Saturday, September 20, 2008

Dry Wolf Brewing Water

Just wanted to post some pics of the water source that I'm using for most of my brews. It's from the source of Dry Wolf Creek in the Little Belt Mountains. The creek is named Dry Wolf because as it exits the mountains, much of it flows back underground and only a dry creek bed is seen at the surface. For the geology types this is because of the Madison Limestone formation that is common along the northern edge of the little belt mountains. The reason I use this water is because it tastes so good! Clean and cold, it comes right out of the ground at this spot and someone installed a pipe here to make it easier to collect. Since it's natural, I don't have to worry about removing chlorine from the water either. The only downside is that the water is moderately hard(at least that's what I found by measuring hardness with an aquarium dip-strip). While hard water is good for the darker hoppier beers that I like, a softer water is required for the lighter Pilsner types that I also enjoy. So, for the lighter beers I'll mix the Dry Wolf water with RO filtered water from the store to make it softer. The spring is off of a forest service road in the mountains and it snows pretty heavily up there in the winter...so I'll have to get up there soon to stock up for the winter months when the area is only accessible by snowmobile.