I am brewing what can best be described as a baltic porter tomorrow. I rarely brew darker beers and am planning to shoot for a mash pH of about 5.5. Should I go closer to 5.6?
5.5-5.6 is what I target for black beers. Lately I’m liking 5.6 the best.
This beer has an estimated SRM of about 27 so I am going with ‘brown balanced’ water profile. Anything to worry about with conversion at a pH of 5.6?
No worries. The profiles are for flavor balance, independent of whatever pH you target. Sounds great!
EDIT - That beer is plenty dark enough to mash @ 5.6, FWIW.
Thanks! I will move forward although Bru’n Water is giving me a red value for baking soda I guess because I am at the pH range limits…
Sounds right, from memory. You use RO, right? The only issue at all with baking soda is sodium content that comes along with baking soda. But if you use all RO, even the roastiest stout keeps you under Martin’s sodium limits. Been there, done it.
I don’t use RO water but my finished Na with Baking Soda is 26 ppm so I should be safe.
safe for sure. i can’t recall martin’s comment on threshold for tasting sodium, but i’ve never come close to even 50PPM using baking soda, and no issues at all. my well water has 100ppm sodium (one of my reasons for RO) and that’s undetectable.
I think Martin says 150ppm is the taste threshold.
250 ppm according to the World Health Organization.
My tap water has up to 200 ppm Na since my municipality performs ion-exchange on all the city water. I don’t taste that, but it would probably affect beer flavor. I use RO for brewing.