Water Adjustment Question

I wholeheartedly agree that having the proper mash pH is very, very important so I fully recognize your motivation for listing it three times.

For the sake of discussion permit me to suggest an alternative list:

1. Mash pH
2. Chloride to Sulfate Ratio for a given beer style
3. Appropriate Residual Alkalinity for a give beer style (color of the beer)

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Cheers!

 

Mash pH - yep

Chloride to Sulfate Ratio - important but not the whole story. The absolute amounts of each are important too. A beer with 20 ppm each of Chloride and Sulfates will taste very different from a beer with 50 ppm each of Chloride and Sulfates, even though they both have a 1:1 Chloride to Sulfate ratio.

RA by beer style/color - obsolete thinking. RA influences the final pH for a given grain bill and salt/acid additions, but is only one factor. The idea that you need a a particular RA for a given beer color was somewhat useful in its time, before people (and mash pH models) had data on actual grains' contributions to mash pH. Color was simply a proxy (and not a great one) for grist pH contribution. A 30 SRM (say) wort color that's achieved through crystal malts as compared to the same color achieved through highly roasted malts will require different water and/or salt/acid additions to hit a given pH.

 

What I was going to say.

 

I agree with Vikeman's response, especially the part about RA.

As for chloride vs sulfate, the ideal for a given beer probably varies strongly among any given set of beer drinkers. Expanding upon this, I suspect that in the same way all salt additions are subject to individual preference, with the ideal not a well defined target.