Colorado Beers - Distinctive Taste?

A lot of CO craft beers are starting to use local malts (Root Shoot, Troubadour, etc.) but that wouldn't account for those 3. Ditto with the hops. Those 3 are likely sourcing most of what they use from different places.

 

I have a theory that we grow so accustomed to the flavor, mineral content etc. of our local tap water that beers made with water from other regions can taste different to us. After all, by far the largest single ingredient in beer is water. I’ve been told that breweries can filter and condition the water used to make beer to neutralize this effect, but I’m still skeptical. Some qualities can probably be adjusted but I think it’s still possible that other characteristics are inherent to the local water supply and they can’t be fully removed. This might be impossible to prove or disprove but I’ve noticed something similar in beer from the Midwest and the only accounting for it in my mind is that I’m tasting something in the beer that folks there have just gotten used to because of the water they drink.

 

Big breweries put a lot of effort into mimicking water conditions when they contract brew in different regions. It’s very reasonable to think this could be a contributing factor.
Personally, I have no noticed it from CO beers.

 

I agree to an extent, but then I consider Budweiser. They make that stuff in like 13 different factories and you cannot taste a difference between them. Inbev puts a lot of effort into accomplishing that, but smaller breweries don't have those resources.

 

Fortunately I haven’t had enough Budweiser in different places to form an opinion on this, so I’ll take your word for it. And also, yes, I think my theory would apply more to smaller breweries that lack the resources or desire to substantially modify their water. Finally, I’m referring to less tangible aspects of drinking water than pH balance, calcium/mineral content etc. I think for people who are highly sensitive to certain tastes etc., you can have two samples of chemically identical water and they will still be able to tell them apart. An imperfect analogy would be the quality of the light or air quality when you travel. Pretty much any time I go anywhere, I notice that the sun is brighter, the air is drier, and it’s just a little harder to breathe than here in the NW. As soon as I step outside at SeaTac I can feel the difference. So can my family—they’ve all mentioned it. It’s intangible but still noticeable. My skin can breathe again. My thinking is that drinking water could have similar properties from region to region, and you notice it mostly when it’s different.

 

I just saw a Coors billboard that said something about the importance of Rocky Mountain water in their which I thought was funny considering that their beers are brewed all over the country, but I just read that Banquet is only brewed in Colorado, so the add makes sense for that particular beer.

I know some people on BA like Banquet, but I rarely see it compared to Coors Light, which helps explain why it’s only brewed in one location.

I would think that Colorado has many different sources for water depending on where you are in the state or does everyone get “Rocky Mountain spring water?”

 

According to my theory you would be the least likely person to detect anything—the beer would just taste “normal” to your palate. Or I’m just wrong about all of this, which is also possible.

 

It has made a bit of a comeback locally in the stubby bottles. Draft Banquet is an unusual sight even here. Once you leave the state, even the stubby bottles mostly dry up, too. For a macro, I like it, but it comes down to your appreciation of banana esters. Coors Light throws off a little bit while Banquet throws off a bunch. I know some people that hate it (and others who love it) based on that alone. That doesn't really have anything to do with the water or any other CO beers, though. I know Coors has a hell of a lab (New Belgium, too) and they employ folks who are borderline supertasters in the QA/QC department. Whatever commonality those two + Tivoli would have would have to either be subtle or coincidental.