I re-wrote my post a few times to make sure I wasn't being aggressive in response to you as I did think your assumption that I was blindly replicating Burton water was a little short, it is difficult to pick up the intended nuances in typed responses like this which would be obvious if we were having this conversation over a beer. I don't try and replicate historic Burton water, it is disgusting but I add the salts mainly to increase sulfate levels as you say we should.
I have read lots of stuff about water and there is a difference between adding chalk to the mash where it does indeed raise the pH and dissolving it in carbonated water where something else happens, I decided at the time it was a good idea so I have added it to my process for those English beers, I have no real idea why but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
With regard to sparge water pH, I do good boils and typically loose 4 L per hour with 20L batches and do have quite high efficiencies, 90% into the kettle so I really don't want to pick up tannin from the grain husks.
Does this make more sense to you?
Yes it makes sense. Some non critical feedback, where if we were having a beer talking you'd have told me to wind my neck in ages ago haha.
But, a little feedback.
Adding the chalk to soda water essentially allows the chalk (calcium carbonate) to fully dissolve. This allows the effects of the chalk to be fully used.
Chalk increases alkalinity of the mash, which works to resist the acidification or drop in pH. It can be useful in some dark beers where the water has low alkalinity and a roast or dark grain bill more than 10%. This can be an instance where chalk is usefull to prevent the pH going too low.
In all other situations, it simply prevents the mash from reducing in pH which is what you want to achieve. You then need to add more lactic acid then needed to overcome the buffering effect of the chalk you just added, so that you can reduce the pH of the mash.
So chalk really only increases alkalinity and adds calcium without adding sulfates or chlorides.
I hope that makes more sense?
With the mash PH, if you are fly sparging and really running down to the low low gravity running to eek out every little bit of sugar, then you do need to worry about the pH of the wort being collected.
To avoid this, you need to reduce the alkalinity of the water. The alkalinity of the sparge water is what's important as the grain will reduce the pH of the sparge water, unless its alkaline (buffered) in which case you need to essentially remove that problem by reducing the pH.
Melbourne water has very low alkalinity to start, and RO water would have almost no alkalinity. For this reason, I said its not important to worry about reducing the pH of the sparge water, and even if you did need to reduce it a pH of 4 would still be considered pretty low.
Just some feedback to consider.
To dial in the styles, when playing with water chemistry consider targeting sulfide to chloride ratios as the factor for increasing perceived hoppiness vs maltyness.
Again, I probably just fired off some replies and came across as a rude c**t which was not my intention. Reading back over my posts I probably came off as arrogant and rude, and if you ask my mates they would probably say.. that's me down to a tee. Haha.
