I typically need to add calcium to my water, both for yeast health and because for a light beer it reduces the residual alkalinity and helps get the mash pH into the desired range. Ordinarily I use both calcium chloride and calcium sulfate, choosing a ratio that yields a balance of chloride and sulfate appropriate for the style. Okay, so, for a gose that I recently brewed, I used about half an ounce of sea salt in about 3 gallons of beer. I am pretty happy with the level of saltiness, so I will probably use a comparable amount of salt the next time I brew a gose. My question is, does it matter whether I use calcium chloride or calcium sulfate for my water adjustment? And if so, what should I do? What I am thinking is that the sea salt (mostly sodium chloride) results in such a high level of chloride that it probably doesn't matter much whether there is a little extra chloride or sulfate on top of that. And of course gose is a strong-flavored beer, so the effect of the chloride and sulfate (in the amounts I am contemplating) might be too subtle to notice. (That is, I'm sure the chloride is very un-subtle in the aggregate, since there is so much of it, but I am only considering the relatively small amount of chloride that might be added in the form of calcium chloride.) Then again, John Palmer and Colin Kaminski write (in Water): "The combination of high sodium and a high concentration of sulfate ions will generate a very harsh, sour/bitter minerally flavor." So maybe I should minimize sulfate so as to avoid any flavor interaction with sodium (which, like chloride, will be super-abundant because of the sea salt addition). I'm inclined to go with 100% calcium chloride to achieve my desired level of calcium because (A) it seems safer given the passage from Water I quoted above, and (B) it is inevitable that the chloride/sulfate ratio will be ridiculously high no matter what I do. Thoughts?
As you said, high levels of sodium and sulfate can be harsh, so I'd lean towards chloride, but if you are ending up with less than 100 PPM of sulfate total I doubt it'd be an issue. You can also wait to dose with salt at packaging if you want to avoid overdoing it.
