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Science

A Geologic View Of Beer 37

Posted by timothy from the limeade-doesn't-dull-the-senses dept.
jmichaelg writes "Older beer drinkers may remember the Olympia Beer ads that trilled "tis the waters..." The NY Times (reg required) has an article that describes how the geology surrounding a brewery affected the local water chemistry and determined the kind of beer a brewery could produce. Pilsners came from regions with naturally acidic waters while Guiness Stout comes from alkaline waters which percolated through pre-Permian limestone. Read the article and learn how German Brewmeisters hacked their way around the laws which banned chemically augmenting their product."
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A Geologic View Of Beer More

A Geologic View Of Beer

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  • ...the Yucca Mountain Brewery will open for business.

  • Beer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by epsilon720 ( 307234 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:15PM (#11088632)
    I know that my dad, who is a groundwater hydrologist, is personally convinced that the Deschutes Brewery in central Oregon benefits greatly from the quality of the water that they use. Since he is extremely familiar with both beer and water, I tend to believe him.

  • Apparently, American breweries... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @08:15PM (#11088634)
    ...are built surrounding naturally-occuring urine springs.
    • My question is: Where the heck are the breweries for Budweiser situated? Every time I see that horrid excuse for a beverage sitting on the shelf at the Beer Store (I think the LCBO has good enough taste not to stock it), I always think to myself "Why buy Budweiser when pissing in an empty is so much cheaper?"
    • You're wrong.

      American breweries aren't built "surrounding naturally-occuring urine springs".

      There isn't enough taste of anything in those beers. :-)

      To be fair, the microbrewery revolution might make US beers better on average then where I live (Sweden). Sometime their standard might reach Germany, Ireland and hmm.. maybe not Belgium.

      The point is that this joke was unfair and probably deserves to be modded down. :-)

  • Oly's a favorite beer of mine, and there is definitely something about the water. Based on my experience the "it's in the water" refers to the loudest, longest, roundest belches I have ever had. I think it has more carbonation and less alcohol than even most American beers. Anyway, Olympia's truly great if you're out camping in a canyon and have had a couple--the echoes are amazing.

  • Not NY Times (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @09:05PM (#11089005)
    The article in another newspaper [chron.com] - no reg required.

  • It's not the water any more... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Doobian Coedifier ( 316239 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @09:34PM (#11089214)
    Olympia was bought by Miller. The Tumwater brewery closed in 2003, and Oly is now brewed by Pabst in San Antonio (along with Rainier...sigh).

    Red Hook is the only major brewery left in the Puget Sound area. (Well, you could count Pyramid or Hale's). However, there's a huge number of micro-breweries in WA [microbrew-nw.com], that are all way better than Oly.

    Some of my favorites:

    http://www.elysianbrewing.com/
    http://www.pikeb rewing.com/
    http://www.baronbeer.com/
    http://www .laconnerbrewing.com/
    http://www.scuttlebuttbrewi ng.com/
    • The Deschutes brewery recently ramped up production to a scale similar to Redhook. Other microbreweries with commercial levels of production in Oregon are Full Sail, Rogue, Widmer, Bridgeport... Portland actually has more breweries than any other metropolitan area in the world.

      It's certainly true that Oly has for many years now been essentially just another Commercial American Pale Lager, but pre-prohibition it was a well known brewery that was one of the first west of Milwaukee to put out product that got
    • You mean.... no more artesians?
      Or am I possibly the only person who remembers those commercials?
      I remember sitting behind the Straight Shooter, listening to an open air concert by Slynk Rand, guzzling Olympias until I could see the artesians
      (and no, I don't expect anyone to know the names, sort of obscure).

    • When I was a teenager growing up in BC no one would think of drinking Olympia without scraping the "the" out of the slogan on the can.

      --Tom

  • Much more information (Score:3, Informative)

    by troels ( 56872 ) <troelsNO@SPAMtolstrup.org> on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @10:31PM (#11089599) Homepage
    Much more (technical) information can be found in brewery.org's technical library [brewery.org]. There is not just information about water, but the entire brewing process, different ingredients, equipment, and much more

    Even more info can be found on Home Brew Digest [hbd.org].

  • I read this in Wikipedia last week while browsing stouts. Is it news if it's in an encyclopedia, even a peer edited one?

  • Caves (Score:4, Interesting)

    by booch ( 4157 ) <slashdot2010@cr[ ... m ['aig' in gap]> on Tuesday December 14, 2004 @11:12PM (#11089793) Homepage
    Saint Louis was home to many breweries in the 1800s, including Anheuser-Busch, now the largest brewer in the world. One of the main reasons is that there are a lot of caves in the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. The caves provided natural refrigeration that allowed the beer to last longer after brewing. Later, A-B was able to pull ahead of the pack by developing refrigerated rail cars and a national distribution network.

    (I work at Anheuser-Busch as a contractor, and I've lived in St. Louis most of my life.)

  • Geologists and Beer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FroBugg ( 24957 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @12:56AM (#11090249) Homepage
    As a geologist, I can only wonder why this took so long to come to light. Geologists and beer go together like... shale and oil.

  • Corrections (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @01:42AM (#11090440)
    Hops, a type of flower, is added to give a bitter, fruity taste to the beer.

    Definitely, hops add a bitter taste to beer, which is often used to balance out the sweet barlety malt sugars. While it is true in some cases for hops to add fruitiness--for example the citrussy hops of the Pacific North West--most often fruitiness in a beer comes from fermentation byproducts, which are determined by the yeast. In general, ale yeasts are less efficient at converting malt sugars to alcohol, and as a result are sweeter with more fruity byproducts than the dryer crispier lagers.

    The balance of fermentable sugars has everything to do with the flavors and the kind of beer that results. The mashing stage is crucial.

    The type of mashing (decoction/infusion/sour) can play a roll in how smooth a beer can be, and different minerals can accentuate different taste qualities. However, this article does not mention that the yeast strain plays a much bigger roll in the flavour profile. Belgian yeast strains can lead to sour/spicy/dryish beers. British yeast strains often produce fruity and sweet beers. German lager strains tend to be crisper, allowing the beer to focus on the hops.

    It should be noted that you can change the amount of fermentable sugars by simply increasing the amount of grain to water ratio, making a stronger beer regardless of region. The ratio of fermentable to non-fermentable sugars may stay the same with the same mashing and water, but the yeast strain can play a bigger roll in converting more or less of the fermentable sugars into alcohol and various tasty byproducts (buttery diacetyl, astringent phenols, banana-like iso-amyl acetate, etc.)

    The water was also rich in sulfates, which acted as a preservative, allowing the beer to be shipped to distant locations, even India - the Burton beers were called India pale ales, or I.P.A. for short. "The I.P.A. style came about because of the geology on which Burton was sited," Dr. Maltman said.

    Back in those days before pasteurization, hops were used as preservatives, and the IPA style owes more of its defining characteristic to extra hopping. IPAs have the highest levels of hops and subsequent bitterness/aroma/hop flavour of any beer style. Although technically incorrect to market a modern beer as preservative free, the hops now are added purely for flavouring, because pasteurization or cask/bottle conditioning preserves modern beer.

    Today, any brewer anywhere can produce India pale ales by adding minerals to - or "burtonizing" - the water to match what burbles in Burton-on-Trent naturally.

    Although this is a common practice for Brittish style ales, the style of beer Burton made famous was pale ale or bitter. India Pale Ale can also benefit from "Burtonizing", but the article seems to confuse the two styles.

    Overall, it's an interesting thesis. Definitely, geography has a big impact on the brewing, but I believe that is due more to the variety of hops growing in a region or the yeast strain found in a region than the minerals in water. Mineral in water do play a significant supporting roll. I can often tell what stylistic region a beer is from by just smelling it and identifying the types of hops, but the same cannot be said for the mineral/water component. Czech hops are spicy and resiny, German hops are foral and woody, Brittish are earthy tea-like and herbal, and American hops are citrussy. If you try to grow a type of hop in a non-native region, it will still produce a flavour or aroma similar to the region it is grown in. It has something to do with the soil. This brings up an interesting question. How has the water influenced the local yeast and hops in the beer? Did Czech brewers gradually select more efficient yeast strains over the years to match their famous soft water? Similarly, the hops could be selectively grown to match beer type. Local water probably played a roll in determining which hops and yeast were prefered, but how much of it was di
    • > While it is true in some cases for hops to add fruitiness--for example the
      > citrussy hops of the Pacific North West--most often fruitiness in a beer comes
      > from fermentation byproducts, which are determined by the yeast.

      One of my favorite examples was the Wyeast Belgian II strain. I was making a Westmalle trippel clone and couldn't find a bottle of westmalle so I had to look for another yeast.

      Turned out excellent with this yeast and it added a wonderful aroma and flavor of bannanas! I was quite
      • The banana flavour comes from some ester whose name I can't recall and am too lazy to look up in Papazian - you maybe got it because you fermented it at too high a temperature (Westmalle Tripel doesn't have much of a banana flavour iirc). I, too, need to brew some more extra-strong beer - the stuff from two years ago has almost gone, and it's usually close to a year before it's even drinkable.
        • Well I also wasn't using the same yeast as Westmalle Tripel. (at the time it was, for some reason, gone from the area)

          Anyway, I kind of like the bananana flavor.

          -Steve
    • The water was also rich in sulfates, which acted as a preservative, allowing the beer to be shipped to distant locations, even India - the Burton beers were called India pale ales, or I.P.A. for short. "The I.P.A. style came about because of the geology on which Burton was sited," Dr. Maltman said.

      Back in those days before pasteurization, hops were used as preservatives, and the IPA style owes more of its defining characteristic to extra hopping. IPAs have the highest levels of hops and subsequent bittern

    • and as a result are sweeter with more fruity byproducts than the dryer crispier lagers.

      You do realize that beer is a liquid right? Two adjecteves that will never apply are dry and crispy. I can see it now: "Hey bartender, break me off another hunk of that lager!" :-)

  • Real Ale (Score:3, Interesting)

    by martin ( 1336 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `cesxam'> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @06:12AM (#11091116) Journal
    Those people who have been 'into' real ale already know this.

    There's a brewing term 'Burtonising' where brewers articifically change the water minerals to be close to that at Burton-on-Trent which is then used to reference the beer's quality from...

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