I use RO water for brewing, and my TDS reading tells me it’s at 10ppm. I use the Bru’n Water spreadsheet, carefully weigh and add my additions, and yet all of my brews using my adjusted RO water have been about 0.7pH too high. Any ideas? On the Water Adjustment page, I set the dilution water percentage to 100%, select RO water as the dilution water. I find I have to add about 7 - 7.5ml of 88% lactic acid to my mash water to get it where I want it.
Sorry. I missed that on the first read. I will leave this to people with more expertise. The good news is that Brunwater likely put you where you needed to be.
In a roundabout way, yes! I’ve learned that if I adjust things so it predicts a pH of 5.2 with no acid additions, then to ACTUALLY hit a mash pH of 5.2, I need to add around 7 - 7.5ml of 88% lactic acid.
Not sure yet, I’ve only been measuring mash pH for 5 brews so far - 2 IPAs, an APA, Belgian Wit and a Dusseldorf Alt. All of them read around 0.7 higher than what Bru’n Water predicted. I’m confused! To get the spreadsheet to align with my readings, I have to tell it my water has 250ppm bicarbonate which is of course impossible, given that my TDS are at 10ppm.
Don’t know if this would change anything, but perhaps you should use RO as your main source of water rather than as your source of dilution water. There are threads on this board about what to do when RO is your main source of water and you haven’t had your RO analyzed.
Beat me to it, what is the base Malt you are using? Is it the same base for all of your brews? I’ve had ph issues before when using Best. Switched to Weyermann and I’ve never had an issue since.
Brew’n water has been really accurate for me.
A systematic deviation of 0.7 units across a variety of styles suggests that the instrument is faulty. I can believe an error of 0.1 to 0.2 units when using Bru’n Water since its only as good as the input data and brewing material characteristics. I haven’t seen a case where the data or materials differed that greatly to produce a pH difference as high as mentioned.
Anything is possible, but this difference doesn’t agree with results I’ve seen and heard of over the years. I strongly recommend that you find or borrow another calibrated meter to check your results.
Thank you for the replies everyone. I used 3 different base malts for the brews I mentioned - Simpson’s Maris Otter, Barrett Burston’s Pale Ale and Weyermann’s Pilsner. I shall do a mini mash with distilled water as suggested and see what reading I get. I’ll have to wait for a while though as I’ve run out of calibrating solutions - have ordered more so hopefully I’ll be able to do this test soon.
And yes, the easiest thing to do would be to borrow someone else’s reliable pH meter - I’ll see what I can do!
Thanks again - I’ll report back here once I’ve had a chance to follow up on your suggestions.
My Hanna pHep5 has always served well. In fact when I destroyed one I got another. ~$100, made in Romania. FWIW. I calibrate monthly but probably don’t need to.
My pH measurements recently got much more consistently close to Brun’water predictions after being all over the place. I changed 3 things at once, so I am not sure what my solution was. I accidentally broke the electrode on my meter, so, I replaced that, I ran out of calibration solution and bought a different brand, and I started stirring the mash before taking my sample.
One of the biggest things to remember is to take measurements in a consistent manner. It’s 15-20 minutes in for me and my mash recirculates the whole time.