Creating Mountain Water: A Delicious, Low-Calorie Beer
There are certain times when a light beer just hits the spot. Maybe you’re soaking up some rays on the beach and want something to cool down. Or maybe you’re enjoying a warm summer night lounging in your hammock. Whatever adventure finds you, we have a beer that’s ready to come along for the ride.
Meet Mountain Water — a refreshing ale that’s made for the outdoors. This brew was made for folks who prefer their beverages on the lighter side, and we’ve been amazed at how this crushable beer has taken off, so we thought we’d give you some background into how this tasty concoction was created.
The Beginnings of a Lighter Type of Ale
If you stay up to date with our beer releases, you know our brewers are always pushing the envelope to develop innovative beers that are jam-packed with flavor. And Mountain Water is no exception.
If you haven’t tried it yet, you’re in for a treat. Mountain Water isn’t your average beer and it isn’t quite a seltzer either — it’s something in between. You’ll taste a slight essence of malt flavor, but it heavily caters to seltzer lovers.
This beer is a first of its kind too. Our head brewer, Hank Marshall, says, “To my knowledge, nothing like Mountain Water exists on the market. There are light ales and seltzers, but I haven’t had anything that was a blend of beer and seltzer like Mountain Water.”
This easy sipper comes as close to a seltzer as possible without being, well, a seltzer. We like to say it’s a beer that doesn’t taste like beer.
A Flavorful, Low-Calorie Craft Beer
Not only do our Mountain Water beers taste great, they’re also lower in calories than the IPAs or Stouts that line the shelves at the grocery store or flow on tap at craft breweries.
Exactly how many calories are in Hi-Wire’s Mountain Water? It might be hard to believe, but there’s only 110 calories per 12 oz serving — making it our lowest calorie beer yet! But rest assured, it doesn’t lack in flavor.
To make the magic happen, our brewers use a base of malt and sugar (40% sugar base and 60% malt). They then add a very small amount of Columbus hops to give this brew a touch of bitterness to balance out the sugar from fermentation. The final step is adding natural flavoring to get those big lemon-lime flavors in our Citrus Splash that cover up that typical beer flavor.
The Mountain Water Bear Pack Goes Live
As the saying goes, good things come in 3s, so we couldn’t just stop with one flavor.
The launch of our inaugural Mountain Water, Citrus Splash, was such a hit that a year and a half later, we decided to expand the line and make two more deliciously refreshing flavors — Pomegranate Peach and Tropical Wave. We dubbed the trio “The Bear Pack”.
Why that name? Well, the black bear is native to the North Carolina mountains, and since we named this beverage “Mountain Water” we felt it was only fitting to make the black bear its mascot. If you follow us on Instagram, you’ll find our Mountain Water bear frequently makes an appearance.
See what the bear has been up to.
A Big (But Good) Surprise for the Hi-Wire Brewing Team
As a craft brewery, it goes without saying that we love big beer flavors, so we weren’t sure how we’d feel about a beer that tastes more like a seltzer than a beer.
Hank says,“The biggest surprise was that everyone wanted to hate it, and everyone really loved it. No one on the brew team really wanted to drink a seltzer, but we all ended up loving the flavor and how light the beer is, especially on a hot summer day. There’s a large consensus among our team that everyone enjoys the product more than they thought they would. And remember, this is coming from a group of people who love beer so it was a big deal.”
So if you’re an IPA drinker, a Stout loyalist, or you just love beer in general, you might be surprised at how much you’ll love Mountain Water too.
Try Hi-Wire Brewing’s Lightest Beers with the Bear Pack
Each of our three Mountain Water flavors are so light and refreshing you’ll bear-ly believe it’s beer. For the ultimate adventure companion, grab a 6-pack of 16 oz cans at a retailer near you!