I have noticed that my darker beers seem to come out better than my pale ales and lighter beers. They seem to be a little more dull than I feel they should be. From what I've read I would guess that, among other ions needing tweaking, my RA is too high for those styles which leads to too high of a mash pH. Do you feel that my water report supports that?
RA is a concept which has sort of had its run now that we look at the details of the proton flows in a mash but it is still useful for comparing waters. Yours would be 42/50 - (30/20 + 3/12.15)/3.5 = 0.34 which is pretty modest but positive. It's interpretation is that you are, as are most, in a situation where some acid will be required in most of your beers.
If you wouldn't mind, I have attached the spreadsheet of a recipe I've brewed before with my adjustments based on what I've understood from my reading so far. Any suggestions or comments are welcome.
No problem. It's a little hard to tell exactly what you did from the spreadsheet so I may be interpreting things wrong. I'm assuming that you blended 2 gal RO water with 2 gal tap water and added 4 grams CaCl2. This would shift the pH slightly and halve the alkalinity and hardnesses which would be built back up by the CaCl2 addition.
When it comes to the grains I have to make some guesses. I am guessing the base malt might be like Crisp's Maris Otter, that the honey malt might behave like 20L crystal and the grits, about which I haven't the foggiest, might behave like unmalted barley. As these are in relatively small proportion they won't have much of an influence anyway. Based on these guesses you might expect a mash pH of about 5.64 at room temperature. The calcium released H+ ions and the small amount of same from the 20L malt are enough to overcome the low alkalinity of the diluted water but not the proton demand of the base malt at a lower mash pH. Note that if a different base malt, one with higher proton demand, is used, such as Weyermanns floor pils, that pH estimate could go up to 5.8 which is clearly way too high. 5.64 is sort of marginal. You'd probably get a better beer at say 5.5. The rule of thumb says you could get this by adding 1.4% sauermalz. In fact it would take more like 2%. Or you could use 2.75 mL of 88% lactic acid or 31 mL 10% phosphoric acid.
These are approximate numbers based on the malt assumptions. It is far better to obtain and use a pH meter than to rely on calculations in which there is a basic flaw in that malt models have to be used, as I have done here, except in cases where one has detailed malt info (and a calculator he can put it into) in which cases they give very good predictions.
The augmented chloride should give the beer a nice round body and a bit of extra sweetness (but that is a lot of chloride - you could use 3/4 or 1/2 the CaCl2 addition w/ minimal effect on mash pH) whereas the cut with RO water should knock the sulfate back to tolerable levels. If, however, you are one of the relatively few who don't really like the effects of sulfate at any level you really haven't much recourse except further dilution with RO.
