PH Reading 15 Gallon Batch

[ianceppos]

I increased my batch size from 10 gallon to 15 gallon for the first time, everything else remained the same ingeredient ratios, temp, SS wine fermenting vessel, etc.  The first difference was the fermentation time.  What normally takes 7 days to reach disired flavor and a PH of  2.3.took 10 days.  What threw me off was when I taste tested the tea from the spout at the bottom it tasted a little to sweet and the PH was too high on day 10.  When I did the same on top, the taste was perfect and had a PH of 3.2.  Having never done a 15 gallon batch and many perfect 10 gallon batches I removed the scoby, drew off my starter tea, let the KT settle for 24 hours, skimmed off the dead yeast, and kegged.  The final product after carbonating the first 5 gallon keg is good tasting KT, but too sweet and had a final PH reading of 3.5.  My question is how should I have taken and accurate PH reading before removing the scoby?  I'm assuming the PH on the top is lower and less sweet compared to the bottom where more sugar is still present and has not yet been converted by the scoby.  If that is the case, how do I get an accurrate reading from the entire batch? 

[Zachary Glasgow]

With what device do you test the PH of your brew?

Thanks

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 9:22 AM, ianceppos <imce...@gmail.com> wrote:

I increased my batch size from 10 gallon to 15 gallon for the first time, everything else remained the same ingeredient ratios, temp, SS wine fermenting vessel, etc.  The first difference was the fermentation time.  What normally takes 7 days to reach disired flavor and a PH of  2.3.took 10 days.  What threw me off was when I taste tested the tea from the spout at the bottom it tasted a little to sweet and the PH was too high on day 10.  When I did the same on top, the taste was perfect and had a PH of 3.2.  Having never done a 15 gallon batch and many perfect 10 gallon batches I removed the scoby, drew off my starter tea, let the KT settle for 24 hours, skimmed off the dead yeast, and kegged.  The final product after carbonating the first 5 gallon keg is good tasting KT, but too sweet and had a final PH reading of 3.5.  My question is how should I have taken and accurate PH reading before removing the scoby?  I'm assuming the PH on the top is lower and less sweet compared to the bottom where more sugar is still present and has not yet been converted by the scoby.  If that is the case, how do I get an accurrate reading from the entire batch? 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lion Heart Kombucha Forum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lion-heart-kombucha-forum+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[ianceppos]

I have a digital PH meter that reads from 1.0 to 10.0.

[thor...@gmail.com]

Have you continued to have this issue?  I just expanded my batch size and will be testing pH in a few days.  I plan to test bottom and top just to see if I have similar problem.