From DPTV’s Great Lakes Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Geist:
What makes great beer? Great Lakes water. That’s what many Midwestern brewers say.
But what are the costs to the Great Lakes? What are the real benefits of the water? And what is the impact on the largest surface freshwater system on earth that supplies drinking water to almost 50 million people?
Detroit Public Television’s greatlakesnow.org decided to dive deeper into the ways Great Lakes water is withdrawn on many fronts.
In July, our Great Lakes Bureau began filming a documentary about water withdrawal called “Tapping the Great Lakes” that will premiere in the spring of 2018. We have already interviewed water experts across the U.S. and Canada about Nestle’s controversial bottling operation; we are heading to Waukesha, Wisconsin to look at the implications of allowing a city outside the Great Lakes Basin to draw drinking water from the Great Lakes, and we’re exploring how much Great Lakes water is wasted in the process of fracking.
But first, we wanted to go a little lighter. We wanted to ask a question not many people think about when they visit their local pub: how do breweries use Great Lakes water?
We decided to visit the largest beer producer in the Detroit area that proudly touts its use of these waters to understand more about the process.
In this feature from greatlakesnow.org, Mark Rieth, the owner of Atwater Brewery, explains the way his brewery uses Great Lakes water.
Check out this video: “It All Starts With the Water” produced by Matt Stinson.
