What’s Brewin’?

Ifn it’s a 5-er… It’ll have some horse power… I wonder how a 1/4# chocolate wheat may play with your grainbill… I’ve been imbibing in darker brews… Maybe my mind set… I’m doin’ some pondering… Sneezles61

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Yeh its 5 gallons should have specified. 1.080 OG something like 8 percent. A little winter prep on the west coast

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Brewed up a standard saison Monday. Looking forward to how it will turn out and if it’s something we’ll want to pursue on a higher level.

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What do you guys think of mixing half distilled and half spring water with no additions?

You can and should X-beerment… To me… Tinkering with the mash pH is the best place to start… Get a meter, testing solution some phosphoric acid and baking soda… Once you get a handle on that, then you can tinker with the salts… Which I don’t do… Sneezles61

I have a meter. What is the phosphoric acid and baking soda for? Calibrating?

Acid will reduce pH and baking soda will increase pH. I use lactic acid as it’s stronger than phosphoric acid. However, if you have to use more than 1mL per gallon you might start tasting it. But if you need to use that much to get to the correct pH you should look into cutting with distilled water.

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Cool. I’ll just start taking a ph measurement after the mash just to see where I’m at. I’ve never messed with my water other than adding campden.
I just read a water report and portlands water is so soft. We have 10 ppm of alkalinity as CaC03 and 7 ppm hardness as CaC03. Kind of odd that pilsners arent more popular than ipas here. Anyways, looking forward to doing this dopplebock and letting it age for several months at lager temps along with a vienna lager I made last weekend.

Do you have to add Campden tablets? I equate IPAs popularity with the higher alcohol content.

When I first started tinkering with mash pH… I went under the 5.2- 5.6… So then baking soda brought it back up… With my water, I’m correcting to 5.9 there abouts for very light colored brews… Pre-mash. Once the grist is added I end up very close to 5.2. Dark brews I don’t do anything… Sneezles61

I think understanding YOUR water composition is the utmost importance when treating water. Without that understanding you might as well not treat it at all as you don’t know how to treat it.

With that, you shouldn’t need to lower the pH with acid then add baking soda to raise the pH. You should target a pH with the addition of your grains. The darker the grain the more acidic it is and will therefore drop the pH naturally.

If you don’t need much to treat your water to reduce pH you could also use acidulated malt. Every 1% of the grain bill will drop your mash pH by 0.1 point.

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Good points Loopie… But if your not as good at understanding scientific numbers and their meanings, like me, you still want to dabble in this, you go about it slowly… Record your results… It’ll help the next time you brew… Always always calibrate your meter… I do every brew day while I’m setting up…
Sneezles61

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If you have a municipal water report and a pH meter then you’re ready to go. Don’t guess at anything. Using your water’s pH and your grain bill Brunwater will tell you exactly what your mash pH will be.

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I have to use campden because of chloramines in our city water. I just downloaded John palmer’s water adjustment app and it makes building water seem much more simple. Thinking about doing a back to back brew of the same exact beer. First one will be with my city water, and second will be built from distilled according to style.

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Don’t know that app. Never used it. I have tried the water adjustment features in BS3 and found it’s calculation of pH adjustments to be WAY OFF. I trust brunwater because I’ve used it and validated it with a meter about 100 times. Brunwater looks intimidating at first but it’s really quite easy to use.

I tried downloading brunwater on my phone but it wont open. This one is called palmer’s brewing water adjustment app.

Brunwater is an excel spreadsheet with lots of built in macros. Yea, won’t work on your phone unless you can run excel then it would be very hard to read. haha

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I’ll download it to the macbook this weekend and give it a shot.

If you use RO water or distilled, then you may not need a pH meter other than to show you it does work… I have a hard time believing that well and city water never changes its pH …
Therefore and foremost, the need to check your water pH so you can “dial in” pre treatment… It’s really fun stuff!! Sneezles61

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Yeh palmer doesnt really focus on ph as much as all the other aspects. So much to learn. I just want to make my beer better and thought I’d start with water now that I’ve got fermentation under control and I’m doing co2 transfers from primary to keg.

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