I brewing a more or less traditional west coast IPA in a couple of days.
I remember listening to an episode of the experimental brewing podcast where Danny talked about adding lactic acid to lower the PH of the finished IPA. I believe this was to make the hop character pop and make a crisper beer.
But I can’t for the life of me find the episode to confirm this. (this has nothing to do with adding acid to the mash)
So I’m asking here:
Does anybody acidify their finished beer (for other reasons than to per-sour a sour beer), and what would be an ideal PH range to acidified a finished IPA to.
I don’t recall specifically, but we may have been generally discussing post fermentation treatment. Like adding gypsum, CaCl2, or acid in the glass. I’ve done the acid thing a couple times. All I can tell you is start with just a little bit and adjust to taste.
I’ve post-fermentation acidified some of my beers to make them crisper when I didn’t feel that the yeast had done enough to acidify the beer. I just dosed a glass of beer until I found the level I thought tasted right.
I recommend that you get a graduated dropper or pipette for your trials. The first thing to do is to count out how many drops of your acid equate to 1 mL of that acid. Don’t do it with water since some acids are more viscous than water and the drop count could differ.
Then get a known quantity of your beer and add say 5 or 10 drops and mix it into the beer and taste. If its not good enough, give it more. When you find a dose that meets your tastes, scale that dose for your keg.