Carlsberg Pilsner

[Greenyinthewestofsydney]

14 hours ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

Hi Boozer, between the Lactic and the Acidulated, that's a fair amount of acid additions.  What did your Mash pH actually measure?  With my last brew, I got an untreated 5.7 to a 5.4 with just 2.5ml of Lactic Acid. 

I know with my rain water ( Sydney) and just pilsener malt and no additions its around the 5.4 already. Rainwater is low pH to begin with and no carbonates to resist the pH drop. I don't use any acid. 

[iBooz2]

15 hours ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

Hi Boozer, between the Lactic and the Acidulated, that's a fair amount of acid additions.  What did your Mash pH actually measure?  With my last brew, I got an untreated 5.7 to a 5.4 with just 2.5ml of Lactic Acid. 

Hi Shamus, yes this PH thing annoys me a bit.  Just cannot seem to nail it each batch but I am getting better at it.

I have measured my tank water from the same tap nearly every brew day and the numbers keep moving.  I have seen it come in at as low as 6.7 and high as 7.4 just measured it again this morning and it sitting at 7.4 + 7.2 + 7.3 = 21.9 / 3 = 7.3 is the average of the 3 samples.  My Horiba PH-11 meter was giving me grief several days ago as it would not calibrate the supplied buffer solution of 4.0, just came up with an error.  It was OK with the 7.0 solution.   So I did a factory reset on it, re-calibrated using the supplied buffer solutions and its seems to have cleared this error.

My rainwater comes off a fairly old cement tile roof and there is a fair amount of leaf litter from a gum tree nearby.  I imagine there would have to be some difference if it was coming of a nice clean colourbond roof.

With this batch of the Carlsberg Pilsner on brew day my PH meter read the rain water to be 7.4 so hence the acid additions.   I tested it 10" into the mash and it was 5.8 so hence the extra Lactic Acid was squirted in (5.25 ml at 88%).  The PH was again tested 15" further into the mash and it was now showing 5.1 so a little bit of an overshoot there (target was 5.2).  It was again tested during the mash out step of 76 C and it was 5.3 which surprised me as I though that during the mash the PH dropped slowly lower.  I will have to do a bit more reading up on this.

My PH meter is temperature compensating but I always try to get the test liquid at around the 20 C mark.  I think ideally the test liquid needs to be at the same ambient temperature as the meter itself as per the manual so that maybe one area were I could be stuffing it up.

Edited June 20, 2021 by iBooz2

[iBooz2]

My Carlsberg Pilsner was pitched today at 17:00.  Doing this one in my second Coopers FV and in my original brew fridge just so I can keep an eye on the temps and get used to what this WLP850 works like.  Pitched at 10 C and will be fermented at 10 C for the next 8 days.  Normally do my usual lagers in those Bunnings blue drums where I don't have to monitor gravity etc as I know what they do.  The blue drums for me are a set and forget until D-rest time.