Mon Mar 07, 2011 3:08 pm
To tell you the truth, I would nix the baking soda and reduce the gypsum to the point that the estimated mash pH was in the 5.4 to 5.5 range. As AJ and Kai have alluded to, you don't really need to strive for high sulfate and calcium concentrations to produce a good hop focused beer.
In this case, the high Ca content is driving the Residual Alkalinity down too much and that forced you to add baking soda to moderate the mash pH. Baking soda should really be a last choice mineral since sodium and bicarbonate are not good together in wort (as told by J DeClerk). Backing off on the Ca content is another way to avoid pushing the RA too low.
I'm betting that the sulfate content and sulfate/chloride ratio will still be acceptably high for a hop focused beer. But if it isn't, you might consider cutting back the CaCl addition if the ratio isn't to your liking.
For those of you that have checked out Bru'n Water, please note that I inverted the chloride/sulfate ratio to sulfate/chloride ratio after reading Colin Kaminski's arguments for it. It makes sense to express the ratio this way since you typically will have low chloride concentrations but you can have very high sulfate concentrations. The old way of expressing this ratio meant that it was a teeny number when you had high sulfate water (like this Pale Ale profile). And even when you have a very malt focused profile with with chlorides, the ratio tends to stay above 0.5. This is just a change in presentation and not really a change in usage, but I wanted brewers to know that the numbers are reversed.
