#1- Wrong. Please listen carefully to Charlie Tally's talk on sanitation, star-san, and bleach. It's worthwhile, and correct. He doesn't talk of old wive's tales or of "beliefs", he speaks of chemical reactions.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr03-29-07.mp3
Don't mix vinegar and bleach directly! But according to the directions in this podcast, it's perfectly safe.
I'm not going to listen to some guy who works for a company trying
to sell his product, I'm going to pay attention to my own knowledge
of chemistry (in which I have two degrees). Using vinegar with
bleach is idiotic.
#2- And wrong. Water chemistry is a HUGE part of the flavor of beer. Huge. Water with a very high residual alkalinity will always make a lighter colored beer have off flavors. Always. No matter if there was a 2 hour lag time or 30 hour lag time.
You're entitled to your opinions, of course. But sweeping generalizations that are in truth only partially correct will be challenged.
I never said it wasn't a factor in beer flavor. I said you are not going
to get bad flavors from ions like sulphate, Ca, Mg, Na, Cl, and you
are not. Poster in the RO thread and another thread last year seemed
to think that sulphates and permanent hardness were making their
beer taste bad, and it doesn't. It may make a beer you want to
taste like Harpoon Ale taste like Samuel Smith's Pale Ale, but it won't
be bad. And a 30 hour lag time will certainly give bacteria and wild
yeast a foothold in your beer and spoil a lighter beer, while dark
malts will mask a lot of off flavors. And carbonate (temporary hardness)
won't leave any flavor either because the mash is acidic and when
you boil it the carbonate becomes carbon dioxide and boils off.
(Source: Terry Foster "Porter"). Temporary hardness can affect
mash efficiency, but that's about it. You, and many others, are
just confused about what causes what.
Jim