Wednesday Weirdness

Some companies boast of making beer with spring water from majestic mountains.

They won’t be competing in the upcoming Pure Water Brew Challenge, in which an Oregon wastewater treatment operator has asked home brewers to make great-tasting beer from hops, barley, yeast and the key, not-so-secret ingredient: treated sewer water.

The point of the contest is not to find Portland’s next trendy craft beer. Rather, it’s an effort to get people talking about how a vital resource can be reused thanks to advanced water-filtration systems.

“We need to be judging water by its quality, and not by its history,” said Mark Jockers, a spokesman for Clean Water Services, which runs four wastewater treatment plants in the Portland suburbs. “The water we’re producing is significantly cleaner than what the safe drinking standards are for water that comes out of taps across the United States.”

@ HUFFPO