Hi all, I recently moved to Florida, from Colorado Springs, and the water situation here is less than great. As a result I have resorted to using RO water. My first batch here resulted in much lower efficiency, I think this was mostly due to the crush I received at the LHBS. They had a victoria type mill. I'm going to try a different shop that has a two roll type mill, so I am hoping that will solve the majority of the problem. Eventually I'll buy my own mill, but it isn't in the budget at the moment. The other issue I've read about is PH. I don't have a PH meter so I'm relying on calculations to put me in the right spot. My Source RO water has a PH of 6.8, per my pool kit. I'm using Brewcipher for my water calculations, as I have for many years. My question is that I didn't see any changes to the Mash PH or the Sparge PH as a result of changing my source water ph from 7.7 to 6.8 in Brewcipher's water tab. This just struck me as odd as it seems like the source water would have a pretty large impact on the final ph. Am I missing something? I'm brewing a brown ale, any suggestions on what my water additions should be for this with RO water? Thanks for the help
The pH per se of the starting water doesn't significantly affect the mash pH. (The ions content does, and that's what @utahbeerdude's pH model in BrewCipher uses.) The reason there's a place to enter your water's starting pH is that the sparge water acidification calculation uses it. But make sure you change all your starting ions to 0 and/or change the "percent distilled" input to 100%. If you select one of the Brown Ales as the style on the recipe tab, there will be a couple suggested water profiles to select from in the dropdown at the bottom of the water results section on the water tab. You can use those numbers to guide you as you add/subtract salts to build your profile.
Ok, so it's essentially insignificant to the mash PH. I just wanted to make sure. I am using the profile you mentioned and I've set up the source water info as you suggested. Mostly I'm just a little disoriented with the RO water, I'm sure once I get a couple of batches under my belt I'll get more comfortable with it. Hey VikeMan, Thank you for the work you've done on brewcipher. It's fantastic. I'm still probably not using it to it's full potential, but it works great for me and is dead on pretty much all the time.
@jakwi, as between the grind of the malt vs. the pH of the water, the far likelier explanation for your poor efficiency is the grind of the malt. I'm not saying you shouldn't worry about water chemistry, I'm just saying in this particular case a proper grind is probably going to solve your problem.
I'm with you, but I figured I should try to cover my bases, and the two things that have changed from Colorado were LHBS (ie Grind) and water. Before I was consistently getting 78% efficiency. My first batch here dropped to 48%. I was pretty unhappy about it as my abv was in the low 3% range, but live and learn. I picked up my ingredients yesterday from a much better equipped shop. The crush looks great so I have high hopes for this batch. Thanks for the help
