Adjusting Sparge Ph

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

GMK

BrewInn Barossa:~ Home to GMKenterprises ~
Joined
18/12/02
Messages
3,699
Reaction score
11
Hi,

Just a question on adjusting sparge PH...

I know some of you do adjust it...

What do you adjust it with -approx how much for 20ltrs.

Can you use lemon juice/citric acid ?

If so - how much - if not - why not...

Thanks for your replies....
 
Hi GMK

You really need some way of measuring the pH either with papers or a pH meter. To adjust the pH, the best way to do it is with phosphoric acid. Lemon juice, citric and tartaric acid all leave taint in the beer.

Cheers
Pedro
 
so lemon juice to adjust the PH in a carona clone is ok...

:D
 
Yes, as long it is the glass after it is served and not in the fermenter
 
If GMK uses Lemon juice, for example, does the lemon flavour come through as the taint??

Just curious
 
Yes, the same as it will when cooking. Beer is advanced cooking after all.....
 
So whats the diff if it goes in before or after???


The real question is why do you want to do a Corona clone in the first place GMK????? Any beer that needs fruit to make it decent is......Belgian????
 
I dont want to do a carona clone....
 
GMK said:
-approx how much for 20ltrs.
Hi GMK,

The how much part of your question will depend on your water and its buffering ability this is what keeps the PH stable, so you may use say a couple drops of this acid or that acid and nothing happens but after a couple more drops the PH may come crashing down.
So for this reason it would be hard to estimate how much you'll need.
Just had a little at a time and keep measuring.
Or even easier just batch sparge and your mash/sparge PH will not rise too high.

:chug:
Jayse
 
I use tartaric, and find that it does a nice job (with my water) and does not taint the beer.
As to how much.... I tested the system once to see how much I need, and have not checked it since, but i know that I am at least making a difference.

I make a solution - 5g of tartaric acid in 250mL of water. I then add approximately 50mL of this solution to each 22L of brewing water. This brings my pH down from around 7.7 to 6.1.

I only bother with this when making pale beers, as the dark malts do most of the work for you.

Dreamboat
 
Why could you not just add hops to the mash?

The acid extraction is minimal and can be done safely.

Additionally, the aroma and flavour compounds developed from hops at mash temps are extremely stable and will withstand the boil.

This is an old coopers method and also an old German brewing method and also complies with the purity law.

Regards
Dave
 
Or even add some acidulated malt.

Doc
 
GMK,
I use to use citric acid, but have since moved on to Phosphoric as someone at our club (devilsaltarboy) organised a bulk supply to raise some money for us...
I never noticed ay flavours associated with the citric acid in the amounts I was using. If you have no way of measuring pH, a good starting point would be about 1/2 a teaspoon for 20 litres of water. This will bring the pH from 7 to somewhere below 6, which is better than nothing at all.....


Asher for now
 
i use rain water - dont have a ph meter

Also always have hops in the mash...

will need to borrow a ph meter i think...
 
I don't bother measuring the pH of my sparge water, but then again I stop sparging when the last runnings are at 1020.

Jovial Monk
 
Probably doesn't add too much to this thread but I happened to use a pH meter the first time with my last brew. Melbourne water is very soft and pils malts apparently don't have the pH lowering power of darker varieties.

It was more out of curiosity (I wanted to play with pH meter) since batch sparging apparently has little risk of the pH rising too high.

I added a few drops (less than 1/4 teaspoon) of phos acid to my HLT (containing about 20 litres) and it lowered the pH from 6.83 to 6.57.

The runoff from the one and only batch sparge was pH 5.87. Based on this I will probably add more phos acid next time to lower it more.

For water with higher mineral content, there are other additives that can be added which can precipitate out stuff, lowering the pH. I think this is the way that calcium chloride works.
 
sosman said:
For water with higher mineral content, there are other additives that can be added which can precipitate out stuff, lowering the pH. I think this is the way that calcium chloride works.
The way calcium lowers the PH is it reacts with the phosphate ions in the grain to form hydrogen ions.
The PH scale is a measure of these ions and the more there is the lower the PH.

This is a very basic view of how it works anyway.

Jayse
 
Back
Top