Alpine brewing at Green Flash?

Pat and Shawn seemed to think they were capable of matching the water profile. I believe there are a few people around here familiar enough with the incoming water treatment equipment at breweries to give you a rough idea - I'm curious myself.

 

Another article on the subject...from the L.A. Times:

Cult favorite Alpine Brewing now shipping to Los Angeles
http://goo.gl/nmmXos

 

In theory, a brewery can have a reverse osmosis system that will strip out the majority of the minerals from the source water, then build back up to a specific water profile through mineral additions. I seem to recall from either The Mad Fermentationist's blog or Jacob McKean's that Modern Times planned on having an RO system but I think it ended up getting cut from the initial plans. I'm too lazy to go back through both of their blogs and look, so if Jacob happens to read this, I'd be curious to know if they ended up implementing it or not.

In practice, I don't know exactly what Green Flash's system entails - perhaps someone with knowledge of their brewhouse can chime in - but it would be some form of stripping out minerals so that they can be built back up to a specific target. Most large-scale breweries do some sort of processing on their water, be it dechlorination, reverse osmosis, or nanofiltration (essentially a lighter-duty version of RO). Considering Green Flash is opening a second facility, I would make a guess that they'll be filtering at both facilities so they can then build back up to a matching water profile, but that's purely speculation.

 

Rip Current does this.

 

I remember watching a video im pretty sure was Brewing TV when they visited them once and they for sure treat their water. I remember something about them saying something about filtration and mineral adding but cant remember exactly.

 

Stone does this

 

Stone has equipment that cost more than the budget of most San Diego breweries. Green Flash may be second place.

 

Yeah, I cut the RO system from budget pretty early on. For one, it was going to cost $15k. Second, RO systems waste about half the water that runs through them. Third, plenty of great beer is made in San Diego without RO. So like a lot of SD breweries, we do double carbon filtration. If we ever really needed to do an RO batch, we could get deionization bottles for about $50 a batch. A lot more feasible for an operation of our size.

Unless things have changed since I left, Stone's brewing water is a 50/50 mix of RO and carbon filtered water.

 

Green Flash has a carbon filter. In San Diego for the most of the styles made the water is great for brewing. As far as matching up the Alpine water,they brought a water reading and it was compared to the water reading coming into the building. Adjustments were made in the brewhouse. Adjustments will be made as more of their beer is made. The thing in San Diego is that the water source is constantly changing so minor tweeks have to be made,but over ayea r it stays pretty constant. BTW-Duet is in the tank and tasting great.

 

Awesome, thank you both for chiming in. I certainly didn't intend to imply that RO is necessary for good beer, especially the hoppier side of things that San Diego is known for. I also didn't realize that waste on RO systems was that significant - I knew there was waste, but not quite that much.

 

So all of the Nelson, Duet & Hoppy B-Day brewed at Green Flash will be kegged only? No bottles? I hope its only kegs and no bottles. I like the keg only idea and it showing up at our local brewpubs & restaurants instead of the bottles showing up at the local stores and disappearing in minutes.

 

This was the story and the plan all along, and was stated and restated quite a few times, but I see how you might have missed it among all the speculation and the Alpine butt hurt.

 

Anyone have any tricks to finding a place to grab a glass of Nelson? I'm heading to San Diego tonight till Monday and cant make it to Alpine but figured I'd be able to find it if I get lucky. So far between Untappd, Twitter, & Taphunter I see people are having a glass all over the place. Are there any other good apps/sites for seeing where people are drinking a glass?

 

http://www.taplist.at/beer-search/

 

Untappd is the one I use. It almost made it too easy to find Nelson in OC/LA for the last week or so.

 

Yeah. Looks like a lot of the bad vibe from their bottles have taken a back seat to all the love thats going on with the recent Nelson release. So with Nelson, Duet and Hoppy BDay being brewed at GF does that mean more room at ABC to brew Pure Hoppiness, Bad Boy and some of their other staple beers? Will they bottle more Duet, Nelson & Pure at the ABC brewery? Maybe I missed this one too. Did they ever find out who stole their SS tank? Or was that just a gimmick?

 

Just for the helluva it I used taplist to search KRBC JO and Randy's Donuts in Inglewood had it just 12 days ago. Is this something new that Randy's is serving craft beer these days? Beer n donuts! Breakfast of champions. . . . .

 

Just means someone checked in there. When I drink at my house, I always check in to Jack in the Box, which is close by. I've never actually been in the Jack in the Box, but I'm hoping someday somebody stops in and asks if they have any cantillon still.

 

It populates its data with check-ins off Untappd so some Untappd user was nearby there and thought it would be funny.

 

These questions have never been answered - all speculation. However, based on what I'm seeing, the best guess is that this Green Flash production is for *new* venues mostly. In other words, it's pretty much business as usual other than it showing up on tap at many new places.

I doubt the tank thing was a gimmick, but you never know.