided. None of them are goals of mine… I would rather have it correct by the time I boil but it’s interesting what happens when you start looking at some of these things. That elusive flavor I lacked in some pale (and maybe light-amber) beers was actually coming from a lower beer pH and I never knew it. Cheers guys.
Ken, was the funky, harsh, grainy & husky flavor beer made with Briess malt by any chance?
No. The latest one was made with Best Malz Pils. I haven’t used Briess in awhile. Mostly Rahr Pale Ale malt for ales and Best Malz Pils, Vienna and Munich for other things. Why? Did you hear something funky about Briess malts doing this? My guess is that I need to be slapped on the wrist for not understanding all of these relationships and I will say right now that I was being irresponsible with adding 4 gallons of untreated sparge water to pale beers (well all beers really… but the darker ones were okay) and it may have been 50% distilled, 25% distilled, etc. I think the pH of the sparge was causing this. On the last 2 pale lagers I just made the last 2 weekends, I was more careful and tasted the wort going into the primary… smooth, clean, clear, sweet. Cheers Beerheads.
