Water Ph

I read Gordon Strong's Brewing Better Beer a few months ago and found his take on water interesting.  I say this because it seems to slightly contradict what we've learned from Palmer and others about making sure the mash, not the water, has the right Ph.  For those who haven't read the book, Gordon actually suggests making sure water is treated to a proper Ph. 

I've been using Brun Water to calculate my water treatment and it seems to use the method of analyzing current water profile with grist profile to arrive at an estimated Ph.  I'm hitting my numbers so conversion is happening but that's not to say my beer  couldn't be better. 

I'm interested in anyone's thoughts on this topic who has also read this book.

Thanks

I read Gordon's book a while back and it was then that I realized there was more to ensuring proper pH than I'd previously thought. He seems to take the details a little deeper than other authorities on the subject.

Having your pH in-range for the mash is important for proper (and efficient) conversion, and making sure your runnings don't creep much above pH 5.8 will ensure you are minimizing the risk of increased solubility of polyphenols (or tannins).

This led me to do the calculations in Brun' Water for my mash according to my grain bill and my current water profile, but also calculate the acid addition to correct my sparge water (using just that volume of my existing water profile) so that volume comes to pH 5.5.

Sparging my pH 5.3 mash with pH 5.5 water pretty much guarantees I'm not going to get tannins from this part of the process, even when running all the way down to SG 1.010.

If you treat the mash and then forget to treat the sparge water, perhaps it was all for nothing. Strong says he has fairly hard water which means a mistake could have implications. Plus he learned the trick at Seirra Nevada brew camp, so perhaps he is simply awestruck on the concept.

For some it might be better to not chance getting too low on PH because it also effects proteins ability to coagulate.

Gordon spoke at NHC and mentioned he often (always?) runs the mash on the base and mashable grains only, and adds the already-converted crystals and roasted grains before sparging.  So, he's working to a different pH target on a lighter mash SRM. 

I found that interesting, since not all dark roasted grains are the same in flavor or acidity.  I think I will try that approach on my next stout, b/c I have to use quite a bit of baking soda on stouts with my low-mineral water here.  Sometimes the salt level gets higher than I'd like. 

I've also come to believe that water tinkering is one of those things we can take to gnat's a$$ level and go way past the point of diminishing returns.  I think experienced brewers should do it for the yeast performance/health and to shape the chloride:sulfate ratio to suit the beer style, but it's easy to reach "good enough." 

It's similar to using yeast nutrient......so cheap it's silly not to, but not worth over-analyzing.  My two cents.

philm63 said:

Sparging my pH 5.3 mash with pH 5.5 water pretty much guarantees I'm not going to get tannins from this part of the process, even when running all the way down to SG 1.010.

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If works for  Sierra Nevada Brewing, it works. After reading Brewing Better Beer by Gordon Strong, I have also been treating my entire brewing water volume from 5.3 - 5.5 pH and have had excellent results. I am still a little geeky about building my water from RO & like the simplicity of using the BrewSmith calculator. I appreciate everything Gordon shared with the brewing community.

I am patiently waiting for John Palmer's new publication in November.

I do think Strong and Palmer are consistent given that Strong usually mashes only his base malts.  It makes sense that if you aren't going to mash the dark grains then then treated mash water, when mixed with just those base grains will only come down a little since there isn't much buffering from just the base grains.  My guess is that the two would agree but he has adapted his water treatment to be consistent with his mash procedure.  I wonder what he would do if he mashed his dark grains?  If he would still treat his mash water to 5.3-5.5?  I'm guessing he really couldn't right?  That would almost assuredly bring the ph too low given the acidity of the dark malts. 

I have tried the late addition technique for crystal and dark malts. My mash out is a 20 min rise to 168 degrees, and that's when I added them. I never got the color I wanted so I had to up the % of the dark malts. I am not a fan of dark malts, so I just went back to mashing at lower %.
I am just not in the mood to experiment.

RiverBrewer said:

I have tried the late addition technique for crystal and dark malts. My mash out is a 20 min rise to 168 degrees, and that's when I added them. I never got the color I wanted so I had to up the % of the dark malts. I am not a fan of dark malts, so I just went back to mashing at lower %.
I am just not in the mood to experiment.

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I tried the dark malts thing twice, I haven't had either beer yet but one seemed to go okay and the other was a disaster.  The nightmare was when I tried adding the dark malts to a no-sparge stout I was trying.  My efficiency was low and the color was barely a brown ale, definitely not a stout.  Emergency surgery had mad take every bit of dark malt I had laying around and do a quick cold extraction through a french press.  Of course, as luck would have it, the dark malt I had laying around consisted of mostly black patent (some chocolate and some barley but mostly black patent).  Although I got the color I wanted my fear is that its going to end up being a bit bitter.  To get the gravity up, I ended up throwing in the dextrose I had laying around for priming and some raw sugar I had left over from a beer I made a while ago.  It got the gravity up a bit but not where it should have been.  Finally, I did a cold extraction of some coffee and added it to the secondary in hopes that it will add enough character to hopefully off set any bitterness I'll be getting from the dark malts I cold extracted.  When I tasted it when moving from primary to secondary it actually didn't taste half bad (which means a little better than half good I guess?) but of course the coffee had yet to be mixed with the stout so I'm not really sure what to expect.  If its drinkable I'll be pretty happy to tell you the truth.  If it turns out 'ok' or 'meh' I'll be really pleased

I tried it again with a porter but I made sure I did my usual sparge routine.  It seemed to work much better and I also mashed the crystal malts since my water is alkaline, those help to bring the pH down.