Beer Forum

Have you ever blindly trusted a brewing water calculator without checking the ph? I freaking did, and now have a so-called Czech pils that has WAY TO MUCH stupid sourness from the 1ml of lactic acid that I added to the mash. Long story short, I'm an idiot and I'm pissed. Will adding chalk to the keg help this in any way? This beer is pretty much undrinkable as-is. I'm proably going to dump it if there's no solution. Definitely living up to my forum name on this one.

If your sodium concentration is not otherwise very high, it might be more effective to add sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to neutralize the acid.

You can neutralize the sourness with a decently strong base it would work. But lactic has a flavor component too, that you probably won't be able to get rid of.

Your best bet might be to brew another batch and blend the two! Or you could always add some fruit and call it a fruity czech!

How does the ADF look? My fear would be that if you put in enough lactic acid to the point where the finished beer tastes sour then the pH in the mash tun would have been way off with probably detrimental effect from that.

Nevertheless it never hurts to try for salvage. You might try experimenting with calcium carbonate, calcium hydroxide, and sodium bicarbonate on glass full at a time quantities. If you find something that works then scale up to the full keg. I wouldn't get my hopes too high, though.

I just added a pinch of baking soda to a pint, and it brought the beer back from the dead to being kinda drinkable. Not good beer, but sort of acceptable. Thanks for the input gentlemen.

brewinhard wrote:Your best bet might be to brew another batch and blend the two! Or you could always add some fruit and call it a fruity czech!

I've done this when I got carried away with the high alpha acid hops in a batch and tasted it before pitching.

Yeah try to blend it, at least then you gt some practice with blending.

When I do most of my step mash calculations I tend to do them twice its inevitable I will forget a number at some point. I trust myself even less with water chemistry, part of the reason I haven't messed with mine(of course I also have good brewing water according to the breweries around here).