These Breweries Are in Competition to Make Beer from Dirty River Water

Brewers are known for being an experimental bunch. If they're not fermenting breakfast cereal, they're making belly button fluff into an actual drinkable beverage or transforming minute water particles into ale.

And now, the parameters of making-beer-out-of-weird-shit have been pushed even further. This time, with stinky old river water.

Six breweries in Massachusetts will compete next month to see who can turn the water of the Charles River, the 80-mile river that runs through the eastern part of the state through to Boston Harbour, into the tastiest beer.

The "Brew the Charles" challenge forms part of a week-long festival celebrating art and innovation in the Boston area and is sponsored, natch, by water treatment company Desalitech.

Each of the competing breweries received their share of water from the river earlier this week but it wasn't quite as simple as scooping out a few bucket loads. Desalitech had to pull 4,000 gallons of water from the river and ensure it was all treated via its reverse osmosis system.

Desalitech CEO Nadav Efraty told Washington's Top News that he hoped the competition would highlight the importance of clean waterways.

He said: "We're having fun here, but at the end of the day, we want to educate the public and decisionmakers. We're all efficient with our energy because we know it has environmental and financial costs. We need to think exactly the same way about water."

The water quality of the Charles River has improved in recent years, thanks to changes to wastewater treatment plants and sewer connections. Some parts are even safe to swim in.

The breweries involved are using the river water in a number of ways. Boston Beer Company is making a German-style lager they say will "showcase" that river taste, while Castle Island Brewing is making a dry-hopped cream ale. Founder Adam Romanow said it would "let the water shine through."

Just what you want in a nice cream ale: notes of riverbed and just a slight tang of algae.

Despite the brewers' enthusiasm for showcasing the water's all-natural flavour, experts are quick to warn that water from the Charles still isn't safe to drink straight. Just this month, high levels of cyanobacteria were found in the water, which can irritate the eyes, nose, and throat.

Alexandra Ash of the Charles River Watershed Association said: "We still have a bit more work to do until [drinking river water safely] is a possibility."

In that case, I might just stick with a gin and tonic.