In the thread “Brewhaus efficiency for No Sparge”, Goose asked me:
Well, like I said it was a New Year’s resolution so I haven’t brewed a lot of beer within the month since …but… I, like you, would target anything from 5.3-5.4 pH at room temp depending on dark, light, etc.
I try to control my processes and my outputs are fairly consistent within small tolerances. I control milling output, liquor:grist ratio, mash in temps and technique, I mash using RIMS using a PID to control temp and by controlling the flow gpm, I mash out at consistent temp, lauter at a controlled flow, batch sparge at a consistent temp and flow gpm, I control heat by kW in the boil, cool and whirlpool the same way every brew day, pitch at consistent pitch rates, control ferment , cold crash, and serving temps, and on and on. I treated my strike water after ran off my sparge into a HLT and before I pumped it into the MLT underletting the entire grain bill.
However, I read Brewing Better Beer by Gordon Strong a long time ago and forgot about it pretty much. I decided to look into it again because I wanted to keep an open mind.
I decided to try a cpl of his techniques to focus only on Calcium above 50 ppm and 5.2-5.4 pH in the mash. Everything else will take a back seat in the mash. I can add crystal and dark grains after the mash is complete and season the wort later — in the kettle. Every mash will be pale so consistency should be attainable. I figured it can’t hurt for a batch or three to see if there’s an improvement.
So, I brewed a Blonde Ale (start small) the other day using 5/8 tsp of CaCl and 3/8 tsp gypsum added directly to the MLT along with distilled water pretreated to 5.5 pH with phosphoric acid for all my brewhaus liquor (strike and sparge).
In BBB, Gordon says, “All this talk of mash pH probably has you thinking this is complicated and requires a lot of fiddling. Actually, it doesn’t. For the most part, the mash pH regulates itself, as long as your water is reasonable.”
As advertised, the Calcium I added directly to the MLT reacted with phosphates in the grain husks to release phytic acid, which lowered the mash pH naturally. To my surprise I hit right on 5.2 pH (at room temp) during my normal 20 min ck.
I was also surprised at exceeding my normal gravity by a cpl points for this recipe. Additionally, the wort seemed brighter and clearer than it has in the past. I caught myself smiling.
Of course, that’s just one brewday so it could be a plethora of causes (correlation does not imply causation). …and proof is in the pudding. We’ll see if I made a better tasting beer or not. It’s finishing up in the fermenter and I’ll close transfer into a CO2 purged keg in a day or so, cold crash and carbonate it, and give it a taste.
So, if the next few beers taste good I will continue to use these techniques for a few more brews to see if the initial findings are validated.
I brewed a Brown Ale using my old techniques prior to the Blonde so I decided to rebrew it in a cpl weeks using Gordon’s techniques: I will 1) pretreat my distilled water to create brewhaus liquor below 6 pH (targeting 5.5 pH), 2) use only 1 tsp of CaCl added directly to the MLT during mash in for mash pH adjustment, 3) withhold crystal and roast malts (that screw with mash pH) to the mash out, then vorlauf, lauter and sparge (equal to ~30 min steep) and 4) season with remaining salts (if any) in the kettle. Then, I can compare old vs new techniques side by side.
We’ll see.