Water & Soil

Hirter Brewery brews with its own spring water, and it has plenty of it: according to the brewery, it owns 24 springs. That's rare, since most breweries today draw their water from the municipal network or wells.

How hard is Hirter's water? The brewery states five to seven degrees German hardness. That's soft to medium-hard water. Hardness indicates how much lime and magnesium the water contains, and it helps determine how soft or sharp a beer ultimately tastes.

Soft water suits pale beers well. It makes the hop bitterness clean and lean, without a harsh aftertaste. That's why it works so well for a Pils, as brewed by the Hirt brewery under the name Privat Pils.

The landscape behind it is alpine. In Carinthia, Hirt lies in the Gurk Valley; Upper Styria around Murau and Leoben belongs to the Mur Valley, shaped by a river and mountains. Cold, clear springs aren't a special feature in this terrain—they're everyday reality. In winter the upper valleys freeze over, in summer the spring water stays cool, and it's precisely this steady cold that a brewer values.

Even in summer, deep cellars in the mountains stay cool, which helps a lager mature calmly. A water profile alone doesn't explain a beer, though. Nearly every brewery today treats its water and adjusts it to suit the brew, so the style comes more from the recipe than from the well.