Water & Soil

The city's brewing water doesn't come from the bay, but from the mountains. From the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park, Sierra Nevada meltwater flows through pipelines all the way to San Francisco. Since the 1930s, the city has drawn much of its supply from this source.

The water collects in a valley of granite. Rock of this kind releases hardly any minerals, so the water is very soft. For brewers, this means little calcium or sulfate, the bitterness stays rounded, and malt and hops come through without hard edges.

Soft water gives the brewer a lot of freedom. Anyone wanting a robust West Coast IPA can add salts and sharpen the bitterness. Anyone seeking a mild, rounder beer, as with California Common, barely needs to change anything. According to the brewery's own history, Anchor Brewing used the city's municipal water.

Terroir plays a smaller role in this region than climate. The bay is often shrouded in fog, summers are cool, and the air cools quickly. During the Gold Rush, brewers therefore set their shallow pans on the roof, where the cold bay air cooled the wort before machines existed to do the job.

Cellars in the European sense are rare here. Storage is handled by tanks in warehouses, such as on Mariposa Street on Potrero Hill. The water from Hetch Hetchy underpins an entire range of young breweries in the city, all building their own profile from the same soft source water.