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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Beers were only tested in areas with bad water quality.

"Average ∑PFAS concentrations of Criteria 3 and 4 beers (popular national and international beers) were similar to the average ∑PFAS concentrations of many Criteria 1 and 2 beer"

A link to the source of the information can be found in TFA https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c11265

And by "95%" they mean 22 out of 23 beers tested.

And these areas are exactly the most densely populated:

https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/

Brewers are supposed to have really good filtration FWIW. [1] If particles are showing up in beer then something has gone horribly wrong as in, someone is being incredibly cheap. [2]

[1] - https://www.beer-brewing.com/beer_brewing/beer_brewing_water...

[2] - https://www.ewg.org/research/getting-forever-chemicals-out-d...

Which of the filtration methods on that list do you believe should be capable of filtering PFAS, the "forever chemicals" in question?

I linked them.

I read through both of the links posted.

I couldn’t find mention of PFAS or ‘forever chemicals’ anywhere on the first link(it may just be a little out of date concerning the last few years of development.

The second link didn’t show any mention of a beer brewing link, but was specifically addressing ‘forever chemicals’ that are meaningfully on topic.

Unfortunately they also included this caveat:

“Although some of the filters did not achieve 100 percent reduction in PFAS measured in the water samples, they did eliminate 100 percent of PFOA and PFOS, two of the most notorious forever chemicals.”

in a microbrewery? You are kidding.

in a microbrewery? You are kidding.

I am not. The level of filtration required to remove chemicals is simple. It's a cost, but that cost can be moved to the customers and the beer can be promoted as "The Only Safe MicroBrew In {insert_state}". Artesian waters are a massive money maker. Apply the same sales logic to the beer. If anything I would taunt all the other micro-brewers and laugh all the way to the bank.

Some places with weird water profiles will set up RO systems and add minerals to build a water profile on top of that, but it's far from the norm. People decide based on how their municipal water supply works with the kind of beers they want to make. I've seen a few brewhouses in the process of being built and talked to some commercial brewers about water, and depending on the location some places just use municipal water. New York water has a great profile for beer.

You don't need reverse osmosis to filter out PFAS -- activated carbon will do it.

Activated carbon will remove the larger chain PFAs, but is not as effective as removing the smaller ones. From the paper:

> Conventional water treatment employed at municipal drinking water treatment plants have been shown to be nearly ineffective at removing PFAS. This can leave the burden and cost of implementing more sophisticated water treatments to brewers unless public water suppliers implement tertiary treatment to remove PFAS from finished water prior to distribution. Anion exchange and activated carbon treatments have been shown to more effectively remove longer-chain PFAS and PFSAs but were less effective in removing PFCAS and the alternative shorter-chain PFAS and PFECAs. Reverse osmosis treatment showed significant removal of PFAS of different chain lengths in drinking water, but can be prohibitive due to high operational costs and energy usage. In areas with known contamination, beers from macro- breweries were less likely to have detectable PFAS than craft beers brewed at a smaller scale, potentially due to more effective and expensive filtration of tap water at larger breweries.

This isn't correct in the general case. In the specific case of brewing, if you're filtering at all it makes sense to use an RO system so that you can then do mineral adjustments from the RO base water.I'm not aware of any brewers outside of homebrewing using charcoal filtration.

Actually, especially for smaller breweries, carbon filtration is extremely common. It still removes chloramines, pesticides, and other off-flavor compounds, and is much cheaper than an RO system. It's true that it won't change the hardness of the water, but if you have naturally soft water you can just add minerals, if needed for the style

There is a reason literally no beer maker does this. Hard to promote beer on health factors when it is already a literal poison...

I gather even artesian wells can contain these chemicals, which get pretty much everywhere.

On the other hand, based on the article you linked to, if something like a Berkey filter is sufficient (I have doubts about their testing, but whatever) the cost is probably not prohibitive. Assuming there's something as effective as a Berkey which can handle a more practical flow of water, but at the same cost per volume of water handled.

PFAS may be ending up in the product from the processing equipment, not necessarily only from the water source.

"The test subjects were produced by U.S. brewers in areas with documented water system contamination, plus popular domestic and international beers from larger companies with unknown water sources."

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