Yes, heat the water, dump it into the MT with the already-used-once grains, stir, take a sample for the pH and get the results of that reading 10 mins later. I have approached 6 or been over 6 before.I think it depends on the water composition and the remaining buffering capacity of the grains. You batch sparge right Ken? When you batch sparge you just dump all the sparge water into the grains give a stir and run off again, no? (Forgive my ignorance here, I BIAB, so sparging is not in my wheelhouse) So do you add the water, stir and then check pH before running off or something else?
I almost always use 4 gallons of water to mash and another 4 gallons to sparge. Most of my recipes are in the same zip code for OG so it's not worth adjusting... it's still in a good grain-to-water ratio. Brauer, I hear you and I thought about that too... my tap water has lower pH but has more alkalinity. The distilled has no alkalinity but it's at pH of 7. Also, I add nothing to the sparge in terms of salts. I only add acid if the pH appears to be too high... but could it be too late by that time?So the question is... if the sparge sat for 10 minutes and the pH was over 6.0 at a temp of 160-170° and the water was anywhere from 25% distilled to 75% distilled... could that cause a tannin, harsh flavor and/or clarity problem? I'm thinking that acidifying the sparge water and getting it to 5.5 or something just sounds like good practice here. Thank again gang.Distilled water at pH 7 in the sparge should come closer to your mash pH than your tap water would at pH 6.6. Alkalinity is more important than pH. The salts added into the mash will continue to affect the pH, since ~25% of them still remain in the grainbed after the first runnings and they've already done much of their work to set pH. The more sparge water you use, the more their effect will be overcome by the alkalinity of the sparge water.
Edited by KenLenard, 10 March 2014 - 05:50 AM.