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Acid Additions for Mashing

JackC

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Hey Everyone,

I am using 0.88 Lactic acid to drop my mash pH to 5.2 and I wanted to clear up something from one of the boxes in BS2. In the Mash tab on the bottom right, it allows you to select an acid type, your current pH, and your target pH. When you hover your cursor over the "Mash Acid Amount" box, it says "Amount of acid to add to adjust pH for mash conversion step." Is the amount it shows just for the strike water, or for all of the water you're going to use? I'm assuming it's just for the strike water. Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers!
 

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JackC said:
Hey Everyone,

I am using 0.88 Lactic acid to drop my mash pH to 5.2 and I wanted to clear up something from one of the boxes in BS2. In the Mash tab on the bottom right, it allows you to select an acid type, your current pH, and your target pH. When you hover your cursor over the "Mash Acid Amount" box, it says "Amount of acid to add to adjust pH for mash conversion step." Is the amount it shows just for the strike water, or for all of the water you're going to use? I'm assuming it's just for the strike water. Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers!

You would be correct, also go lightly on the acid it can cause a off flavor in your beer if you use too much.
 
The amount shown is for the strike water as you had guessed.  The box under that is the acid recommendation for the sparge water. 

Please note CK27's warning about the acid.  From the reporting of several sources, it appears that the recommendation BeerSmith is giving is about 4x to 5x too high. 

 
CK27 and Oginme,

Thanks for the speedy responses! I will take care to avoid adding too much acid. I have read this warning from many different places. Luckily for us, we added the acid (6mL as shown in my attached image) to the entire volume of water being used. So it should be okay. Today's brew is identical to one we made last week, due to extraction issues, so if both finished beers have a similar off-flavor that lactic acid gives off, I will reduce the volume significantly.
 
JackC said:
CK27 and Oginme,

Thanks for the speedy responses! I will take care to avoid adding too much acid. I have read this warning from many different places. Luckily for us, we added the acid (6mL as shown in my attached image) to the entire volume of water being used. So it should be okay. Today's brew is identical to one we made last week, due to extraction issues, so if both finished beers have a similar off-flavor that lactic acid gives off, I will reduce the volume significantly.

Sounds good :) let us know how it turns out
 
sorry if I seem a little dense on this issue.  The water profile of our local water district changed and now my pH is 5.74.  Until this change I never needed to adjust the pH.  So, do I add the lactic acid to the HLT as I heat the water up for the MLT?  Or, do I mash as usual and only add lactic acid to the sparge water?
 
Is that your mash pH or the water pH?  if it is the mash pH and you want to bring it down a little, then add some more acid to the mash water (your HLT).  If you use BeerSmith for acid adjustments, go easy on the recommendation, as it seems to over estimate the amount of acid needed.  Make sure that you enter your entire water profile into BeerSmith in order to get a good recommendation on the addition rate.
 
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