First all grain/water adjustment

[Cajunbrewer87]

So I'll be making my first all grain batch in about a week, so I'll be soaking up all the info I can until then. Water adjustment is the only thing thats been giving me a headache, even after a lot of research. I will be brewing the brown porter recipe from brewing classic styles, and use bru'n water's brown malty as my target profile. After playing around it looks like I am in that ball park. I will be building from distilled, using the BIAB method so for a 6 gallon batch I figured I would start off with 8.5 gallons. After adding 3.4 grams of gypsum, 4.3 grams of calcium chloride, 1.7 grams magnesium chloride I end up with this:
Calcium 61
Magnesium 6
Sulfate 59
Chloride 82
Ph 5.4
The problem is that it is suggesting 84 bicarbonate, but when I add baking soda the ph gets too high, is there another way I can add bicarbonate?(I've read that chalk is a bad idea)Besides that does everything look ok? Thanks, hopefully I can get a better understanding of this water stuff before next week.

 

[Yooper]

You probably don't need ANY bicarbonate. What is the projected mash pH without it?

Are you sure you don't mean magnesium sulfate (epsom salts) instead of magnesium chloride? If so, go ahead and leave it out.

No need at all for the gypsum. Just use enough calcium chloride to get your calcium above 40 ppm, and 0 sulfate and 0 magnesium is fine.

 

[Cajunbrewer87]

The ph without the bicarbonate is 5.4, so I'm assuming that people say you need bicarbonate only to bring up the ph from dark malts, so if my ph is in that range without it I'm fine? So it sounds like for this particular recipe all I need is calcium for the yeast and chloride for malt flavor, and everything else can be 0? On bru'n water it says magnesium chloride, but they have epsom salt on it as well

 

[Yooper]

The ph without the bicarbonate is 5.4, so I'm assuming that people say you need bicarbonate only to bring up the ph from dark malts, so if my ph is in that range without it I'm fine? So it sounds like for this particular recipe all I need is calcium for the yeast and chloride for malt flavor, and everything else can be 0? On bru'n water it says magnesium chloride, but they have epsom salt on it as well

Yes, and yes.

You only need enough alkalinity, in the form of bicarbonate, to ensure a proper mash pH.

You don't need to add any sulfate to this beer, so just some calcium chloride, and a mash pH of 5.4-5.5, would be great.

 

[Cajunbrewer87]

Sounds good! Thanks for the help