I need someone here to explain to me how this happened, please. I use a Colloid Master to make my CS, always set on brew #3, and I always get a nice clear product that reads 8 to 10 ppm on my Hanna Tester. I brew in a quart jar, no stirrer, using 6" half-inch-wide pair of electrodes hooked over the top edge of the jar.
As time goes by, these electrodes wear away in the center -- leaving a nearly untouched span of silver at both ends -- top end where it's out of the water, and bottom end where it's suspended in the water. I have been thinking what a waste of silver this was -- so yesterday I decided to try something. I folded the electrodes up, so that the wide ends covered the narrow centers -- thus shortening the electrodes by about a third, but placing wide bars where the narrow bars usually are. Does this make sense? OK -- the generator was still set at #3, I used a quart of distilled water from a gallon from which I had used a quart the day before, turned the unit on and let it go. It brewed in the same period of time as always. But when I tested the water, after the unit had turned itself off (because I wondered if I would get a lower ppm-level) -- I got a whopping 29.6 ppm reading on my Hanna tester. I thought perhaps I was getting an incorrect reading at the top of the jar, so I stirred it all up and retested -- same high reading. I let the brew sit overnight to see if it would change -- it didn't. This morning I had to dilute it with distilled water in order to get it down to the 10-ppm level that I prefer. The good news is that one brewing created three quarts of 10-ppm CS, rather than the usual one quart. But why did this happen?? Can anyone enlighten me? MA
