That "taste" that immediately identifies a brewery

[arbadarchi]

What is it that locks a brewery into a specific signature taste that makes you know who makes it?

Two examples:
Lagunitas. All of their beer has this dankness in their beers that other craft beer doesn't have.

Sierra Nevada. All their beer has that signature spicy slightly salty taste that I have grown to love.

Is this a result of their unique brewing systems? Or does it have to do with recipe tendencies that the brew masters learn to do over time?

Thoughts?

 

[RM-MN]

A pretty large percentage of the makeup of beer is water. Change the mineral content of the water, you change the beer. The yeasts used also have their own flavors they add to the beer so you change the yeast, you change the beer. Barley is grown in lots of places and those places have different soil chemical makeup so change the source of your barley and you change the beer. Then to make it even more difficult to match what a brewery has to offer, change the process slightly and you get a different beer. Lots of factors go into the flavors in your beer.

 

[Grannyknot]

Stone is pretty much the only brewery that I can identify their beers in a blind taste test.

 

[BigMack]

What is it that locks a brewery into a specific signature taste that makes you know who makes it?

Two examples:
Lagunitas. All of their beer has this dankness in their beers that other craft beer doesn't have.

Sierra Nevada. All their beer has that signature spicy slightly salty taste that I have grown to love.

Is this a result of their unique brewing systems? Or does it have to do with recipe tendencies that the brew masters learn to do over time?

Thoughts?

I would agree that if you're tasting the same slight flavor across all beers it is likely that it has to do with their water chemistry. It could also have to do with a proprietary yeast strain, but that wouldn't be the case with either of those brew since SN uses WLP 001 and Lagunitas uses 002 or Wyeast 1968 depending on the brew. You also always have to take into account the process. Handling the ingredients in different ways could give a signature flair to a breweries beer.

That's the great thing about beer. Hand the same ingredients and recipe to a handful of brewers and you're almost guaranteed to get back beers that all have different nuanced flavors.

 

[bobeer]

I agree... water and yeast make up most of the individual properties of beer. A friend of mine and I brewed the exact same beer, same yeast too, but used our local water sources. We fermented at the same temps too. Everything was the same except the water. The two beers were pretty different and we chalked it up to our water sources.

I've also read, I think in The Joy of Homebrewing, about micro organisms that live at your address. They do get into your beer and have an affect on the taste of the beer.

I've always wondered this... a brewery that has 2 locations must have to use different water sources but they can still get the beer to taste pretty damn close to the original locations version. I've always wondered how they do that. Maybe use straight up RO water and build it back up to what it is at the original location? Seems like an expensive way to brew beer.

 

[DrWill]

House flavour is the result of all kinds of variables: yeast strain, water chemistry, local microfauna, and even things like grain storage conditions and vessel geometry.

It will be interesting to see if the Lagunitas' flavour changes noticeably if it's being brewed at larger Heineken facilities. I didn't notice a huge difference between the CA and IL brewed versions.