Table salt for water adjustment?

[Silver_Is_Money]

I have very low amounts of sodium in my tap water, and as I understand very low amounts of baking soda are needed, so the added sodium levels would probably only be beneficial for me.

Baking Soda should only be needed for rather dark beers. With your ~40 mg/L Alkalinity (by my reckoning) you should be fine "as is" for most mid-colored beers (ballpark 20-40 EBC) that derive their color from malts as opposed to sugars. You will likely need to acidify for light colored beers, or mid-colored and even dark beers for which sugars are the source of the color. And if you sparge, acidifying the sparge water to ~pH 5.4-5.5 is a good idea for all cases.

 

[marc1]

Is beersmith's water tool any reliable? I'll go and pick some stuff up today or tomorrow at my LHBS.
Did some more reading around last night, and since my water has relatively high alkalinity, is soft and lacking in calcium and chlorides I'm probably good to go if I get some calcium chloride, calcium carbonate and something like lactic acid right? At least to adjust for more malt focused beers which are what I am mainly interrested in.

I've never used beersmith. I've heard that it is great for recipe formulation, but, at least at one point, it was not great for water calculations. I don't know if recent updates, if any, have made the water part better.

As others have noted, chalk is problematic; baking soda works well.

 

[jerrylotto]

Magnesium hydroxide (readily available in pharmacies as a constipation treatment) is good choice to raise pH. You will use tiny amounts - best to make up a 1m solution and use a dropper. Quicklime (CaO) reacts pretty violently with water and will precipitate out CaCO3 in the presence of carbon dioxide.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

I tinkered a bit in beersmith, added my water profile and chose salts to match the porter profile.
My mash PH seems to land at about 5.3 PH without any need to acidify it, will fire up brunwater and see how much I might need in my sparge water though.

 

[Bohern]

Below is calcium hydroxide, I got mine at my local Ace Hardware, but you can order from Amazon too should you need it. I like using it cause it lets me control the sodium levels better.

 

[dmtaylor]

Gosh that looks familiar.

 

[Bohern]

Gosh that looks familiar.

HA! didn't see your post...my bad. You can tell my coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

EDIT: Now I just wish it was in Beersmith.