That pineapple rum you challenged me to had a real low pH too. I think it got down to 3 at one point. Had to use a lot of bicarb (only thing I had at the time) to bring it up and get the stall to restart. After the hypothetical run, I cleaned my copper with vinegar and the solution turned bright blue like window cleaner😂
Rum and fruit are crazy when it comes to pH and blue distillate, Bicarb is ok in small quantities, I have just had the flavor pull into my product when I over did the volume. Stabilizers are so much easier to use.
Wash and sterilize marble chips (available at gardening shops) and place a large handful in the bottom of the fermenter . They will automatically buffer excess acid if/as it forms, without chancing the flavor. Marble is metamorphosed limestone, which is primarily calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Cheap and effective. Oh, and Happy Birthday 🎂
Hello, enjoyed your diskussion about PH and distilling/fermentation and your channel in general. just being pedantic about chemistry here, most copper salts are blue so its not copper sulphate you have there but for example in vinegar its Copper acetate and in citric acid its copper citrate.
wow...you continually give me more insight into the hobby. I never knew about pH stabilizers and I manually adjust the pH of my mash/wash...I just ordered that exact stabilizer from Amazon thx 'bro! of all the distillers on youtube I consider you the "Master" and an encyclopedia of knowledge. Thx again!
Great video. I’ve struggled with cheap and good pH meters. Seems that no mater how much care I take to store the electrode and generally take care of the damn things, they rarely work properly. I have pH paper strips but they’re really old and I’m not convinced they’re accurate since different Brand’s provide different results. With my 2 water sources, I just add up to 2% Acidulated malt in my grain bill. With trace amounts of salts I get the results I want and kinda don’t worry about pH anymore. I haven’t made too many projects outside the scale of beer and whisky though.
Hi CC, I got so use to my water being very resistant to pH change that I sometimes forget that some washes drop pH really quickly. Also had one of those yellow pH meters but had to keep calibrating it so just went back to pH strips, super easy and gives a ball park number.
Ya, I used to have the yellow pH meter then I bought a better red one. The red one seemed to work well for a year but sometimes it wouldn’t calibrate which I blamed on out of date calibration solution. I kinda live in the middle of nowhere so when I’m in a major centre I try and stock up on supplies like that. So, when it did function properly I rarely needed to adjust mash pH and using acidulated malt seemed to be the holy grail for my grain mashes. The water comes from a mountain spring that flows seasonally. Not much limestone around here but the water tastes great and pH was in the 6-7 range. Small shrimp live in the water so that’s my cue to believe it’s fit to consume. I do use it quickly and unfiltered so no other critters begin to grow in it. The locals appreciate my beer and whisky so I must be doing something right🤣
8:47 copper in your acetic acid solution produces a blue colour NOT because of copper sulphide, but just because copper ions are dissolved in your solution. You've actually made copper acetate.
Just wondering if grappa is more prone to being blue, or if the wash needs to go lower then ph 3. I have a ton of old wine and old beer, some of it sour beer that I intend on disstilling. And perhaps I should wait on adding all the copper to my stainless still
Hope you can help, i have struggled with my ph for my rum for a very long time now and have used bicarbonate of soda and had no luck at all and just went down in a week and was as the start of 3 again so i bought sodium carbonite, poured that in and my ph went up to 4,2 and now staying there but still doesn't kick off, what could be my problem
