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If I tell you that as a groundwater geologist, a 6% alcohol by volume beer has 94% water and that water must be studied with great gusto, I am sure you would agree.  It  turns out that because the Romans and the Greeks before them used lined street ditches as sewers to remove human wastes from the urban areas, we now have historic brewery styles as distinctive as pilsners are from stouts.  It all relates to groundwater.  The Greeks and Romans conceptualized about water resources and wastewater treatment in a centralized model - the water would be brought to the center city for local distribution, and the wastes would be generated in public toilets, and the pipes and open-channel sewers would lead to the river in a centralized discharge point.  By allowing the Tiber River in Rome to become contaminated with human and animal wastes, the river became unusable as a source of potable water.  Therefore, clean drinking water had to be brought in from far away.  This was accomplished by the great Roman aqueducts and other engineering feats.  Importing water to the center of Rome had the effect of centralizing water resources.  Had the Romans kept the Tiber River clean, who knows whether we would have decentralized urban water and sewer systems today.

Later, Europeans in England, Belgium, Germany and other beer drinking countries realized their waterways were too polluted to drink or use the water as brewing water, and most brewers preferred to use cleaner groundwater sources accessed through hand-dug wells.  The water was much cleaner and contained local dissolved minerals which reflected geologic processes of deposition of the rocks in which the water flowed.  In some cases, clean sandstone aquifers provided sand-filtered water of the highest quality.  High sulfate levels in some groundwaters (think Burton-upon-Trent) indicates a source of gypsum, and evaporative depositional processes in the past. 

One last thing about centralized versus decentralized water and wastewater services - decentralized distribution of water and wastewater services in urban areas would have required individual hand-dug water wells and individual latrines or out houses.  The Greeks and Romans thought about these issues and both agreed on the centralized approach for water and wastewater services in urban settings.  The centralized model for water and wastewater is still with us today in the urban centers over 2,000 years later.  Rural areas have tended to go with a decentralized model.  Future wastewater and water will likely require a combination of water recycling in urban homes or small communities and possibly some limited onsite treatment of wastewater.  With sea level rise, we will need to rethink the coastal wastewater plants and the water sources.

Coming back to beer - the historic brewing styles in Europe reflect the decisions of thousands of brew masters working over hundreds of years with the specific groundwater at their brewery.  These brewing chemists had to adjust their hops, yeasts, and cereal grains to the dissolved minerals, pH and other characteristics in the brewing water to yield a consistently tasty brew that locals would reliably purchase year after year.  Having brewed a few batches, I understand how challenging it is for brewmasters to consistently deliver a terrific beer.  I have attached as a PDF a list of beer and geology references plus a portion of my beer and geology lecture.  Cheers!