Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Does anyone have a more detailed report than the general 2 page report you can get online? I'm looking to get more into water chemistry of beer and want look at values like Calicum, Magnesium, etc.

My dad works for the water department, I just emailed him to see what he can find.

Kent - can you post that here for everyone. I called and got a copy 2 or 3 years ago (I'm guessing) which I doubt much has changed. I posted the one I got on the board, and I think someone else has posted a more recent version as well.

Yeah, once I get something I'll try to disseminate it as best I can. He was going to talk to the lab and see what they test but don't publish. He wasn't really sure what further info he had.

I did a brew session three weeks ago with a couple people from work and they brought a friend that is a lab guy with the water department. I could see if he has anything. He was most interested in the water of course. He said he would prefer to just build up from RO water. He did say they do not add any chlorine, they use chloramines only so treat with campden tablets.

Well, guys, here's the daily lab reports of the pump effluent from the 2 plants. This is for CR and Robbins. Marion, Hiawatha, and other outlying areas have their own water treatment. I should receive monthly updates which I will post here when I get them. Hope this helps

let me try that again

If anybody has any questions on building water profiles for brewing or analyzing water reports don't hesitate to ask me. If enough people are interested I'd be happy to do a follow up Tech meeting on the topic. I've learned a few things since the last one over a year ago. Because my well water is not that great for brewing I build my water from scratch using RO water.

On 02/10/12 13:00, kjball wrote:

Well, guys, here's the daily lab reports of the pump effluent from the 2 plants. This is for CR and Robbins. Marion, Hiawatha, and other outlying areas have their own water treatment. I should receive monthly updates which I will post here when I get them. Hope this helps



Bad people drink bad beer. You don't usually see an empty bottle of Rochefort tossed onto the side of the road

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Perfect! Randy, maybe you can confirm this. I come out using these numbers a probable pH amont around 5.65 ish, which would work out great for ales, lagers, maybe even a porter.

If you are to make the lighest of beers. Adding some gypsum to increase calcium would be warranted to create the proper profile? Do I have that right?

And to make some of the darkest beers, you would want to increase alkalinity and by some addition of sort.

I'm planning a simple lager that will be light using pilsner malt and only one hop addition. It should have enough flavor for me, while not putting off some of my friends who are only interested in very light beers.

What are you using to calculate that 5.65 number?

In general yes, you'll want some Ca in there as the CR water is only around 25ppm. You can work with it but I like to get it closer to 50 for most beers to help yeast floc. Gypsum would work well for hoppy beers in general, or Calcium Chloride for maltier beers. Or both in moderation.

Really, though, it helps to use a good spreadsheet to calculate the effects of the different grains combined with your water. If you like, give me your expected recipe and I can give you a rough idea of where you "should" end up pH wise.

I tried to attach the sheet I use but the forum says it's space for attachments is full...

I put the water report into Beersmith. Did I miss something or isn't there anything for sodium? Hopefully not answerng my own queston, what about alkalinity? I don't see anywhere to enter that either.

Yes, it would be nice to have the Na and K numbers, though the latter is probably less than 1ppm. Right now using the numbers from the sheet the cation/anion balance is a bit off.

Also keep in mind that the Ca and Mg numbers need to be converted as they are listed as CaCO3. So in Beersmith and other software that expects ppm you'd want to use Ca=25 and Mg=18 (averaged). One other number we need to calculate ourselves is Bicarbonate. I come up with 94ppm using the Bru'm Water spreadsheet.

Alkalinity (as CaCO3) is listed on the water report. I used the averaged number from the J ave plant, or 78ppm.

sodium is on the right side of the sheet.

Jeesh that makes sense...attach J st sodium to the NW table! Anyway, that does make the ions balance out.

On 02/12/12 01:00, kjball wrote:

sodium is on the right side of the sheet.



Bad people drink bad beer. You don't usually see an empty bottle of Rochefort tossed onto the side of the road

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I missed the first tech meeting on water, I woul definitely appreciate another if you were up for it...