pH questions...Wineos Sugar wash

[FuriousGeorge]

So I'm attempting my second ever wash, this time it's Wineos sugar wash, and contrary to all the posts I've read it seems stuck and never really "took off". I followed the recipe to the letter, but after two days when nothing was really happening I knew something was off. Thinking it might be a pH issue (well water) I got a hold of some pH strips from the local brew store. I bought both the Beer ones (CPR pH 4662) and the Wine ones (CPR pH 2844). When I first tested it, it looked like I was at 3.6 pH, so proceeded to add an additional tsp of Gypsum...then did some more reading and read that I should add some Calcium Carbonate. So I got a hold of some and added a tsp at a time. After about 5 tsp of Calcium Carbonate it looked like it's up to about 4.4 pH. I started to get worried that I'm adding too much.

Is there hope for my wash? When is it usually best to test the pH, water only, before the completed wash?

[Dnderhead]

whatever you use in the wash will affect the PH so the PH has to be tested/adjusted after making wash/mash.

[FuriousGeorge]

Great. Thanks.

Does 5 tsp of Calcium Carbonate seem like too much...it's still only up to about 4.4. Should I add more?

[Dnderhead]

should work at 4.4 but 5 is better. you could add some more. next time leave out the citric acid until after checking PH.

[FuriousGeorge]

Will do. Thanks for the advice.

[SaltUbar]

Hi FuiousGeorge,

I am using the same recipie. (WPOSW) I do 55lt batches that strip down to 12lt. I am having the same issue with my fermentation times running a lot longer than I am hearing other folks ferments.

I have come to the same reasoning as you. I have tested my water and I make sure that the Ph of the wash is at about 5.5 I do this by adding calcium carbonate in quantities that bring the Ph to the desired level. As the fermet occures I notice that the Ph become more acidic. I had a stuck ferment on day 5 (Ph less than 4) and I added 5 tsp of Calcium Carbonate and one tsp of DAP. The ferment started off again and in a week the sg was down to ~.998 from ~1.055.

This weekend I am going to start another batch and I will try adding 5 tsp of Calcium Carbonate + DAP on day 3 to see if I can prevent the slowdown on day 5.

Below is a graph of the Sg and ABV% for the last run.

ABV Graph WPOSW - stuck at Day 5.jpg (14.6 KiB) Viewed 12797 times

[beelah]

That what I did yesteday and the ferment took off. So I don't know id it is the calcium carbonate or the the DAP that gets things going, or is it a combination.

[SaltUbar]

Hi Guys,

Here is the follow up from the previous post.

This is where I had a stuck ferment on day 5 which I solved by adding DAP and Sodium Carbonate at which point it took off again. The question I wanted to answer was if I continuously added small amounts of DAP and Sodium Carbonate would this then prevent the stuck ferment and would it ferment faster given I was providing a better environment for the yeast (less acidic and more nutrients)

So

I have done another WPOSW wash identical to the previous one (see above) however each day I have sprinkled 1 teaspoon of DAP and 4 teaspoons of Sodium Carbonate. The thinking and from reading posts on the site is that the Yeast get O2 from sugar but needs nutrients (unknown validity to this thinking I am not a biologist just testing if there is an effect on the ferment) so added DAP for the nutrients and Sodium Carbonate the stronger form of Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) to make the wash less acidic. I have previously tested that I don’t get Ammonia or blue colour as long as I keep the Ph in the wash in the acidic range.

The graph below is what I have got after three days.

I am graphing both the Specific Gravity (SG) adjusted for the temperature of the wash and the ABV% calculated using the formula found on this site. The dotted line plot is the wash I graphed in the earlier post the full line plot is the new wash with the daily addition. I have also added a further plot of a wash I did with turbo yeast last year for a comparison.

What I think I am seeing is a huge improvement in yeast activity after day2 where the yeast is not being stunted by the high acidity of the wash. Unfortunately I am in the same boat as beelah I don’t know if the results on this wash are because of the Ph control or the extra nutrients. This is a question to solve in the next wash. Learning learning learning…

Interested in what you guys think about this.

click on the graph to get a bigger version

[Dnderhead]

White labs recommends adding potassium carbonate right from the start, as sugar has nothing to start with.
but when making up recipes its a game of figuring out what you have added, and what it lacks.
even when you git it to work for you it mite not be right for others, and someone else mite have to "tweak"
a bit,do to water, environment etc.. (maybe if recipe was made with distilled/ro water this mite not be
necessary?)


http://www.whitelabs.com/distilling/distilling_FAQ.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[SaltUbar]

Hi Dnderhead,

I am using water from an aquifer that starts out at a Ph of 7. Don’t know about the salts in the water but as you say I am not using distilled water so what I am using will have something in but without doing a chemical analysis (read expensive) I have no idea.

Good idea about using Potassium carbonate I will have a look at trying this next.

[Oracle]

I am in the midst of my first sugar wash (WPOSW) and am having a similar experience. Followed the recipe quite closely (exactly as far as the quantities of the ingredients). Deviated by using tap water (soft, local river source at a pH of 7.3) that I carbon filtered to remove chlorine, etc... Boiled the water. Boiled the sugar. Added rest of ingredients to hot sugar solution. Cooled water by running through my homemade counterflow chiller and then aerated 30 minutes using an aquarium pump and air stone. Blended the sugar concentrate and the boiled/cooled water. When temp dropped to 35°C, added baker's yeast (1/2 cup Fleischmann's active dry). About 20 minutes later (yeast wetted and beginning to bubble nicely) I mixed it well, covered with air-tight lid outfitted with bubble trap. Bubbling proceeded nicely (I thought anyway). Checked the sg (via Brix refractometer) before adding yeast and it was approximately 1.055 (although it showed up as 1.065 the next morning after the yeast was busy overnight?). Bubbling seemed to be slower that evening. Checked pH using an inexpensive digital meter and it showed a pH of ~3.1 which seemed low. Double-checked the accuracy of the meter and it was fine. Not sure what to do, I let it go overnight and did some more reading. By the next evening the bubbling was noticeably slower (~20 bubbles/min) and pH was at ~3.0. Decided to follow SaltUbar's lead and added about 1/4 teaspoon of DAP and then began adding sodium carbonate (pool supply grade) at 1 tsp at a time. Checked pH and repeated until reaching a pH of ~4.8 (took ~4 tsp). Interestingly, an enormous evolution of CO2 occurred when I added the sodium carbonate and mixed it in. Within a couple of hours the bubbling was much greater (at least double at ~42 bubbles/min). The next morning it was bubbling like crazy (~86 bubbles/min) and continues at this rate through this evening. Looks like adding the sodium carbonate to raise the pH to the much more desirable range between 4.5 and 5.0 made a huge difference. I will check the pH again in the morning to see if is changing significantly and adjust, as necessary. I am curious to see if the fermentation will finish faster with this pH correction. I am convinced that had I not added the sodium carbonate, the fermentation would take much longer to complete. Since this is my first sugar wash run, I don't have a yardstick to measure by, but would surely like to see this complete in 3 - 4 days rather than a week or more.

Going back to read the WPOSW thread, it looks like there is quite a range of time periods to finish the fermentation. I am suspecting the starting pH is quite variable depending on the source water and perhaps the quality/purity of the ingredients. I found a cheap, local source for potassium carbonate and may try it as a pH adjuster in my next batch. Clearly, the ingredients (nutritionally) are fine, it just seems the pH is having a substantial impact on the rate of fermentation.

Anybody else have an opinion on the "sodium carbonate" versus "potassium carbonate" amendment? The former is about half the cost of the latter. For this purpose, either is dirt cheap.

As for SaltUbar's daily addition of sodium carbonate, might he overshoot the pH by adding that much? May be a good reason to acquire a cheap pH meter. I'll update my experience over the next couple of days.

[Dnderhead]

back in my other post, I said that I avoid sodium, not that "some" sodium is bad it is adding to much. as I/we have no way of testing it is just as easy to use calcium carbonate or (if you can obtain) potassium carbonate that wont affect the yeast.adding to much sodium can be counter produtive..

[SaltUbar]

Hi Oracle,

I am very interested in your WPOSW experiences. I was initially worried about Ph overshoot as well. Each day I measured the Ph of the wash to make sure it didn’t get to high. Unfortunately I don’t have any Ph Meter stable for graphing but I did use a universal indicator solution to tell me if I was getting close to Ph 5. I would be very interested in seeing any results you have from the two washes adding potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate. I agree with Dnderhead while as long as the Ph doesn’t become basic you won’t get ammonium created but potassium salt or carbon salts would b better in a stripping run boil.

[Oracle]

SaltUbar, I am not sure I understand the idea that using the potassium salt would be better in the stripping run boil. I was planning to add sodium carbonate (after reading through the threads that advocate it to reduce esters, etc...) but if the potassium carbonate would work better, I am prepared to use it instead. As for which is better for pH adjustment, I don't have an opinion yet. I do know that I prefer to use a mix of salts in my cell culture work. That is, when I need a buffered saline solution for lab work, one prepared using just sodium salts alone are good for general work, but for cell culture, I prefer a mix of sodium and potassium salts. Ha! Like it matters to me. The cells like it better and THAT works for me. I am thinking the mix would be of value for the yeasts as well. Will try a side-by-side next time to see if there is any real difference.

Dndrhead, calcium carbonate or potassium carbonate? I can see trying to control the sodium. With WPOSW, calcium is already added (gypsum), but we are not talking a lot. Doesn't seem like the amount of sodium is excessive (if it is mostly coming from the sodium carbonate; unless the source water is high in sodium...).

For what it is worth, I checked the wash this evening (~92 hr into the run) and the pH was 4.5, the sg dropped to 1.015 (~5 Brix) down from a sg of 1.05 (~12.2 Brix) just 36 hours earlier. Bubbling dropped to ~30/min (down from 86/min). Seems to be plowing to a finish.

[Dnderhead]

I whould stay with calcium or potassium carbonate. as sodium can affect the ferment, potassium works much faster than calcium .but either one yeast can use.
If your trying to increase the active ferment, why not add something that the yeast need?

if you use sodium you rise the PH but can lower the rate of ferment by adding sodium.so your fixing one problem and adding another.

[SaltUbar]

Hi Dnderhead,

I have been impressed by the speed of fermentation with adding a Ph modifier which is way better than not adding Sodium Carbonate. Happy to take on face value the Sodium Carbonate is not so good for the yeast so I guess the next step is to run the next batch with the same method and ingredients but substitute Potassium Carbonate to see the difference.

One adverse observation with adding more Sodium Carbonate is that the wash has a brownish tinge even when cleared which the control batch didn’t have.

I am hoping to do the spirit run for the Sodium Carbonate Ph modified batch this weekend and then test it against the batch I did several weeks ago without Ph modification of the wash.

[Dnderhead]

white labs,say that "a plain sugar wash" (sugar/water/nutrients/yeast) the PH will plummet before the wash is finished and may prevent or slow down fermentation. (it can drop from 6-7 to 3 in the first few days)
out of the three that rise PH I whould choose either calcium carbonate or potassium carbonate, witch is the best I have no idea. then agin it mite make a difference with your water. as calcium is in many well waters.potassium ???????????? more searching..........

[SaltUbar]

Hi Dnderhead,

Very interesting,

Here is a quote from the white labs FAQ that supports your assertion about Potassium Carbonate. Interestingly it talks about adding this prior to the 12th hour mark.

http://www.whitelabs.com/distilling/dis ... ml#Re:_Rum

Since there is no buffering material present in the sugar solution, the pH will drop from an initial pH of about 5.0 down to as low as 2.7. This low pH will stress the yeast and it may never recover. Therefore you should add about 1 # of Potassium carbonate/1000 gallons of mash before the 12th hour. This should keep the pH about 3.3.

[SaltUbar]

Hi Guys,

Again to support Dnderhead’s max Sodium content in a wash. Here is a bit of Organic Chemistry Calculations (If I have remembered it correctly from school See below) . Working it out I should never have more than 1.2 g of Sodium Carbonate per litre to stay under the 500 parts per million recommended by White Labs. That results in 63.4g Max for my 55 litre wash.

[Dnderhead]

for most people I thank just avoid sodium ,that leaves a choice of calcium or potassium, now yeast can use either ,, why does white lab recommend potassium? I believe that there going by "average" water. and most water contains calcium already, but lacks potassium.

( now these are just my ideas)
thanks ,Saltubar as I'm not to scientific nor can read for extended time)

[Oracle]

Back with a quick update. I am waiting on the secondary settling on the first WPOSW run (gotta get the last of the yeasts out of the way before my first stripping run). In the mean time, I started two new WPOSW runs. Interestingly, the pH of each dropped from around 5.1 at the start to ~3.3 after only 12 hours! One batch is being amended (for pH) with calcium carbonate and the other with potassium carbonate. I am not adding any additional DAP this time. Only adjusting the pH. Already made a minor mistake in that I assumed the amount of each would be similar to the quantity of sodium carbonate I used in the first run. This was OK for the calcium carbonate (~4 tsp raised the pH from ~3.3 up to ~4.5) but the same quantity of potassium carbonate raised the pH to ~5.6! Nevertheless, both are bubbling away like mad. I will be checking the pH again later this evening to see how much the pH has changed in the last 12 hours. I will adjust more carefully, as necessary.

Another question is how folks are dissolving the salts before(?) adding to the wash. I noticed that the salts did not entirely dissolve in the hot sugar concentrate and had to be dissolved in an additional amount of water after I poured the sugar concentrate into the receiving water (I'll supply more detail later). I mainly want to know how many folks add the salts to the sugar concentrate versus adding directly to the final wash solution. Also, I am curious how many folks are "sanitizing" their diluent water during the wash prep? That is, are folks boiling the water, filtering it, or just using it straight out of the tap (or whatever source)? I carbon filtered mine and then boiled it. Cooled the water and aerated with an aquarium stone before adding the boiled sugar concentrate. I am trying to minimize the likelihood of bacterial or other contaminants, but if this is not that big a problem with these fast running (and heavily yeast inoculated) washes, then I may skip the boiling step for the water in future runs.

[Dnderhead]

I use mine right out of the tap, I use well water most of time witch I sure has calcium in it.( I have no PH problems, through you have to thank of others)
most of the wash/mash that we use are so quick and short that "sterilizing" is not necessary.

[SaltUbar]

Not sure if necessary but I boil all water I get from an aquifer prior to adding to sugar to make my wash. I do wait until cooler to add yeast and citric acid.

[Oracle]

Hi folks!

Another update. I won't catalog all of the runs but thought I would show a couple of graphs and a bit of explanation to show what I have encountered re: pH and WPOSW.

No question but that the addition of some sort of carbonate salt to adjust the pH was beneficial for me. My first run benefited from the sodium carbonate (and I might say that it smelled best). The calcium carbonate worked fine as far as bringing the pH up and presumably speeding up the fermentation, but it took a lot longer to clear than either the sodium or the potassium carbonate. The latter seems to have worked best. Mainly because it cleared faster than the calcium carbonate. I would say any of these salts would work at the concentrations I used. No sign that the use of the sodium salt inhibited the fermentation relative to the others.

Here is a graph showing the pH versus specific gravity over time. At 12 hours I added the potassium carbonate which immediately raised the pH to 5.6, but by the next time point (12 hours later), the pH was down to 5.0 and from then on stayed at 4.9 without any additional potassium carbonate. Note, I did not use my hydrometer, but rather my "used" eBay Brix refractometer to estimate the s.g. during the fermentation. At the end of the run, I compared the Brix refractometer and the hydrometer and clearly the refractometer is "off" in the presence of the WPOSW recipe ingredient, but not by much. At least I can see how to interpret the "actual" s.g. from the graphs I have generated. Note, the graph shows a s.g of 1.017 (~4.4 Brix) at 72 hrs, but the hydrometer was less than 0.99 (-3 Brix).

Here is a more complex (crowded...) graph of one of my stripping runs. I am showing as many parameter as I can, especially the refractometer (right out of the leibig) while the hydrometer is from the parrot (so is temporally behind the refractometer). Plus, I discovered the refractometer is consistently lower than the hydrometer after correcting for temperature. Anyway, I would appreciate hearing if my results look like what the rest of you see in your runs.

[ratboy]

Just to say thanks Oracle for the graphs on pH. Keep up the good work, it's appreciated!

I've been adding Potassium Carbonate on second day to raise pH from low threes to low fives. Slightly less than a level teaspoon per gallon.

I always try to start with an SG between 1070 and 1080 after inverting the sugar with 1 tsp citric acid and 20 min boil. Add 2 tsp DAP, 2 Swisse women's multi vitamins (lots of B group & quality product), 1 tsp calcium sulphate (food grade gypsum equivalent), 1 tsp citric acid, good pinch Epsom Salts. I top that up with water with the hose on high to aerate and mix, which works particularly well, lots of bubbles and foam. Pitch below 30 deg C with 125 gm Baker and Crosby Distiller's Yeast for the first batch, then re-use yeast cake for next batch and only 50 gm Distiller's Yeast on top of that.

Plan on doing a hybrid WPOSW / All Bran next, with 7 cups All Bran Original added (per 28ltr). I run 3 x 28ltr (7.5 gallon) washes in parallel. Might use Wheet Bix for the second and Corn Flakes for the third tub,or maybe a mix of all three.

I also plan to use charred oak for a few days on the resulting distillate, i tsp maple syrup and 1 drop iodine per litre of neutral spirits to try for a bourbon equivalent next batch.

Cheers, and thanks again!

[Ack]

I'm a bit late to this thread but thought I would post my data anyway in the event it helps someone... I have to say much thanks to the folks posting here as it has helped me a lot. I too have had troubles getting my WPOSW to finish. After a month or so it sticks around 1.010 - every time. Tired of having to finish by adjusting PH, pitching more yeast / dap I tried some experiments.

My water is city water. Its actually very drinkable from the tap although it is treated. Some numbers of note:
Tri-halomethanes: 57 ug/L
Calcium: 32.8 mg/L
Potassium: 1.2 mg/L
Sodium: 12.9 mg/L
Total Hardness: 94.3 mg/L (or just under 5.5 gpg)

I have other data as well - not sure what might be relevant... generally my water would be categorized as "moderately hard".

So I started 5 different washes, following the recipe exactly except to vary one ingredient per wash. The yeast was Superstart distillers. Basically the variations I tried are derived from what I've read in this thread and the main recipe thread in tried and true.

1) Baseline - exact recipe for all ingredients
2) 1/2 aitric acid - to start with a higher PH - someone mentioned in the main thread doing this allowed their wash to finish
3) No acid
4) Added a pinch of Ascorbic Acid - folks have mentioned doing this to neutralize chlorine in city water
5) No gypsum - I wanted to see if this helped / hurt the wash

In a later run (after I got some more fermenting buckets!) I also tried:

6) Filtered water - using an under sink rainfresh water filter with a VC-1 cartridge (1 Micron)
7) Rain Water - some folks have good luck with this

I tried to measure PH, SG and temp ever day. I did miss day 6 for 1-5 and days 6 and 7 for washes 6 and 7. The temps stayed right around 78-83 degrees so I didn't graph them as there wasn't much variation there. Here are my SG and PH results.





I didn't graph the end of the wash - just to the point where it looked like it was slowing down to an unacceptable level. My experience is that if I leave one of these washes for more than a month they will stall at around 1.010.

Notes:
1) This wash looses PH like super fast when it starts I wonder why that is? It must be responsible for stressing the yeast.
2) Starting with a higher PH definitely helps. I didn't notice any blue or ammonia smell in the wash with no acid.
3) Ascorbic acid didn't seem to help me in this case - it just reduced the PH a bit more which I don't need for this wash.
4) The wash without gypsum performed quite badly - so gypsum really helps! I was very surprised to see this...
5) Filtered water actually helped me gain a day right up front - very noticeable improvement. I use filtered water for all my washes, beer, wine now.
6) Our rain water is _crap_ scary what falls out of the sky around here... starting PH was so low - I guess that's why they call it acid rain...

So - using the info in this forum, I did another wash with:

- filtered water
- less that 1/2 tsp of Citric Acid
- adding 1 tsp of Potassium Carbonate after 10 hours.

Here are the graphs, with the baseline data incorporated for comparison:





Holy !@#$ - success!! Having this wash finish completely in 5 days is a record for me! Only problem is, I now have so much neutral I won't need to do another ferment until 2012

Thanks to the folks who posted info on this wash - greatly appreciated!

[Oxbo Rene]

After my first couple of washes I noticed that my PH would drop way low when fermenting got underway (if i recall correctly).
So I developed a habit of fixing wash up and making it in the high 5's (5.7-5.9) before adding yeast,
And that seemed to work OK for me = no problems, now PH drops, but is within accessible range (don't recall exact numbers).....

[Oxbo Rene]

(Acceptable)
(why can't we edit our posts) ??

[rad14701]

(Acceptable)
(why can't we edit our posts) ??

You only have a certain amount of time to edit prior posts...

[Ack]

So I developed a habit of fixing wash up and making it in the high 5's (5.7-5.9) before adding yeast

Hi Oxbo - I'm curious what you did to improve your wash before adding yeast? Your fix was able to keep your wash PH from dropping to low? Of course I'd much rather start my washes out a better way that would let them finish properly than have to adjust them with Potassium Carbonate a half day into the ferment every time...