Water for Chocolate Hazelnut Porter

[Johnnyboy1012]

Hey guys,
I use Bru'n Water calculator, it has never steered me wrong! I am going to be brewing a Chocolate Hazelnut Porter for a competition at the end of February and wanted to see if I can get some opinions on my water profile. My ingredients for a 5.5 gallon batch are:

10 lbs British Pale
1 lb Munich
1 lb Crystal 40L
1 lb Crystal 75L
8oz Carapils
12oz Chocolate
8oz Black Patent
8oz of Cocoa Nibs in secondary and Hazelnut extract

The calculator puts me at 34 SRM which is pretty close to what BeerSmith has me estimated at. I will be going with about 34-36 IBUs. Mash with 4.61 gallons and batch sparging with 4.81 gallons.

I wanted to give you all of the info for the beer before I went into the water. I will be brewing with 100% distilled water. I chose the Black Balanced for my desired water profile to try and replicate. The calculator has me adding:
.22 g/gal of Gypsum: 1g mash and 2g sparge
.15 g/gal of Epsom salt: .7g mash and .7g sparge
.42 g/gal of Baking soda: 1.9g mash
.30 g/gal Calcium chloride: 1.4g mash and 2.3g sparge
.25 g/gal Chalk: 1.2g mash

My final water profile is:
Calcium: 61.5
Magnesium: 3.9
Sodium: 30
Sulfate: 47.9
Chloride: 38.3
Bicarbonate: 161.1
Cations: 4.7
Anions: 4.7
Total Hardness: 170
Alkalinity: 133
RA: 87
SO4/Cl Ratio: 1.3
pH at room temp: 5.5

I am asking for advice because I have never used baking soda or chalk before and wanted to make sure this looked correct. With these additions, I have gotten very close to the Black Balanced profile, except hardness, the total hardness should be 191 and mine is currently at 170. Also, I batch sparge so can I add the remaining brewing salts to the boil or should I just add them to the sparge water? Thank you for your help and please let me know what you think!

Cheers

 

[ajdelange]

5.5 is an acceptable pH and is about what you might expect from the water treatments and grain bill you have chosen if the chalk worked as the stoichimetry says it should but it doesn't. So why not leave that out which will probably shift pH to 5.44 which is also a very respectable mash pH? If, for some reason, you want higher mash pH then you could substitute an equivalent amount of pickling lime (0.9 grams).

Now my mash pH predictions (and yours, wherever you got them) depend on some rather far reaching assumptions about the actual proton deficits of the malts you are using but as I don't know what the properties of the actual malts you will actually be mashing I can only guess. IOW your actual mash pH might be somewhat different from the preditiction. The dark beers are really the ones you need a pH meter for.