PH-measurement & control

[Odin]

Share more info and educate us, please!

Odin.

(oops, reposted ...)

[RevSpaminator]

You guys don't have any idea about...

That right there is why you turn people off to anything you have to say. Are you interested in the science or just showing off how much you think you know?

Telling folks who consistently get top-shelf quality for results that they don't have any idea makes you sound foolish.

[MichiganCornhusker]

What's wrong, Galeo, don't nobody want to play with you anymore over on the "Yeasty" thread? Come over here to harass some new folks? Why don't you give yourself a protein rest.

[T-Pee]

You guys don't have any idea about pH and mashing.

Two words come to mind here. "Ignorance" and Arrogance".

tp (neither)

[Odin]

What's wrong, Galeo, don't nobody want to play with you anymore over on the "Yeasty" thread? Come over here to harass some new folks? Why don't you give yourself a protein rest.

Hey guys! I am not that new!



Odin.

[wv_cooker]

What's wrong, Galeo, don't nobody want to play with you anymore over on the "Yeasty" thread? Come over here to harass some new folks? Why don't you give yourself a protein rest.

Hey guys! I am not that new!



Odin.

Now you have reposted Twice LOL.

[frunobulax]

So I have my Voltcraft PH-measurer in. I calibrated it and checked PH of our tap water. PH is 7.65. Not too high, so okay, I'd say. Now, what really flabbergasted me, was the (almost finished) rye bread beer I took a reading on.

3.05!

And that's very, very low. Interesting thing is, that this is a new generation, without added backset! I will have to adjust. That's sure!

Odin.

Did it stall?

You guys don't have any idea about pH and mashing. In human physiology (which ain't that different to yeast physiology) Peter Stewart came up with the answer 20 years ago (before he died) with strong ion difference and Atot. Get your head around that concept before you repost. There is a calculator at anaesthetist.com which explains everything. There is some money to be made from someone writing an app calculating all this!

WTF are you even talking about?

[SoMo]

What's wrong, Galeo, don't nobody want to play with you anymore over on the "Yeasty" thread? Come over here to harass some new folks? Why don't you give yourself a protein rest.

Hey guys! I am not that new!



Odin.

Odin he meant another group to harass he thinks he's a smarty pants, I think he's a troll. Back to ph and it's effect on mashing, washes and it's correlation to good fermentation.

[woodshed]

You guys don't have any idea about pH and mashing.

Two words come to mind here. "Ignorance" and Arrogance".

tp (neither)

Indeed as it takes one to be the other. They always walk into the room holding hands.
Galeo, you are a pretentious ass. Either bring something other than your holier than thou opinions to the table or take them somewhere else where someone may care.

[badbird]

PH is 7.65. Not too high, so okay, I'd say. Now, what really flabbergasted me, was the (almost finished) rye bread beer I took a reading on.

3.05!

And that's very, very low. Interesting thing is, that this is a new generation, without added backset! I will have to adjust. That's sure!

Odin.

That looks typically of the starting and ending PH 's I get here from sugar washes if I don't intervene with by adding powdered limestone or the like, the water here is excellent to drink but not so good at buffering . I think next wash I'll try NZchris's clam shell technique as a lot of the powdered limestone I use trends to sink down to the bottom of the yeast bed and become inaccessible if not reacted straight away.
I get by with 0.5 to 5 test strips, have had a couple cheap digital meters but found they don't last long and I don't really need to know the PH to that accuracy anyway.

[Odin]

The wash didn't stall. It did take 2 1/2 weeks to finish, which isn't that bad, given my previous experiences of one to two weeks. But, and this is bothering me, this was a ferment without backset. Normally, I include like 15 to 20% backset. That might explain the 4 week ferments. With backset, ph will be even lower than 3.05 ...

No problem. I have the PH-measurement rod and I will get me some calcium carbonate to bring PH up. Had some but it got used up like a few months ago.

What I intend to do is, on my next run, take measurements of the PH of the backset as well as of the fresh ferment. Then I will follow, during the ferment, how PH drops. I will adjust with CC when needed, aiming for PH of around 5.

Regards, Odin.

[MichiganCornhusker]

I'll be interested to see what you find out on your next batch, Odin. The only time I've run into a problem with pH was when I did a mash with a bunch of potato in the mix. When the fermentation didn't take off like I usually see with an all grain mash, I checked pH with strips and could tell that it was really low. Added some calcium chloride and then everything went great. I've read a lot that yeast tends to control the pH to some extent itself, how much do you think the acidity would need to vary before you felt the need to add something to the ferment to move the pH one way or the other?

[rtalbigr]

Odin -

I eventually (sometimes my brain gets stuck) figured out that when I do use backset (and even sometimes w/o) that I needed to adjust my pH Before I started fermenting. If the pH is 6 or higher I have never had problems with the ferment.

I'm not surprised that your ferment dropped down to 3. I've had ferments get down that low before.

Big R

[Odin]

Yeah, I understand Big R. And you know what? Not only did I not add enough calcium carbonate, since I upgraded to my bigger fermenter. Also, due to misinterpreting water read out and understanding my tap water was actually very low on calcium ... I added some calcium sulfate.

Now I found out, my calcium is fine (around 130-140 ppm) ... and calcium sulfate off course LOWERS PH.



The mistake is obvious and so is the solution. Next time I will not use calcium sulfate, check PH (with backset), and if PH is below 6, I will add some calcium carbonate.

Odin.

[T-Pee]

Crushed oyster shell (chicken dietary supplement) works very well for increasing pH and is CHEAP. I'm stuck on the stuff 'cuz it's hard to add too much. When the pH gets to around 5.5-6 it simply stops buffering as far as I have been able to tell. I've used it a half dozen times too just in case you folk are wondering.

tp

[Brendan]

Galeo = Roddy?

These two sound very similar...

[Tokoroa_Shiner]

If not the same. Maybe brothers??

[SoMo]

If not the same. Maybe brothers??

See if galeo mentions Langmuir.
The oyster shell seems a fool proof way to keep PH at a stable level, someone Googe maybe found it kind of self regulated.

[T-Pee]

The oyster shell seems a fool proof way to keep PH at a stable level, someone Googe maybe found it kind of self regulated.

I think Googe did too so I did some experimenting and found the same thing.

tp

[Galeoturpis]

Oh crap! I should never post after a few drinks. By "you guys", I was actually referring to all alcohol fermenting scientists. pH is a complex subdiscipline of of chemistry and physiology. Even the  definitions of acid-base are contested between Lewis acids (electron pair acceptor) and Bronsted-Lowry acids (proton donors). 
pH is all about life and energy production. In the primordial soup, bacteria used their cell walls to make energy and some became very good at it using adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as the main currency. Another bacteria absorbed this organism and it became the organelle "mitochondrion" in eukaryotes (all animals, fungi and plants.) Fungi then diverged by having a tough glucan/chitin cell wall (lobster-like shell). When a eukaryote's internal pH changes too much, the mitochondria can't make energy and so the cell dies. Humans have an ideal intracellular pH of 6.8 based on the charge of the amino acid, histidine (the Reeves and Rahn imidazole alpha stat hypothesis.) Conversely, yeast intracellular pH varies from 6-7.5  (a thousandfold) depending on temperature, external pH and sugar concentration. Yeast's internal pH is very closely related to the external pH (0.2 pH units) so the hard outer shell stops it from exploding. http://jcs.biologists.org/content/114/16/2929.full.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 242.x/full" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

The pH of a solution can be calculated if you know constituents. The wiki page on pH explains it quite well as does Peter Stewart in his 1981 book "How to understand acid-base balance. 
Acid-base.org or http://issuu.com/acidbase/docs/htuab

Hydrogen ion concentration (pH) is determined by independent variables. Biological fluids consist of strong ions, weak ions and non-electrolytes. 
The strong ion difference is (sodium + potassium + magnesium + calcium) minus (chloride and other strong ions like lactic acid). 
A(tot) represents the weak acids and is mainly proteins (YAN, ammonium, etc.) and phosphates. 
http://www.anaesthesiamcq.com/AcidBaseBook/ab10_1.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

As a brewer, you make the wort's pH depending on the water, calcium and magnesium most importantly but also according to how well the proteolytic enzymes of the barley break down the protein for incorporation by the yeast. The yeast then adapt to the given pH by changing its cell wall. What flavour  compounds the yeast releases depends on the wort medium and how it is stressed. The actual pH is just a measure of all the independent variables and I reckon there's a buck to be made by someone writing an app that makes it easy for brewers to predict their pH based on their water and recipe. 
pH tells you as much about a mash as the speedometer on a car tells you about how the engine works. 

[SoMo]

Oh god he's back speedo says speed, tachometer gives the pulse of the engine.

[bearriver]

Mods have their work cut fir em I reckon...

[Jimbo]

seems docs dippin in the adderall cabinet again.

[SoMo]

seems docs dippin in the adderall cabinet again.

Don't blame that looney crap on adderall it helps folks. Maybe huffing rubbing alcohol or hopped up on urea.

[NZChris]

Has someone ODd on their damiana liqueur?

The oyster shell seems a fool proof way to keep PH at a stable level, someone Googe maybe found it kind of self regulated.

I don't know if it's completely idiot proof, but it does seem to work with my water and ferments. The advantages of using whole clams instead of calcium carbonate in powder form are that you can weigh them and know how much was used for your future reference, and that you don't have to do any fancy calculations. KISS is good in my book.

[frunobulax]

I had to look up oyster shells to see why they worked as a buffer, and what I read was oyster shells are calcium carbonate.
From Wikipedia...Biological sources

Edit: Eggshells, snail shells and most seashells are predominantly calcium carbonate and can be used as industrial sources of that chemical. [9] Oyster shells have enjoyed recent recognition as a source of dietary calcium, but are also a practical industrial source.[10][11] While not practical as an industrial source, dark green vegetables such as Broccoli and Kale contain dietarily significant amounts of calcium carbonate.[12]
The reason it seems self regulating is 'cause they are ground coarser and take longer to dissolve. I don't use calcium carbonate in my mashes because it takes so long to work and
ya only have a short time before conversion is over, so I never use it. But it seems It may be good to help ph crashes in sugar type washes because it takes so long to work.

[SoMo]

Nzchris was it you that added them then measured and weighed, noting changes in overall size and weight? I may have referenced Googe, when credit goes to you sorry if it was. Too much reading so little grey matter. Tpee's been using it with success as well. Seems easy enough to just throw some in and let it work.

[NZChris]

Nzchris was it you that added them then measured and weighed, noting changes in overall size and weight? I may have referenced Googe, when credit goes to you sorry if it was. Too much reading so little grey matter. Tpee's been using it with success as well. Seems easy enough to just throw some in and let it work.

I've been doing it for a while now. A 5gal UJSSM usually dissolves 3 to 4 grams of a couple of one or two large clam shells.

Something I haven't tried is adding a large number of shells, so that there is much more surface area. I don't like to mess with something that isn't broken.

[Odin]

Just bought me some 3 kilo's of chickengrit. Made out of sea shells and supposed to be allmost all calcium carbonate. I will use NZ's measure of 3 to 4 grams per 20 liter. For my big fermenter some 30 grams should do it.

I just took out some finished wash (ryebread beer of around 6.5%). Around a liter at PH 3.05. I added 1.5 grams of chicken grit. Now, it does not dissolve easily. It actually still sits on the bottom of the flask in which I gathered that liter of wash. But already PH is up a bit, just after a minute. PH 3.10 already. I will give it a few more hours and see if PH rises on the test batch.

Edit: after one hour the PH in the test sample has risen to PH 3.20.

Regards, Odin.

[Odin]

Another update. I added around 30 grams of chicken grit. A few grams I smashed into a powder, so it could dissolve quicker. More surface area that way. This is what happened.

I had some 30 liters of grains, thrub, yeast, wash left in my (gross) 210 liter fermenter, when I did my last stripping run. I added the chicken grit to these 30 liters. In like an hour or so, the ferment that was done (below 1.000), started up again. Quite the frizzle! Seems there was some sugar left and I guess the chicken grit helped get PH up enough to get them yeasties going again - even though it was the end of the fermentation cycle. So, did it somehow stall due to low PH? Yes, it so seems. Well, that's a sorta conclusion I can draw now.

When my last stripping run was done, I used around 20 liters of backset to dissolve sugar and to start up the second generation of this rye bread recipe. I just finished adding everything (some rye bread, sugar, nutrients) just 5 hours ago ... and already it is fermenting. And at a higher speed. May be that the heating belt (27 degrees C instead of 21) helps a bit ...

Odin.