Please note: you must be at least 21 years old to attend AABG meetings.

The February meeting will be hosted by Adventures in Homebrewing, starting at 7:30PM on Friday, February 8.

Read more about this month’s meeting online, including an interactive map to the location, or download the newsletter, which contains information about the meeting and features “UnSession Beers”, the style of the month.

Pre-meeting education about Ann Arbor water

Molly Robinson (Ann Arbor’s Water Treatment Services Manager) will discuss Ann Arbor’s water, the treatment facility, and how the water changes from source to tap. Crispy contacted her and provided some background on the club, and mentioned the recent interest that members have expressed as to understanding the single most significant ingredient in our homemade fermentables.

Along with the aforementioned source to tap discussion, Crispy suggested that members would also be interested in some key elements and minerals that can affect our brewing (sulfur and sodium being two).

You can find the most current information on Ann Arbor’s water at Ann Arbor Water Treatment Services website, which includes the interesting document Water Quality Data for Aquarium Owners and Home Brewers. That document shows the variation of hardness and other minerals by month for the year 2011.

Molly also suggested that if we were interested, she could arrange a tour of the water treatment plant during some warmer weather.

And while Molly indicated that she is a fan of better beer, she is not a brewer. So the presentation can go one of a couple of ways. Molly can speak with authority on what is coming out of the tap, and how it got to be the way the charts show it to be. So the presentation can just focus on that aspect. Then either as an immediate follow-up during her presentation, or perhaps at another meeting, we can discuss the ramifications that various elements and trace minerals have on our brewing output.

Jeff Rankert sent in some questions that he’s interested in:

  1. What is the seasonal variation in our water?
  2. If it’s mainly from Barton Pond, where do the minerals come from? Runoff through the local gravel/soil?
  3. Does AA take measures to remove Iron? Green Earth or other means?

Jeff has agreed with Crispy to talk more about the brewing ions and some of the spreadsheets one can use at the March meeting.

 

Categories: meetings

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