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Here's Something You Don't See Often, a Scientific Paper Titled "Hold My Beer..."
Last edited Tue May 13, 2025, 06:33 AM - Edit history (1)
Here's the full title and the rest of the reference: Hold My Beer: The Linkage between Municipal Water and Brewing Location on PFAS in Popular Beverages Jennifer Hoponick Redmon, Nicole M. DeLuca, Evan Thorp, Chamindu Liyanapatirana, Laura Allen, and Andrew J. Kondash Environmental Science & Technology 2025 59 (17), 8368-8379.
It concerns the man made persistent intractable class of chemicals known as PFAS, and the degree to which they show up in beer.
The paper's open sourced, anyone can read it and look at the pictures and find out which locations in the United States are likely to have PFAS in them as a result of their local water supply. Here's just the intro as a teaser:
Synopsis
This is the first study to adapt an established PFAS method for drinking water for beer analysis and evaluate how municipal drinking water within brewing location influences PFAS in beer.
1. Introduction
Beer has been a staple beverage since premodern times, when it was actually considered safer than water given the destruction of waterborne pathogens during brewing. (1,2) Today, beer is the third most popular beverage around the world, following only water and tea. (3) In the United States, the beer industry experienced rapid growth the last several decades, with a market over $400 billion. (4) Smaller craft breweries have experienced massive growth and now comprise a quarter of the U.S. market. (5,6) Macrobreweries produce greater than 15,000 beer barrels or 460,000 U.S. gallons annually. (7)
Beer is comprised primarily of water, malt from grains (usually barley), hops, and yeast. (8) Each individual beer type is characterized by overall style, flavor, aroma, appearance, and feel, with microbreweries often known for a variety of types, from India Pale Ales to Stouts, while larger beer companies predominantly sell lighter beer. Water is the most abundant (>90%) and important ingredient, impacting its pH, enzyme activity, hop utilization, and yeast growth. (9,10) In fact, as much as 7 L of water can be used to produce 1 L of beer, potentially introducing contaminants during beer production. (11) Breweries typically have basic water filtration and treatment processes to ensure source water meets brewing requirements. (12) While these processes aim to balance water parameters for brewing, they are not necessarily effective at removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). (13−16)
PFAS are human-made chemicals produced for their antigrease, water-resistant, and stain-repelling properties. (17) PFAS have been widely used in consumer products (such as carpets, furniture, clothes, cookware, and food packaging), industrial manufacturing (e.g., as a processing aid in plastic production), and in firefighting foam for decades. (17) Often referred to as “forever chemicals”, they are ubiquitous in the environment due to their extensive use and resistance to degradation. Recent studies show that PFAS exposure can lead to adverse reproductive, developmental, cardiovascular, liver, kidney, immunological, and carcinogenic health effects. (18−20) Additionally, PFAS can remain in the body for years. (21)
Nearly every American has PFAS in their blood, indicating that exposure is common. (22) Consumption of contaminated drinking water is a major, if not primary contributor to total exposure. (23) PFAS occurrence in the environment has been documented in surface water, (24,25) groundwater, (26) well water, (27,28) and municipal water supplies (18,19,28,29) across the United States and globally, (30,31) with the extent, distribution, and type of PFAS dependent on local factors related to sources. From 2013 to 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) requested that large public drinking water systems test PFAS to understand the spatial extent and prevalence. (32) The Third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR3) revealed significant concentrations of several PFAS compounds. In 2023, USEPA established maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for six PFAS in drinking water and the ongoing UCMR program (now UCMR5) will include PFAS results for additional U.S. based municipal water systems. (33)
With the global pervasiveness and variability of PFAS in drinking water sources, paired with the popularity of beer as an adult beverage, we set out to understand whether popular craft beers as well as national and international beers may also be a contributor to total PFAS exposure for beer drinkers. Stable isotope ratios of oxygen and hydrogen show that brewery location strongly correlates with local meteoric water level, indicating that source water in the brewing process is typically local tap water, thus tap water containing PFAS may be an unexpected exposure source for beer consumers...
Beer has been a staple beverage since premodern times, when it was actually considered safer than water given the destruction of waterborne pathogens during brewing. (1,2) Today, beer is the third most popular beverage around the world, following only water and tea. (3) In the United States, the beer industry experienced rapid growth the last several decades, with a market over $400 billion. (4) Smaller craft breweries have experienced massive growth and now comprise a quarter of the U.S. market. (5,6) Macrobreweries produce greater than 15,000 beer barrels or 460,000 U.S. gallons annually. (7)
Beer is comprised primarily of water, malt from grains (usually barley), hops, and yeast. (8) Each individual beer type is characterized by overall style, flavor, aroma, appearance, and feel, with microbreweries often known for a variety of types, from India Pale Ales to Stouts, while larger beer companies predominantly sell lighter beer. Water is the most abundant (>90%) and important ingredient, impacting its pH, enzyme activity, hop utilization, and yeast growth. (9,10) In fact, as much as 7 L of water can be used to produce 1 L of beer, potentially introducing contaminants during beer production. (11) Breweries typically have basic water filtration and treatment processes to ensure source water meets brewing requirements. (12) While these processes aim to balance water parameters for brewing, they are not necessarily effective at removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). (13−16)
PFAS are human-made chemicals produced for their antigrease, water-resistant, and stain-repelling properties. (17) PFAS have been widely used in consumer products (such as carpets, furniture, clothes, cookware, and food packaging), industrial manufacturing (e.g., as a processing aid in plastic production), and in firefighting foam for decades. (17) Often referred to as “forever chemicals”, they are ubiquitous in the environment due to their extensive use and resistance to degradation. Recent studies show that PFAS exposure can lead to adverse reproductive, developmental, cardiovascular, liver, kidney, immunological, and carcinogenic health effects. (18−20) Additionally, PFAS can remain in the body for years. (21)
Nearly every American has PFAS in their blood, indicating that exposure is common. (22) Consumption of contaminated drinking water is a major, if not primary contributor to total exposure. (23) PFAS occurrence in the environment has been documented in surface water, (24,25) groundwater, (26) well water, (27,28) and municipal water supplies (18,19,28,29) across the United States and globally, (30,31) with the extent, distribution, and type of PFAS dependent on local factors related to sources. From 2013 to 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) requested that large public drinking water systems test PFAS to understand the spatial extent and prevalence. (32) The Third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR3) revealed significant concentrations of several PFAS compounds. In 2023, USEPA established maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for six PFAS in drinking water and the ongoing UCMR program (now UCMR5) will include PFAS results for additional U.S. based municipal water systems. (33)
With the global pervasiveness and variability of PFAS in drinking water sources, paired with the popularity of beer as an adult beverage, we set out to understand whether popular craft beers as well as national and international beers may also be a contributor to total PFAS exposure for beer drinkers. Stable isotope ratios of oxygen and hydrogen show that brewery location strongly correlates with local meteoric water level, indicating that source water in the brewing process is typically local tap water, thus tap water containing PFAS may be an unexpected exposure source for beer consumers...
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