Water...

Great Lakes Brewing Co. (in Ohio) contracted with Harpoon for a year or two to pilot the canning line. The hard water they had made every one of the GLBC beers taste extremely aggressive. The hops really interacted differently and the specialty malts had a certain texture. It was nothing like the balanced and really great quality city water we have in Cleveland, which is pretty much optimal for brewing (I know, ironic, river catching on fire ha ha ha).

It definitely makes all the difference. There’s a reason brewers on all levels obsess over the mineral makeup of their water.

 

If the water components are different from one location to another I would think the beer would vary some also.Maybe I am wrong

 

I’d guess the water would be treated to be consistent. Being in the medical field something along the lines of RO to remove unwanted minerals and such, filters can be installed to remove the chlorine and chloramines . Whether they use that in Brewing I don’t know, but it’s common in the medical field. It’s neutral water I suppose is the goal, so it’s predictable.

 

I know when our local beer society went to Indeed Milwaukee, one of the hardest things for them was replicating the beer made at the Minneapolis brewery to taste the same, as the water in Minneapolis comes from the Mississippi River while Milwaukee gets its water from Lake Michigan. (Side note, with the license they had, they were not allowed to serve kegs from Minneapolis as they had a brewery license, the beer needed to be made in house). While both surface water sources, there is different chemistry to figure out to get batches to taste the same.

It is possible, I know Miller and Budweiser fly beer from all their breweries in to the respective headquarters to ensure the beer is the same.

 

Oskar Blues had the same challenge when they expanded out of CO to NC, and they had a hell of a time trying to match the softness of the water and composition on final brewing.
Allegedly.

 

Jebus, people still talk about this?

Good breweries figure this out quickly.

 

My understanding is that, historically, water played a major role in the development of certain styles:

Crisp, mountain springs are at least in part why the Germans and Czechs were able to perfect clean, delicate lagers... whereas being resigned to peaty water is how the Irish figured out they needed dark, roasty malts to produce a palatable beer there.

 

As water can change from location to location in a few miles or with a different well in the brewery.

Peaty water? Prove it. Ron Pattinson has said that is crap in Scotland.

 

Relax, behbeh..
Never said ‘my understanding’ was ‘the truth’... please educate us

 

I have a theory about this, based solely on personal experience and with very little knowledge about what breweries actually do. I’ve tried beers from all over the country and I definitely believe different water alters the overall flavor, mouthfeel, and even aroma of beer. But keep in mind that if you live in a given region you are used to water having a certain taste, feel, and smell. So to a degree I think we are all “blind” to these attributes in our own water, and thus in our beer—and it’s only really noticeable when we drink water or beer from somewhere else. Just like if you visit a different city or region the sights, sounds, smells, even the quality of the air and light can be different from what you’re used to. I think this might be one subconscious reason, in addition to availability and freshness, that most people prefer their local beer over beer from elsewhere.

Now if all breweries treat their water to have a “preferred” mineral content, pH levels etc. then maybe my theory is baseless. But I’m not sure how many breweries, especially smaller local ones, go to the trouble and expense to do that.

 

If Budweiser can treat water so that the beer tastes the same made in different locations, of course it is possible to do at any brewery. It takes skill and knowledge to do it, but of course it can and should be done. If beer tasted differently brewed with different water/at a different location it is because the brewer lacked the skill and knowledge (or desire) necessary to do it properly.

 

You might be right but I don’t understand your logic. You’re saying that if one of the biggest beer brands in the country can do it, then naturally so can anyone else? I don’t know what kind of resources, equipment etc. are needed to treat water for optimum brewing, but it’s probably more than nothing. So smaller breweries that are more limited in resources, struggling to be competitive in a tough market, might not be able to match the technological/scientific prowess of Budweiser.

 

I've never done this sort of work myself, but I imagine a water chemistry lab can titrate for pH, run ICP-OES for mineral contents, do GC or HPLC for organics and tell you within a day how to treat water coming out your RO plant to get the same taste.

 

That's why Bud, Miller and Coors are all superior to whatever local spot anywhere in the world. Hell.. Hill Farmstead would be average if not for their water.

 

Yes, homebrewers try to do it with recipes and knowledge of water chemistry, and there are plenty of resources to teach water chemistry in brewing. Presumably a brewery would want their beer to taste the same brewed at different locations. I gave three reasons that they might not succeed at it (lack of knowledge skill or desire), Guess I'll leave it to you and others to further speculate.

 

Yes, about Ireland. Arthur Guinness was an Ale brewer in Dublin, but failed to brew a good product so he brought over the Purser brothers from London to try brewing Porter and Stouts. It was all to do with the local water (liquor in brewerspeak)
In those days Ale and Porter brewing were two separate and independent industries.
It is not widely appreciated that Irish Stout originated in London.

 

What about lack of money? I know enough about water treatment (at the municipal level) to know it’s not necessarily cheap. I’d guess that treating 5 gallons at the home brewing level might be easier and cheaper than treating the volume of water that a local brewery would need to handle.

Back when I used to brew I’d sometimes go up to the mountains to collect water as close as possible to the glacier it came from (and I swore the beer tasted better, but it easily could have been psychological)—but obviously that’s not an option at an industrial level.