Why is most Texas craft beer cloudy?

um.... every brewery I have been to in the Houston area has an RO unit...

I deal with them on a regular basis in my day job, so I took note when I saw them as everybody and their dog builds them, and I'm always curious who is producing the best equipment for my (or my company's) $.

 

Do you know if they brew with only RO water or are they blending it with filtered city water? If they are only brewing with RO water then they could in theory build their water to be what ever they want, so water shouldn't be an issue, it would be brewing process.

 

Preach!

 

while TX water has high alkalinity, i don't think its the main culprit of TX breweries not nailing the IPA.
i think that has more so to do with chloride to sulfate ratio and brewing process...not designing a grain bill around their local water profile.

 

Hey, Nate from (512) here.

Just a couple of quick points-

I think it was mentioned earlier in the thread that Austin's water in large part comes from aquifers. Just south of Austin city limits down through San Antonio I believe all comes from the Edwards Aquifer, but City of Austin water actually all comes from the Colorado River.

The high alkalinity of Texas water does present some issues that could theoretically contribute to hazy beer, but all the brewers I know are smart enough to be on top of their pH throughout the brewing process, so I don't think that's actually causing many issues.

I don't know about other cities, but Austin water is incredibly low in calcium. Proper calcium levels are important for yeast health as well as yeast's ability to flocculate, and seems to help a lot with chill haze too. COA water reports have typically listed about 10 - 12 ppm calcium for the last several reporting cycles. 50 - 150 ppm is really the optimal range, and I've heard it said that most strains of yeast need 80 or more ppm for proper flocculation.

I'm not aware of chloride:sulfate having an effect on haze, but it absolutely has an effect on the overall flavor balance, especially in hoppy beers.

We were having some pretty irritating issues with chill haze not that long ago - beer that tasted great to us, and cleared up almost instantaneously when it was placed in a warm water bath (best way to identify chill haze, btw), but for some reason every batch had this haze that to us was excessive. We looked into protein content in our base malt, yeast health, reviewed our transferring techniques, our rates of kettle fining, etc. and everything was a dead end. After putting some research into water chemistry and making some relatively minor tweaks to what we were already doing, we got instant results.

Here's what we just finished kegging :

 

awesome post!

EDIT: here's the water analysis of the 290 Cypress area of Houston from 2012...

pH 7.7
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 236
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.39
Cations / Anions, me/L 4.0 / 4.0
ppm
Sodium, Na 34
Potassium, K 4
Calcium, Ca 41
Magnesium, Mg 4
Total Hardness, CaCO3 119
Nitrate, NO3-N 1.0 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 17
Chloride, Cl 41
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 103
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 85
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

the calcium is a little low and the chloride:sulfate is pretty bad in regards of brewing pales.
i know some people go by the 300ppm sulfate rule in regards of making a solid IPA, the ratio of chloride and sulfate is what really matters the most. sulfate doesn't necessarily need to be 300ppm. the desired PH can be modified via grain bill.

while the water out here is bad for pale ales...i say its darn good for brewing ambers and brown ales.

 

Agreed, what's really funny is when I toured Odell in 2010 they were like, "We filter every beer except for Easy Street Wheat and Cutthroat Porter. Easy Street because it's meant to be an unfiltered wheat and the Porter because you can't see or taste the difference if we did."

 

The sulfate level is 51 ppm. Ward labs reports as sulfur, multiply by 3 to get it as SO4. Adding gypsum will boost the Ca and SO4, so the water is not terrible.

Maybe you know all of that.

 

no, the water is not terrible. the chloride:sulfate in our local area is not the ideal ratio for pale ales. adding gypsum definitely helps a lot.

 

Thanks for sharing, I always love hearing from brewers!

 

I can confirm this brewer makes great beer. Their porter is probably my favorite and I've drank a lot of porters.

As far as IPAs go freshness is key in my experience.

 

I also heard sours are sometimes sour.

 

Hope you're not referring to Great Grains Yellow Rose... very nice label design, but their beers remain a great shame on the history of Dallas brewing.

 

Nope, this one is currently in the top 15 of IPA's on this site.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30380/92960/

 

Only Top 15?! People, you're letting me down. Psh, @champ103 maybe you should revisit your rDev -5.8% review and state how you were obviously wrong and clearly this is the greatest beer ever made, etc. etc.

Especially that latest batch, mmm.

 

Interesting thread... the cloudiness of the beer may indicate unfiltered brew which is common, specially on sours.

But this brings me back to when I was watching "Vice" the other night which is a show on HBO. This particular episode touches on Texas' water shortages. It's an eye opener and a reality check. Check out this link below I found a few days ago just after watching the Vice episode.

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/06/tex...gotten_so_bad_one_city_is_turning_to_toilets/

Vice episode is called "Deliver us from Drought" - HBO

 

I don't ever let public opinion sway my personal opinion, even yours. So there

Considering I have given Sculpin, and Blind Pig about a 3, my 4.1 is a pretty good score here

 

Don't you know that all the brewers tea bag the batches and piss in the fermenters before bottling/kegging??