Water Adjustment noob question

[rjsnau]

Hi everyone,
I have spent the last week looking and learning about water adjustments. I live in Phoenix and our water he is not very good at all so I want to build up RO water. Up until now I have just added a generic pack of salts from the LHBS to my RO water but I want to get better control over it.

I am brewing a Christmas Ale tonight and am using the EZ_water calculator 3.0.1.

Here is what I plan to do. I end up with a good balance of Chloride/Sulfate ratio since I am not trying to make either the hops or malt stick out more. Just to note I am only doing a 3 gallon batch.

I think my biggest question is Palmer always talks about Residual Alkalinity. Mine is -113 here but my calculated PH is right where I wanted to be. Is the RA more of a guideline if you don't have a good way to estimate the PH? I have a PH meter so I am planning on starting without the Acidulated Malt and adding it if I need it. My estimated PH without the Acidulated Malt is 5.55 so right at the top value for room temp mash PH.

Thoughts?

 

[ajdelange]

Home brewers tend to press RA for more information than it really gives. It was intended for comparing waters. It does work for predicting mash pH - sort of - but given that you have a meter that is more or less moot. Use the meter.

The spreadsheet does tell you that it takes a lot of calcium/magnesium to get a small reduction in mash pH. That's why most brewers use acid relying on it to play the major pH control role. IMO what you are proposing here has way too much salt. The beer is going to taste minerally (or it would to me). It is possible that you want that in which case it is fine but most seem to prefer a softer water brew. I recommend starting out with a relatively low level of calcium chloride, then adding sulfate, then increasing sulfate and chloride (and with them, calciuma0 until the "optimum" mineral addition level is reached.