Something special is brewing in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. For 10 years, Superior Bathhouse Brewery, the only brewery in the country located inside a national park, has used the area’s famed natural thermal waters to brew craft beer. We caught up with founder Rose Schweikhart to learn more about what inspired her to start this adventure.
I have quite a story. I went to graduate school in Manchester, England, and lived there, studying tuba. I got my master’s in tuba performance, and a big part of British culture is, of course, beer. A big part of classical music is performing and traveling, so I had this wonderful experience, enjoying different beers from different cultures and styles.
Once back in the States, my husband at the time and I moved to Springfield, Illinois, and started home-brewing. I was working at the University of Illinois at Springfield and felt antsy. I thought I would like to be a business owner one day because I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. My ex-husband was invited to move to Hot Springs, Arkansas to take over a music festival, and at the time, there were no breweries there. In 2011, craft breweries were getting popular around the country and, I thought, How does a town like Hot Springs not have a brewery?
The thing that I love about beer is how diverse and varied it is—the styles and tastes. It’s like painting or making music: there are unlimited possibilities of flavor combinations. Picture an orchestra, with an unlimited amount of combinations of sounds and tones. Making beer is kind of like that. If you can imagine a type of beer, you can make it. So, making beer tapped into my creative vein. You can duplicate a famous style or try to make something totally off the wall that no one’s ever made before.
Photo by Karen E. Segrave
In 2011, I reached out to the local superintendent at Hot Springs National Park and asked if it was possible to make beer using the natural thermal spring water. Within a couple of hours, she wrote back that the short answer was ‘yes’. She invited me to see the Superior Bathhouse the next time I was in town.
About 20 years ago, the Hot Springs National Park had these historic bath houses that were becoming derelict, as vacant buildings do. They went to Congress to request funding to stabilize the properties. The point was to advance the buildings far enough that they could lease them to private companies for adaptive reuse projects.
When I got to Hot Springs, I fell in love with the building. It was semi-stabilized, but it was so lonely. It needed people again. So, I put together a business plan and that’s when the hard work began. In 2012, they selected my proposal. The bathhouse had been closed for 30 years, but proposing how we would use the water in a new way was the big sell.
Beer is 95 percent water, so the water has a huge effect on the final product. For a century, the National Park has been making sure it’s potable. There’s a long history of bathing in it and drinking it for health reasons. It’s healthy and safe, and they maintain it. We have piping that carries the hot water right to us. It’s hot – 140 degrees already. That’s a huge difference between other breweries, which have to heat up their water, so there’s also a sustainability angle to our process. We just heat it up to 168 degrees.
Also, chemically the water is extremely low in minerals and salts. A lot of spring water has calcium, potassium, and metals that come from the earth. Our water is very close to the type of water in Düsseldorf or Cologne, Germany. And I can definitely taste it in our beer. There’s a mouthfeel, a chalkiness, that comes from the high bicarbonate content. The water has been forced through a limestone bed for 4000 years, and you can taste that.
Book your stay at Best Western Winners Circle