Before brewers can make great beer, they have to understand Wyoming water

Wyoming brewers say great beer starts with what comes out of the ground—water. The entire plot of the 1977 film “Smokey and the Bandit” boils down to that fact: Coors, brewing at the base of the Rockies, refused to pasteurize their beer, believing heating it degraded the flavor attributed to alpine spring water. Easterners hauled cases home like contraband.

“Water is obviously the backbone of beer—without good water, you can’t make good beer,” said Ben Gruner of Gruner Brothers Brewing in Casper. His brewery’s water begins in the North Platte River, gets pulled through natural sandbeds by city wells, then runs through municipal treatment before Gruner puts it through an additional gauntlet of reverse osmosis, carbon filtration and UV sterilization. All those steps exist because Wyoming water doesn’t sit still. “The hardness of your water can get a little bit harder in the summertime, because there’s more water running through,” he said.

In Pinedale, Wind River Brewing Company depends on pure water from Fremont Lake. “That’s the secret of why our beer’s so good,” co-owner Kari DeWitt said. Head brewer Thomas Simms explained: “This water comes from 200 feet down in Fremont. They basically add nothing to the water besides UV treatment and the smallest amount of chlorine. So that coming into the brewery is just a great start for any beer.” From Lander to Saratoga, Wyoming’s brewers agree: great beer starts with great water.