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Moving from Bru'n to BeerSmith2 - where's the pH?

jsbull

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In the past, I have used Bru'n Water to get my water right, and have liked it. BeerSmith certainly makes things easier since it's all under one roof, and I'd like to just use it. However, I'm struggling with the mineral additions vs pH. I've read several posts on this across the web, but still can't get my mind around it.

So, you have a water profile of your local water. Mine is 8.6 pH and lacks in Ca, Mg and SO4.
Then you have a profile that you want to match. Let's use Yellow Full as an example.

I can use the Water Profile Tool to match it and it tells me for each 10 gallons to add .4g of Table Salt, 3.3g of Epsom Salt and 4.1g of Calcium Chloride. That's awesome. However, what did that do to my pH? PH isn't listed anywhere there. When I save this as a profile, it just puts 8.0 in as the pH. That's not correct. It's not always 8.0 after every addition to every style with my city water.

So, let's take that to a recipe. It pulls the water into the recipe, which also has the grains entered. The mash tab shows "Estimated Mash pH". Water pH is 8.0, which can't be right at this point. Then Est Mash pH is 5.65, which apparently takes the grain into account. However, that's not taking the minerals/salts into account which absolutely impact pH.

So how do BeerSmith2 people handle this? Do I need to continue using Bru'n Water to get a reliable pH estimate so I can do an acid addition?

Thanks,

-jsbull
 
I use Bru'n Water. as do many other long time BeerSmith users. Hopefully, BS3 will address this problem. If Brad hasn't done so at this point, I for one will subscribe to Brewers Friend.
 
pH of the mash is largely controlled by the type and amount of malts you have in the recipe, so the water profile tool cannot predict a mash pH until you add that water profile into the recipe.  Then the predicted pH will be on the mash page in the lower right corner of the tab and the estimated pH will also be displayed on the 'session' tab.  Unfortunately, at this point it becomes impossible to make adjustment of the salts/minerals within the recipe and have the program predict the effect on mash pH.  BS3 changes this by having a 'water' tab for adjustments within the recipe.  You can load the recipe with your base water and have the adjustments needed to reach a target profile made in the tab and the predicted pH displayed there as well.
 
Oginme said:
pH of the mash is largely controlled by the type and amount of malts you have in the recipe, so the water profile tool cannot predict a mash pH until you add that water profile into the recipe.  Then the predicted pH will be on the mash page in the lower right corner of the tab and the estimated pH will also be displayed on the 'session' tab.  Unfortunately, at this point it becomes impossible to make adjustment of the salts/minerals within the recipe and have the program predict the effect on mash pH.  BS3 changes this by having a 'water' tab for adjustments within the recipe.  You can load the recipe with your base water and have the adjustments needed to reach a target profile made in the tab and the predicted pH displayed there as well.

Excellent, so the answer is that this will be solved in BS3. Thank you.
 
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