Water for 10th Levels

[SacoDeToro]

he goes on to say that they use "biological acidification", by which he clearly means sauergut to set mash pH.

Sauergut seems to have a slightly broad definition when I've spoken to German-trained brewers. Most often they simply use the term to describe either a sour mash or the use of acid malt. In the case of Lightning Brewery, their sauergut is a house lactic culture they use to produce an "acid beer" of sorts that gets used to acidify their mashes.

[ajdelange]

He didn't use the term "sauergut" but did say something about innoculation i.e. it was clear (or I thought is was anyway) that it was not sauermalz purchased from a maltster. GB in my area does apparently use sauermalz.

[dunleav1]

Any idea of how much sauer malt drops mash ph?
(ie) a formula to calculate how much I need for a batch.

[ajdelange]

It's going to depend on the grist composition and the alkalinity of the water but the rule of thumb people use to get started is 1% of the grist for each 0.1 pH drop desired. Thus if a test mash gave pH 5.7 and you wanted 5.4 you would use 3%. If it were a 100 pound grist (to make the numbers easy) I'd add three pounds and have another on standby in case the 3% didn't give the drop I wanted.

One thing to watch out for though. When you first dough in the acid gets released but does not react immediately so pH may go lower than you expected - even below 5.2. Don't panic and throw in chalk. Wait a while. The pH will slowly rise to what will be its final value for the duration of the mash.

[dunleav1]

Thanks AJ. I'm going to try the sauer malt on one of next batches.