I just got myself a PH Meter as an early Christmas gift.
I got the PH4 and PH 7 calibration vials with it.
Any pointers on how to use it?
When should I measure my mash, and what should it read?
I’m fixin’ to brew a British bitter.
Thanks
I have one not a fancy one but it seems to work alright. A few things that I deduced, which means I may be wrong, but you have to check the mash water at about 15 minutes at room temp. So it’s to late to do anything about the mash in progress so keep notes so the next or similar batch you can make adjustments. As far as calibration after you get it calibrated check the ph of your tap water and record that . Your tap water ph probably won’t change so you can calibrate against that.
Thanks, Brew_cat.
I checked the mash when I first mashed in, and let the temp settle to about 90 degrees. The reading was 5.26. I used 1tsp of gypsum, and 1 tsp of Calcium chloride. I’m thinking 1/2 tsp of each next batch. Any suggestions are welcome.
That seems like a great mash ph, what ph are you looking for
Honestly, not sure. This brew is a British bitter, not a lot of grains or hops. Pretty light.
Those are reasonable salt additions for a british pale ale. I tend to use more gypsum than CaCl for hoppy beers like bitters and pale ales, and more CaCl for malt forward beers. My water tends to be a little too alkaline for pale beers, so I use my pH meter to check my mash and sparge water before use, and adjust the pH of the mash water down to about 5.8. Generally hit a mash pH of 5.1-5.2 with my water and a pale ale or bitters with some crystal malt. I adjust the sparge water to about 5.2 to avoid raising the pH too much during sparging, although I may not really need to worry about it so much. It’s quick and easy to do though.
Depends greatly on how you sparge. Batch sparging doesn’t require as much treatment as it’s over quickly. Fly sparging needs more buffering ability as it takes longer. With that said I don’t see a problem treating water for batch sparging.
Yeah, I don’t think it is absolutely necessary, especially for batch sparging, but I think it may keep the resulting pH of the wort where I want it. Haven’t done any controlled experiments, but it doesn’t take much time or effort to adjust the pH either. I have a friend in our local club who hasn’t been happy with the beers he made here since he moved a couple of years ago, and I suspect the difference is he has not been worrying about water chemistry (our water is moderately high in carbonates, low in calcium, chloride, and sulfates). Adding some salts and adjusting pH seems to make a noticeable difference with our water, just a matter of deciding how you want to do it.
