[SpanishCastleAle]

Mashed at 154, ph 5.36 at room temp, added 3 g each chalk and baking soda to the mash to get correct ph.

Do you mean your pH was 5.36 and then you added the chalk/soda or that you added the chalk/soda in order to achieve that 5.36?  At 5.36 you were spot on so if it was the former you shouldn't have added the chalk/soda but if it's the latter...nice 'shot'!

[jlap]

The mash ph was 5.05 without the salts so I added them about 10 minutes into the mash to bring it up.  I have had my water tested and these salt additions don't seem too overboard to me, they basically get me to Dublin water.  My water is moderately hard to begin with but a bit short of calcium...

[tschmidlin]

Dublin isn't really known for producing RIS.

In my experience with salt additions, trying to match any of the heavily mineralized waters always ends up tasting bad.  For some reason, "making" Dublin water doesn't taste the same as using Dublin water (insert Liffey joke here ), maybe because the reports are wrong, the breweries treat their water, I don't know, there could be several reasons and I'm not a water chemistry expert.  But "short of calcium" and needing to up the pH is all the more reason to use pickling lime and leave the baking soda in the cabinet.  That's me though, you can do what you like.

[jlap]

OK well call it London water then... I really just look for the right pH adding as few salts as possible while getting up to 50-75 ppm Ca++.  I've been thinking about getting some Ca(OH)2 anyway so I'll give that a try next time.  It's certainly true that I don't need any more carbonates in the beer for flavor purposes...

[hopfenundmalz]

Get the pickling lime.  It has minimal flavor impact, and you add Ca.  The beer I was making last year suffered from additions of baking soda or too much chalk (those and the spreadsheet I was using then have been put away in the museum of homebrewing in my house).