Rarh malting and acidification

My local store started carrying Rarh so I picked up a bag this fall. On brew day what I thought I had calculated as mash pH of 5.2-5.3 at room temp, (I messed up, should have been aiming for 5.4) turned out to be a room temp pH of 4.96. I checked w/ my store and they had no answer other than a discussion on variations of the local water supply during the seasons. Then the possibily of a lactic bacteria in the malt came up.

Skip ahead to today, I saw in Bru’n Water that Rarh malting may “pre-acidify” their base malts.

While I could pm Martin, I thought maybe others might have a way around this. In Bru’n Water, it mentions that Rarh Malting may pre-acidify thier base malt. Off the top of my head, If all things were equal, I would just plan on a difference of -.4 or so when using one of these base malts as the bulk of the grist.

Is this what others do or is there a method out there?

Edit: I guess the difference might actually be closer to a pH of .2-.3. Not a huge deal but if you make an error like I did, the combination can really affect the end results.

Check this out…

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/f ... ic=14478.0

[quote=“Denny”]Check this out…

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/f ... ic=14478.0[/quote]

Thanks Denny.

It probably would not have been much of a problem if I hadn’t brain farted and set my mash pH target as room temp in the calculator. (or am I getting them backwards again. :roll: )
Combine the two and I was way low.

On the bright side I know the cause.

the second half of the bag I used towards 11 gallons of Mullerbrau two-hearted w/ some minor adjustments to compensate as best as I could guess for the malt pH. I was still a touch low on pH but it turned out great.

Thanks for this. I use Rahr 2-row for maybe half my brews and I had no idea. I stopped checking mash pH regularly after I was satisfied Bru’n Water was getting me in the right ballpark consistently.

Great post…just about 24 hours too late! My first use was yesterday and did come up with a pH of 4.9. Thank God I didn’t have my usual acid malt or this would be lower. So far, so good. By the way, the White Labs Super San Diego is the most active yeast at 24 hours I have ever used!

[quote=“Denny”]Check this out…

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/f ... ic=14478.0[/quote]

Wow, great link, Denny.