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PH Meters


iBooz2

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Hey fellow brewers. 

Been looking into water profiles and and that scientific stuff and wondering what you use to test or get your PH right.  

Can you point me in the right direction for a cost effective bit of kit to get this sorted out?

Cheers - AL

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10 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

Can you point me in the right direction for a cost effective bit of kit to get this sorted out?

I must have been lucky.  My Kegland one seems to work fine.  I would love to check it against a real ph meter, though.

I consider it satisfactory because it calibrates correctly in the calibration solutions.  Also the ph of the mash measures pretty close to the calculated ph in Brewfather.  This might just be pure coincidence.  Hence my desire to compare it to a high quality one.

Like a few things in brewing, having used the ph meter on all my all grain brews, due to the consistency of the results (from the palest pilsner to the darkest imperial stout), I am starting to wonder if it is worth the hassle of testing the ph.  Rather, I could just rely on the Brewfather calculations.  I do not think I will abandon doing ph testing just yet, but if the consistency continues, I will probably stop.  Maybe if I did a brew with some unusual ingredients, it might be worth checking.

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8 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

The cheaper ones aren't always that accurate

Is it actually that critical? I'm no AG'er but I'd have thought the chemical balance would be 'within a range' rather than having to be within .01 pH.

Or is the accuracy more inherited from professional brewers who have an absolute need to make identical beers, time after time?

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1 hour ago, Journeyman said:

Is it actually that critical? I'm no AG'er but I'd have thought the chemical balance would be 'within a range' rather than having to be within .01 pH.

Or is the accuracy more inherited from professional brewers who have an absolute need to make identical beers, time after time?

yes I'm not sure if people who do this just like the process of testing it and if they really make adjustments but I would have thought if always using the same tap water it would mostly be the same each time. Maby some recepies are better matching the exact ph for lighter styles never something I thought of i sometimes fill fermenter with garden hose.

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Thanks guys.  I am just trying to get my mash pH right as BeerSmith sort of guesses it from your recipe and base water pH and probably would be fine with a close guess re adding acidulated malt to get it down each batch.  But when looking at the water test reports for 2019/2020 from my local water supplier the maximum pH was 10.6 and minimum 6.6 (mean 7.58) so a bit of a wide range there.  So I figured a meter would have to come into play so I knew where my baseline water was at each batch and also to make notes in the recipes what the actual pH of the mash turned out to be learning from it.   Once I have go those numbers for a particular recipe it would be as simple as checking on the input water pH and letting Beersmith tell me from there.

@MitchBastard, was about to order a KL one as I had other stuff to get from them today and saw your post in the nick of time.  That one you pointed out looks good, will download the user manual and have a read.  Thanks MB. - Cheers

PS Don't know what is going on - cannot post and getting gateway time out - bad gateway 502 errors so apologies if multiple posts appear.

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22 hours ago, Journeyman said:

Is it actually that critical? I'm no AG'er but I'd have thought the chemical balance would be 'within a range' rather than having to be within .01 pH.

Or is the accuracy more inherited from professional brewers who have an absolute need to make identical beers, time after time?

It depends what you're after I suppose. I don't think anyone home brewing is trying to get an exact mash pH figure, but if you're aiming for 5.3 and it's really at 5.9 or something then it might be an issue. You still want the meter to be accurate to avoid things like that happening.

The water itself also doesn't have a great influence on it, it's more the grain bill used. It's also the amount of carbonate in the water - the more carbonate in it the more it will resist pH change in terms of getting it more acidic, regardless of the other minerals present. Because I distill all the water I brew with it basically starts at nothing and I can keep the carbonate level low in order to get the mash pH down around 5.3ish which is ideal for the pale coloured beers I mainly brew. I like it up around 5.6 or a bit higher for the big dark stouts and things so I'll use more carbonate in that water to stop the acidic dark grains from dropping it too far. 

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My new pregnancy test meter arrived today (pH) and after calibration confirms my filtered tap water (just a twin filter in kitchen) is 6.5 and unfiltered water from one of my rainwater tanks is 7.0.

I am about to do another AG brew day in next couple of days so can more experienced brewers tell me when they test the pH and how often on a brew day.

Presume a base reading on the input water and then another reading after any pH additives / adjustments to make sure target range hit and then another test just after mash in.

TIA

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4 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

I am about to do another AG brew day in next couple of days so can more experienced brewers tell me when they test the pH and how often on a brew day.

I am just a newbie when it comes to all grain brews.  And my answer will probably confirm that status.

I just check it about 5 minutes into the mash.  I have a small dipping sauce sized bowl in the freezer.  Take it out and get my sample.  I still have to put it in the freezer for another 5-10 minutes to get it down to 20°C.  Although my pH meter is meant to have temperature correction, I do not like the idea of dunking it into 65°C wort.  As I noted above it is just a $26ish Kegland jobbie.

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4 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

My new pregnancy test meter arrived today (pH) and after calibration confirms my filtered tap water (just a twin filter in kitchen) is 6.5 and unfiltered water from one of my rainwater tanks is 7.0.

I am about to do another AG brew day in next couple of days so can more experienced brewers tell me when they test the pH and how often on a brew day.

Presume a base reading on the input water and then another reading after any pH additives / adjustments to make sure target range hit and then another test just after mash in.

TIA

I'm surprised your rainwater is neutral. Usually its acidic. Mine runs from 5.5 to 6. 

As for readings I usually take 10 mins into the mash. Input readings/ph will only make a little difference to ph in my experience. 0.2 to 0.3 Max. As an example my pilsener in 5.5 rain water will go to 5.2 or 5.3 in the mash. My 7.5ph tap water pilsener will go to 5.5 or 5.6 and I usually need some acid to get it down.

Your ingredients and the minerals in the water have more of a bearing on the mash ph. 

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21 hours ago, Greeny1525229549 said:

I'm surprised your rainwater is neutral. Usually its acidic. Mine runs from 5.5 to 6. 

As for readings I usually take 10 mins into the mash. Input readings/ph will only make a little difference to ph in my experience. 0.2 to 0.3 Max. As an example my pilsener in 5.5 rain water will go to 5.2 or 5.3 in the mash. My 7.5ph tap water pilsener will go to 5.5 or 5.6 and I usually need some acid to get it down.

Your ingredients and the minerals in the water have more of a bearing on the mash ph. 

Thanks heaps Greeny, you are a champ.

Tested my rainwater again today, same tap and it reads 7.8 but we did get a fair drop of rain overnight.  The water from this tap would be drawn from the bottom of the big plastic "super" tank at the moment so don't know if recent rainfall would effect it that much.  Most of the tanks are plastic and the pressure pipes and fittings are also plastic or PVC.  Taps are brass of course.  Rain comes off tile roof into standard colourbond guttering so don't know if all this has an effect on pH.

Yeah still trying to get my head around where the BeerSmith recipes are pulling the pH data from, seems to be pre-programmed depending on the grain selected in the recipe.  I think I am going to have to get a couple of professional water tests done if I am to really nail the pilsner recipes come lager season.  Just to get a baseline as a good starting point then maybe I can understand all this a bit more easily.

What do you do if your pH is high 10 minutes into the mash?  Leave it and adjust it next time you make same recipe or tweak it a bit then and there?

TIA

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7 minutes ago, iBooz2 said:

Thanks heaps Greeny, you are a champ.

Tested my rainwater again today, same tap and it reads 7.8 but we did get a fair drop of rain overnight.  The water from this tap would be drawn from the bottom of the big plastic "super" tank at the moment so don't know if recent rainfall would effect it that much.  Most of the tanks are plastic and the pressure pipes and fittings are also plastic or PVC.  Taps are brass of course.  Rain comes off tile roof into standard colourbond guttering so don't know if all this has an effect on pH.

Yeah still trying to get my head around where the BeerSmith recipes are pulling the pH data from, seems to be pre-programmed depending on the grain selected in the recipe.  I think I am going to have to get a couple of professional water tests done if I am to really nail the pilsner recipes come lager season.  Just to get a baseline as a good starting point then maybe I can understand all this a bit more easily.

What do you do if your pH is high 10 minutes into the mash?  Leave it and adjust it next time you make same recipe or tweak it a bit then and there?

TIA

Maybe the tiles have something to do with it. Mine is a colourbond roof.  

If its high then I have used two options. Acid malt addition or phosphoric acid. If its low which is common for dark beers then I usually put in some calcium carbonate to raise it.  After making the batch once you will know what you need to add before you start the mash. These days I usually only use my meter for light or dark beers really. That's where I get nervous with the pH. Any batch i have made before or a batch with some crystal or darker malt in some reasonable quantity I know it will be somewhere from 5.2 to 5.4.

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