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Seasoned Advice

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  • I'm curious if anyone has had any good experience with electronic pH meters? Due to the nature of my former career sector (we were an SQF Certified plant) and product category, we mostly worked with time/temp. I had personally developed our calibration program, which involved conducting verification once daily (operational) via boiling/freezing point methods, and was objective to the degree of transparently accounting for the elevation and ambient barometric pressure at the time of each verification event (if you ever see a sheet full of only 212°F entries on a calibration log, they're... Commented Jul 12, 2022 at 8:11
  • ...not actually doing it for real). We had forayed into packing sauce sachets in-house on several occasions, and for the product development on those I had briefly interacted with some pH meters; however, the units I came across were not (to put it mildly) very "calibration-friendly". I've always wondered how other establishments handled pH verification in-house? We did have an in-house lab, but only for micro + chem titration. Commented Jul 12, 2022 at 8:13
  • Electronic pH meters are most suitable for suspension food matrices such as hot sauces described above. Chemical-optical methods would be near impossible to read properly in this scenario (how do you determine the shade of red on a strip or in a vial thru a red hot sauce?). Commented Jul 16, 2022 at 17:37
  • Calibration of electronic pH measurement units is almost never performed in-house and only verified using pH standard solutions, like with the SQF requirements for thermometer calibration traceability that you should be familiar with. Commented Jul 16, 2022 at 17:44
  • I believe you may be referring to the annual equipment recertification as prescribed by SQF 11.2.3 (or traceable cert of accuracy upon initial purchase)? However, I am referring to what would have traditionally been a HACCP PRP Calibration Program (such as in FSIS-inspected plants), where daily operational verification is performed. E.g., for weigh scales we out-source them to be recalibrated & recertified annually by an accredited contractor, but on a daily basis we use a set of knob weights (also annually cert'ed) to verify each unit is within tolerance prior to checking out. Commented Jul 17, 2022 at 8:15