Thoughts on ancient famous water sources

patto1ro said:

Only problem is that Guinness Extra Stout only took on its current form in the 1950's when the degree of attenuation was boosted from a more normal 75% to 85%. For the 150 years before that, Guinness was no drier than a London Stout.

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Originally we had a table of with water profiles that Martin has shown was wrong and much more complicated than originally thought. Ron has shown us that many of the beer styles that are thought of as "traditional" aren't very old or their present form is vastly different than they were 100+ years ago. But we KNOW water was the primary driver for the development of beer styles so I guess it took Guinness more than 150 years to realize they had the perfect water for dry stout and immediately started brewing it? - long after they had become a successful international brand selling dark beer and long after water treatment techniques were known. Are we still not at a place where we can say any discussion of the development of stout and dublin's water is stupid?