pH meters and mash pH

cfbugsbunny · Post by **cfbugsbunny** » Wed May 25, 2011 7:02 am

As a newbie to All-grain I am noticing a number of topics on the internet regarding mash pH and how important it is for successful brewing. Do any of you utilize a pH meter? If not how do you monitor mash pH? Do you need to monitor mash pH? As a side note, I purchased some of the 5.2 ph buffer from five star but I am beginning to wonder if this was just snake oil and it really won't have much of an effect. I haven't tried yet and that's because I haven't brewed my first all-grain yet. Oh the woes of a newbie trying to learn everything all at once.

brownbeard · Post by **brownbeard** » Wed May 25, 2011 8:19 am

I never check mash PH. Never have.

Matt F · Post by **Matt F** » Wed May 25, 2011 8:27 am

I use CR tap water treated with a campden tablet. I use to check mash PH when I started doing all grain with the cheap test strips. It was always around 5.2 to 5.4 so I stopped checking it. Haven't check the PH for many years.

hoboscratch · Post by **hoboscratch** » Wed May 25, 2011 8:39 am

I just recently started entering CR tap water info into the 3 popular water spreadsheets out there (Bru'n Water, EZwatercalculator, Palmer's) along with my recipes, and almost all of my prior recipes could have benefited from a little bit of pH adjustment. Sometimes it was just a touch high, like into the 5.6-5.7 range. However, I usually cut my recipes with about 75% CR tap water and 25% bottled water, sometimes 50/50. I should probably go with the Campden tablets route. Would be cheaper and probably drop the pH as much as the bottled water.

carrisr · Post by **carrisr** » Wed May 25, 2011 8:48 am

Adjusting pH and water profiling is not something I would worry about as a new brewer. There are far more important things to get a handle on that will have a bigger impact on your brewing. I can relate to the desire to learn everything at once; I've been in that same place for the last year and only recently started to feel confident with my brewing process.

I don't currently have a pH meter, but it's high on my list of things I want to get. Right now I'm using the Bru'n Water spreadsheet to estimate mash pH and trusting it's in the range. From the feedback posted from testers it seems to be very close. However, it would be nice to know for sure.

As far as the 5.2 product goes, most of the home brew "experts" have all said that they feel the product is of dubious benefit. In testing they've found that it works OK with some types of beers, but not well at all with others. It also adds a fair amount of sodium and phosphate which can be undesireable. Most have said they think you are much better off setting your water profile for the flavor you want and then adjust pH as needed. To me I find it very hard to buy into the idea of a "magic bullet" that gives you perfect water every time.

But if you really want to learn more about water, or basic brewing topics, I'd be happy to have you over for a brew day, or get together and go over some things. I've done quite a lot of research on water and I'd be happy to share. It's just too much to cover here.

On Wednesday 25 May 2011 8:02:22 am you wrote:

As a newbie to All-grain I am noticing a number of topics on the internet
regarding mash pH and how important it is for successful brewing. Do any
of you utilize a pH meter? If not how do you monitor mash pH? Do you need
to monitor mash pH? As a side note, I purchased some of the 5.2 ph buffer
from five star but I am beginning to wonder if this was just snake oil and
it really won't have much of an effect. I haven't tried yet and that's
because I haven't brewed my first all-grain yet. Oh the woes of a newbie
trying to learn everything all at once.

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TappedOut · Post by **TappedOut** » Wed May 25, 2011 10:20 am

Just to join the chorus -- a pH meter would be a fun toy to play with, but is far from necessary, especially if just starting out w/ all-grain. I have some colorpHast strips that I have occasionally used to confirm that the pH was about where I thought it was going to be. Again, not necessary. CR water is pretty versatile for most beer styles without any adjustments. If you are brewing with the ground-up rocks Marion puts in their water lines, you probably need to be more careful.

Mr T · Post by **Mr T** » Wed May 25, 2011 10:40 am

I picked up a nice one for cider making...but haven't used it. Looks like a pain to keep calibrated.
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TappedOut <brew-tech@crbeernuts.org> wrote:

Just to join the chorus -- a pH meter would be a fun toy to play with, but is far from necessary, especially if just starting out w/ all-grain. I have some colorpHast strips that I have occasionally used to confirm that the pH was about where I thought it was going to be. Again, not necessary. CR water is pretty versatile for most beer styles without any adjustments. If you are brewing with the ground-up rocks Marion puts in their water lines, you probably need to be more careful.

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jjbuck · Post by **jjbuck** » Wed May 25, 2011 10:56 am

Speaking as a chemistry teacher with 15 years experience, the affordable pH meters (less than $100) are extremely iffy on accuracy, a pain to calibrate and kept claibrated, and in a high school lab are used to see trends of change during titrations and equilibrium reactions. If you didn't pay more than $100 for the probe you probably don't want to bet the farm on the accuracy of the reading.

cfbugsbunny · Post by **cfbugsbunny** » Wed May 25, 2011 3:42 pm

thanks. I can save the money on this and.... buy more beerkits!!

tompb · Post by **tompb** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:26 pm

For the price of a cheap PH meter I'd spend the money on a digital temp controller for a frig. Controlled fermentation temp will make more of a difference in a beer.

karl · Post by **karl** » Fri May 27, 2011 6:50 pm

Worrying about pH, in my experience as an all-grain brewer, doesn't help. Remember, worrying hurts the beer. Relax, have a homebrew! (paraphrasing Papazian)

Anyway, the scientific mumbo-jumbo says that the modern modified grains typically used in microbrew and homebrews is designed to work well in typical municipal water supplies. Worrying about pH is really only a big deal if you're working with historic grain varieties or 6-row barley strains.

You might think about mineral content relative to style (e.g. adding some Burton salts if making a Newcastle brown clone), but otherwise playing with pH doesn't help. I bought a pH meter once and ran a number of batches correcting the pH prior to mashing and my yields actually went down. And the flavor was just a little off.

My advice: buy good malt. (I like Briess 2-row.) Use a full volume boil. And, enjoy not fretting about it.

carrisr · Post by **carrisr** » Fri May 27, 2011 7:14 pm

Karl,
While I agree that buying a pH meter is not the first place for a new brewer to start, I have to disagree that mash pH is not important. All of the top home brewing experts (Palmer, Zainashef, Conn, Strong, Brungard, etc.) advocate for adjusting mash pH. They say, however, that many people "over treat" their water by going overboard adding mineral salts. This is usually because they are not treating for pH, but rather they are trying to follow published historical water profiles, such as Munich or Burton. Many of these are of dubious accuracy.

You said you corrected pH prior to mashing: do you mean you adjusted the pH of your water that you added to the mash or the pH of the mash?

Modern grains high a higher diastatic power and so step mashes have become less necessary but I've not seen anything that indicates that they have a different affect on pH.

Again, I think there are plenty of other things a new brewer should work on long before they worry about water and pH. It's all about control really. Many people become all grain brewers because they want more control of their recipe and process. Water treatment is just another aspect of that.

On Friday 27 May 2011 7:50:18 pm you wrote:

Worrying about pH, in my experience as an all-grain brewer, doesn't help.
Remember, worrying hurts the beer. Relax, have a homebrew! (paraphrasing
Papazian)

Anyway, the scientific mumbo-jumbo says that the modern modified grains
typically used in microbrew and homebrews is designed to work well in
typical municipal water supplies. Worrying about pH is really only a big
deal if you're working with historic grain varieties or 6-row barley
strains.

You might think about mineral content relative to style (e.g. adding some
Burton salts if making a Newcastle brown clone), but otherwise playing
with pH doesn't help. I bought a pH meter once and ran a number of
batches correcting the pH prior to mashing and my yields actually went
down. And the flavor was just a little off.

My advice: buy good malt. (I like Briess 2-row.) Use a full volume boil.
And, enjoy not fretting about it.

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Matt F · Post by **Matt F** » Sat May 28, 2011 11:46 am

You are correct Randy, mash PH is important. My experience using CR tap water is you don't have to worry about it because everytime I have tested my mash ph it was in an acceptable range. Most of you have tasted the results of that practice so you can be the judge. I have had good results in brewing contests with both CR tap water treated with campden tablets and filling the 5 gallon jugs at Hy-Vee.

The basic thing to remember which is emphasized by the experts you mention is if your water tastes good already, you are probably better off not messing with it too much.

karl · Post by **karl** » Sat May 28, 2011 8:07 pm

Ok. You are right.

pH is important. But we typically don't need to worry about it. Here's why:

My experience was with correcting the pH of the strike water prior to doughing-in. This involved testing the water (which read 8.2 out of the tap) Correcting this to a specified pH with a small amount of acid (usually lactic acid) to a value relative to charted values typical of style and recipe. Then mashing in and checking the pH again (just for record keeping). Suppose the target style calls for a water pH of 7.4 to hit a mash pH of 5.6. I corrected the water to 7.4 and whammo the mash was 4.8.

After checking with a experts at a couple of homebrew shops and reading a couple of articles, it seems that modern, highly-modified grain contains enough chemicals to acidulate the mash without correction when using water from typical municipal water supplies.

I stopped correcting the water, leaving it at 8.2 pH out of the tap, And upon measuring the pH of the mash would typically hit 5.4 or 5.5.

However, when using 6-row or historic strains, these apparently do not acidulate the malt on their own. Thus, correction may be necessary when using these more esoteric grains.

If you're not on a municipal water supply, the tap water pH may not be the typical 8.2 or 8.3 range. And, yes, you may need to correct the pH by using minerals or acids as necessary.

Mr T · Post by **Mr T** » Sat May 28, 2011 10:31 pm

I'm at el bait shop dm....just looking for some beer ideas..list too long..crashing this post.

Ph meters rock...

Sent from my U.S. CellularÂ® Android phone

karl <brew-tech@crbeernuts.org> wrote:

Ok. You are right. pH is important. But we typically don't need to worry about it. Here's why:

My experience was with correcting the pH of the strike water prior to doughing-in. This involved testing the water (which read 8.2 out of the tap) Correcting this to a specified pH with a small amount of acid (usually lactic acid) to a value relative to charted values typical of style and recipe. Then mashing in and checking the pH again (just for record keeping). Suppose the target style calls for a water pH of 7.4 to hit a mash pH of 5.6. I corrected the water to 7.4 and whammo the mash was 4.8.

After checking with a experts at a couple of homebrew shops and reading a couple of articles, it seems that modern, highly-modified grain contains enough chemicals to acidulate the mash without correction when using water from typical municipal water supplies.

I stopped correcting the water, leaving it at 8.2 pH out of the tap, And upon measuring the pH of the mash would typically hit 5.4 or 5.5.

However, when using 6-row or historic strains, these apparently do not acidulate the malt on their own. Thus, correction may be necessary when using these more esoteric grains.

If you're not on a municipal water supply, the tap water pH may not be the typical 8.2 or 8.3 range. And, yes, you may need to correct the pH by using minerals or acids as necessary.

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