Taste problems in my beers after I moved to a new house, had to use new water and started measuring mash pH with EMD's colorpHast strips prompted me to compare tha pH determined by the pH strips with the pH measured by a pH meter. Though I later found that the taste problems had more to do with the hops I used I discovered an unexpected systematic error for the pH read from the pH strips which was also confirmed in an e-mail from EMD.
set-up
For the test 10 pH buffer solutions were mixed using the 4.01 and 7.01 calibration buffers that are sold by morebeer (MT610). The pH of these buffer solutions was chosen to match the pH values on colorpHast's color scale. The pH strips (MT629) and the pH meter (MT601) were purchased at morebeer.com
experiment
The pH meter was calibrated and each of the pH buffer samples were measured with the pH meter and the colorpHast strips. All measurements were taken at room temperature (70 *F / 20 *C). The colorpHast strips were submerged for 5 seconds until the color didn't change anymore. Leaving them in longer than that didn't change their reading.
