Yes, this is another of the many water adjustment threads out there.
I claim not to be a water chemist and I don't want to get too deep into this, but does anybody out there have a water adjustment spreadsheet that ACTUALLY WORKS for mash acid additions? I have tried a few and they all have issues (not to mention don't give the same results when tested side by side). I will not name any specifically as I do not want to sound disparaging to the folks out there writing these programs for free for us to use (I would like to buy them all a beer for being kind enough to take on such a thing in the first place)..
My water is pretty low in everything (wardlabs tested) so I always need to add Ca at a minimum. No problem. I almost always (except for very dark beers) have to add a little acid to get the pH in the right range. Usually this is a guessing game and I'm trying to get it nailed down better than that. Using a few different calculators out there give me wildly different "recommended" acid additions, some of which are ridiculously incorrect. I have checked, double checked and re-checked all of the information to make sure I didn't enter something wrong and there are no issues.
Who uses what methods for calculating needed mash acid additions and do they work well for you?
For instance, my water is 8.8 pH (133 ppm alkalinity and 136 ppm HCO3, 119 CaCO3, everything else under 20 ppm). For a 12 SRM beer I "supposedly" don't need to add any acid and my pH will be 5.0 according to one commonly used program. In reality I have to add .2 ml phosphoric per gallon to get the mash pH down to 5.5.
Anybody have better luck that that using a spreadsheet or am I just going to have to come up with some method of my own?
As always, thanks for your responses...
I claim not to be a water chemist and I don't want to get too deep into this, but does anybody out there have a water adjustment spreadsheet that ACTUALLY WORKS for mash acid additions? I have tried a few and they all have issues (not to mention don't give the same results when tested side by side). I will not name any specifically as I do not want to sound disparaging to the folks out there writing these programs for free for us to use (I would like to buy them all a beer for being kind enough to take on such a thing in the first place)..
My water is pretty low in everything (wardlabs tested) so I always need to add Ca at a minimum. No problem. I almost always (except for very dark beers) have to add a little acid to get the pH in the right range. Usually this is a guessing game and I'm trying to get it nailed down better than that. Using a few different calculators out there give me wildly different "recommended" acid additions, some of which are ridiculously incorrect. I have checked, double checked and re-checked all of the information to make sure I didn't enter something wrong and there are no issues.
Who uses what methods for calculating needed mash acid additions and do they work well for you?
For instance, my water is 8.8 pH (133 ppm alkalinity and 136 ppm HCO3, 119 CaCO3, everything else under 20 ppm). For a 12 SRM beer I "supposedly" don't need to add any acid and my pH will be 5.0 according to one commonly used program. In reality I have to add .2 ml phosphoric per gallon to get the mash pH down to 5.5.
Anybody have better luck that that using a spreadsheet or am I just going to have to come up with some method of my own?
As always, thanks for your responses...
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