Craft beer lovers can now literally enjoy a taste of history at a multi-award-winning Queenstown brewery.

Altitude Brewing has teamed up with another award-winning company, Gibbston’s Fleck Water, to produce its new Waterman’s London Porter, a 5.1% London-style porter, made from mineral-rich water at Fleck’s spring.

Altitude founder Eliott Menzies says Fleck’s water falls as snow and rain on high country, with an average “recharge elevation” of 1700 metres.

It then takes about 50 years to filter down through the schist to the aquifer the water is drawn from in Gibbston.

The water, he says, can be traced to a measured elevation, decades in the making, with a mineral profile that makes an “awesome” London porter, described as “soft and rich on the palate, with subtle caramel and chocolate notes”.

“It’s a moreish sipper that strongly resonates with a Thames-side beer garden and a copy of The Times.”

Fleck Water chief water officer Paul Robinson, who established the company in 2019, says their mineral water has always had a character brewers get “genuinely excited about”.

“Working with Eliott and the Altitude team to see it become the backbone of a proper London porter has been a great collaboration, and Waterman’s London Porter shows exactly what this water can do.”

It is not the first time Altitude has used locally-sourced spring water for their brews — it is a concept they first explored with Mountain Melt WC Pilsner, brewed using pristine Glenorchy spring water in partnership with Glenorchy Brewing’s Steve Hewland, which showed how the character of Wakatipu water can shape and elevate a classic beer style.

Menzies says water is the single largest ingredient in any beer, and is arguably a brewery’s most important raw material.

Otago’s clean, mineral-rich water is also a defining asset for the wider Queenstown economy, he says, underpinning everything from tourism and hospitality to agriculture and the region’s fast-growing craft beverage sector.

“Collaborations like Waterman’s London Porter and Mountain Melt WC Pilsner are as much of a celebration of that resource as they are of the beers themselves, and a reminder why protecting local water sources — for brewers, businesses and communities alike — matters for the long term.”

Waterman’s London Porter is available on tap at Altitude Brewing’s Tap Room, near the Frankton marina, and in 440ml cans at local retailers.

tracey.roxburgh@scene.co.nz