Filtering Beer Trouble

Earlier, since the whole point here (mash wise) is to make sure conversion of starches to sugars happens in the proper pH range. Give the grain, water, and brewing salts time to mix (say 5 minutes) after dough in, then draw a sample, cool it, and test your pH. Then adjust with lactic or phosphoric acid if needed. The goal though is to be able to use your grain bill, water strike volume, and water sparge volume to predict (in advance) what brewing salts and/or acid malt will need to be added to the mash to obtain the proper pH and overall water mineral content. That is where a calculator like the one's Vikeman mentioned comes in handy.

Most mashes with typical water and a typical grain bill tend to naturally buffer themselves at about 5.5 - 5.8 pH. So it doesn't take much to lower it down to the 5.2 - 5.3 range. Keep in mind that grain bills that are high in roasted malts are generally more acidic to begin with.

Aside from the pH, the overall water mineral content is important for achieving the healthiest fermentation possible, achieving a beer that clears quickly, and adjusting the taste profile of your final product. Here are some notes on some of the main ions you might find handy...

Calcium Ions:

1. Important in water hardness (both permanent and temporary)
2. In brewing, it precipitates phosphate in wort to reduce pH
3. Stabilizes alpha amylase
4. Increases total and alpha amino nitrogen of worts
5. Improves lauter performance
6. Precipitates oxalate (haze and gushing, beer stone)
7. Decreases wort color
8. Improves flocculation of trub and yeast
9. Limits extraction of certain colored and astringent substances / silicious materials
10. Reduces the effectiveness of brewery cleaners

Magnesium Ions:

1. More soluble than Calcium ions
2. Therefore they have less effect on wort pH and beer flavor
3. Important as cofactor for certain enzymes (pyruvate decaroxlase)
4. Catalyses the isomerization of hop alpha acids


Sodium

1. Rarely present in high concentrations
2. Sodium gives sour and salty taste
3. Sodium Chloride at up to 150 ppm gives a desiable palate sweetness / fullness


Bicarbonate

1. Decomposes on heating
2. High concentrations give too high pH and negative flavor effect
3. More potent in raising pH than Calcium is in lowering it

Sulfates

1. Contributes to drier more bitter flavor
2. Source of sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide during fermentation
3. Yeast cells absorb sulfates and then pass them out as sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide (giving egg / burnt match smell)

Chloride

1. Gives more mellow palate and palate fullness
2. Limits yeast flocculation
3. Improves clarification and colloidal stability
4. Combines with phenols to produce off flavors

 

Because it can burn you.

 

@koopa has an excellent post!

I just want to emphasize the part of: “The goal though is to be able to use your grain bill, water strike volume, and water sparge volume to predict (in advance) what brewing salts and/or acid malt will need to be added to the mash to obtain the proper pH and overall water mineral content.”

I prefer the MpH tool for making water adjustments (I use lactic acid to achieve my target pH).

Measuring the pH is a good practice to confirm that you did indeed obtain your target pH. My experience so far with MpH is that it does a very good job in predicting mash pH.

Cheers to koopa!

 

Glad to hear it! In addition to the Irish Moss helping, S04 is a yeast strain known for fast flocculation. So that is also helping expedite the clarity on that second batch.

 

Well, here's the other reason.. lactic acid is food safe, easy to find, and commonly used in brewing.

Sulfuric acid.. well, it's pretty corrosive. And for one, you'd need to find a food grade form of it. It's generally not something you'd find in food, maybe perhaps small amounts in HFCS.

If you are worried about adding calcium chloride to your water, certainly you'd have more issues with letting people know your beer has H2S04 in it!

Maybe time to brush up on your books.....

 

I assume "vine" is "wine".. I'm open to hearing about the use of sulfuric acid in foods, because other than HFCS, I can't think of any off the top of my head.

And no, they don't use sulfuric acid in wine that I'm aware of. It's illegal, it's pretty much battery acid for cripes sake! Most will use phosphoric acid if they need to change the pH any. I'm not a wine guy, so I don't know the whole process, but they do add sulfites to the beer, and the french do exhibit their acid content as sulfuric acid, but it's incorrect.

Point being, regardless of your degree ( I'm a chemist in my day job as well... ) H2S04 isn't something people eat, nor drink, atleast knowingly.

The mere thought of adding it to food, on the premise that you are so against adding more natural things to your beer like salt, is just funny to me.

 

Hate to moderate the moderator but......

Maybe time to do a cursory google search before making such a remark?

I did and, according to this USDA technical report (if I'm interpreting it correctly of course - I apologize if I am not), sulfuric acid does indeed seem to be used in food processing...

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5101325

Food Handling Uses

Sulfuric acid is considered a general purpose food additive and is used in the production of food acids (i.e., citric and lactic acids) and to directly control pH during the processing of foods (particularly packaged foods) and beverages, including seaweed extracts, alcoholic beverages, and cheeses. In the production of citric acid, calcium oxide is added to form an insoluble precipitate, calcium citrate. Citric acid is recovered by adding sulfuric acid to dissolve the precipitate (Kragl, 2005). A small amount of sulfuric acid is used in the production of high fructose corn syrup (Watson, 2002).

 

Found a link to what appears to be a food grade version too (although to FATC1TY's credit I'm sure it isn't easy to procure like lactic or phosphoric is)

http://www.generalchemical.com/assets/pdf/Sulfuric_Acid_98_Food_Grade_PDS.pdf

 

No need to worry about moderating me, I need it sometimes!

I mentioned that I know they use it in the processing of some foods, like HFCS. Point is, like the USDA portion you quoted ( which I will admit, I didn't bother to look up beforehand ), it's used in processing, and is a byproduct in some cases. You aren't eating sulfuric acid when you eat citric acid, and you can handle citric acid and it's more stable and easy to find than pure sulfuric acid.

I admitted I didn't know, or look up, and was open to finding out what foods we eat daily that have any pure, or near pure form of H2SO4 in them.

My main driving point was, the idea to use a pure sulfuric acid to adjust the pH of a beer, when there are many other options to do so, which are safer, and cleaner. He seemed hesistant to use irish moss, or to use anything that would be seen outside the guidelines of water, barley, hops and yeast, yet figured using pure sulfuric acid would be acceptable.

You don't see many people using it, even it was the best route in beer, wine and cheese making, because it's just not something everyone has access too, despite their diplomas on the wall.

 

So, are you using irish moss in the boil now? And gelatin to fine, or just letting it cold crash out and leave it be?

 

Whats your kegging process? Do you use "corny" kegs, or something different?

I ask because I think you could probably do this:

Ferment for 2 weeks. Drop temp down in Primary after 2 week mark, give 2-3 days at cold temp, and filter transfer to keg. Add gelatin to keg, and cold condition for one more week, while carbonating. You could then, pull off the first couple pints of gelatin/yeast from the bottom of the keg, and transfer it to another keg.

That could have you around 4 weeks, give or take a couple days from start to finish. Beer will clear up, condition, carbonate all at the same time. You have to rack it to another keg for the "finished product", but it shaves 1-2 weeks off your current timeline.

 

So are you actually selling your beer now or just learning for when you start your brewery? From what I've read you have a lot of learning left before you are ready to be selling beer. It is a huge mistake to get into this (or any business really) before you really understand what you are doing. Inexperienced/incompetent brewers opening breweries and making the whole craft movement look bad is starting to become a bit of a problem here in the US as the craft beer market has exploded. It isn't good for anyone when someone opens a brewery without the ability to produce a consistent, quality product, it makes consumers think poorly of all small breweries and the brewery in question often ends up failing or at least developing a bad reputation by the time they actually learn to do things correctly.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, or even discourage you from opening a brewery eventually, but you really, really need to be sure you know what you are doing before you start selling your product.