Does adding lactic acid have any adverse effect

[Ckilner]

I'm doing some water adjustment to get my water to a pale ale type which means I need to get the calcium level from 25ppm (my water supply after decarbonation) to 140ppm.
It's only 25 litres that I'm treating and I can get to the desired levels but to adjust the mash pH to 5.4 (ish) I need to add 200g of acid malt and 8ml of lactic acid. In the past few brews i've only used 100g acid malt and 3ml of lactic acid.
Do you think that winding these both up will have mess up the flavour?

 

[ashley_leask]

It possibly would, the taste threshold for acid malt is up in the air (http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lactate_Taste_Threshold_experiment), but keeping under 5% is recommended in that link. I believe lactic is the acid product generated during the creation of acid malt, so it would combine with the addition of lactic acid in terms of whether it got to the level you could taste.

Have you thought about using salts like calcium sulphate and/or calcium chloride as part of the process to get your pH to where you need it? My water looks to be similar to yours in calcium concentration and I use 12g of those two salts, in a blend depending on the beer type, along with up to 100g acid malt (only for the palest beers) to get my pH to around 5.4 for a 17.5L mash with around 5kg of grain.

Google the EZ Water spreadsheet, and enter your water profile information, that should give you a good place to start, from there it's just experimentation for your taste and your system & process.

 

[manticle]

Anything in too large an amount will present itself in the taste - calcium salts included.

Get your calcium levels where you want them, balance your sulphate : chloride ratio for the beer you are making then adjust pH with food grade acid if required.

I rarely need to use acid and when I do, it's a smidge so I can't answer your question based on experience but the more you can spread the things used to drive pH down, the less you'll taste one particular thing. Acid is more effective in dropping pH than calcium salts but calcium levels can be reasonably high before they start wreaking havoc with the beer.

I'd be inclined to go with what you have calculated and adjust next time if you find the flavour component too pronounced.

 

[mabrungard]

If you have decarbonated the water already and the calcium content has fallen to 25 ppm, then there is little chance that the alkalinity is very high. It's quite unlikely that proper dosing of lactic acid for that water will produce a taste effect. The median taste threshold for lactate in humans is around 300 to 400 ppm. Since lactic acid is monoprotic, every ppm of bicarbonate that needs to be neutralized with acid will leave one ppm of lactate in the water. By the way, bicarbonate concentration is 1.22 times the alkalinity (as CaCO3).

Since malt and yeast can also impart lactate to the beer, it makes sense to NOT assume that you can add 300 or 400 ppm lactate and be able to get away with it. I prefer to council brewers to avoid adding more than 200 ppm lactate. That is a fair amount of bicarbonate and alkalinity, so most brewers can get away with using lactic acid in many tap waters.

Of course you should investigate Bru'n Water for your water adjustment calculations and also visit the Water Knowledge page to pick up more info on water treatment.

 

[McFeast]

Geez. Sounds like lots of efgort for 25 litres! Reckon its time you upped the batches to 250 litres to make it all worth while!
But on a serious note, good on you for going the extra mile to make your water better for your beer styles. Im lazily jealous of you Ckilner! (One day..)

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[ricardo]

I use Sydney water which is very soft and i would suspect similar to yours (does anywhere have hard water in Oz?).

I brewed at the weekend and found that i didn't need any lactic acid in the mash as the grains (total grain bill 8kg with 800g of dark malts) and salts i was using to raise calcium and sulphate levels were taking me under the correct pH range. I had to add a small amount of bicarbonate soda to get into the correct pH range of 5.3 or 5.6 at room temperature.

What i did need it for was my sparge water to which i also added brewing salts. Total lactic acid i used for 30 liters of sparge water was 1.5 ml and that brought me down to pH 6 although i'm not sure what the ideal pH range for sparge water is?

 

[manticle]

OP is in UK but having decarbonated the water it is presumably fairly soft. Sparge water shouldn't be horribly alakiline mainly so I reckon yours sounds ok (mildly acid). I'd have to look up recommendations to refresh my memory but no alarm bells are ringing. What was your sparge water before adding anything?

 

[Ckilner]

If you have decarbonated the water already and the calcium content has fallen to 25 ppm, then there is little chance that the alkalinity is very high. It's quite unlikely that proper dosing of lactic acid for that water will produce a taste effect. The median taste threshold for lactate in humans is around 300 to 400 ppm. Since lactic acid is monoprotic, every ppm of bicarbonate that needs to be neutralized with acid will leave one ppm of lactate in the water. By the way, bicarbonate concentration is 1.22 times the alkalinity (as CaCO3).

Since malt and yeast can also impart lactate to the beer, it makes sense to NOT assume that you can add 300 or 400 ppm lactate and be able to get away with it. I prefer to council brewers to avoid adding more than 200 ppm lactate. That is a fair amount of bicarbonate and alkalinity, so most brewers can get away with using lactic acid in many tap waters.

Of course you should investigate Bru'n Water for your water adjustment calculations and also visit the Water Knowledge page to pick up more info on water treatment.

I've been using your water adjustment calculator on the last few brews and each time the mash pH has been right on target. On this next brew I thought I'd get as close as I can to the Pale Ale Profile so to do that I need to raise the Calcium level. Since my original post I've tweaked the numbers a bit more and now have acid malt to 100g and lactic acid at 7ml which gives me a mash pH of 5.5 which I think is OK. From what you say the level of lactic acid won't be detectable in the finished brew so that's good.

 

[ricardo]

OP is in UK but having decarbonated the water it is presumably fairly soft. Sparge water shouldn't be horribly alakiline mainly so I reckon yours sounds ok (mildly acid). I'd have to look up recommendations to refresh my memory but no alarm bells are ringing. What was your sparge water before adding anything?

My water report shows a pH of 8 but the actual pH meter tells me it's 7.5, quite a difference!!

 

[manticle]

Water report works on averaging out a bunch of data points taken over time so that seeming discrepancy makes sense.

 

[ashley_leask]

Water report works on averaging out a bunch of data points taken over time so that seeming discrepancy makes sense.

Depending on the accuracy of your meter it may be within the error margin as well.