Hold my beer: Labatt halts production at St. John's plant after city's water warning

With the City of St. John's warning people not to drink discoloured water, a local brewery is putting production on hold.

Labattspokesperson Wade Keller told CBC'sSt. John's Morning Show that the company's Leslie Street brewery has been forced to stop making beer until they get more information about the water situation.

"Obviously you can't make beer without water. We produce a lot of beer, especially this time of year," said Keller, adding that over the course of a year Labattmakes 150,000 hectolitres of beer.

One hectolitre is about the equivalent of a two-dozen 12-packs of beer.

Beer on shelves made six weeks ago

Keller, who called the halt a "major inconvenience,"said it's too soon to comment on how long the plant can wait before running out of the beer it has.

"We brewed beer on Tuesday and yesterday. We've isolated that, pending further testing," he said.

"That beer wouldn't hit store shelves for several weeks, so the beer that's in stores now would have been produced probably about six weeks ago, so we should be fine for a while, and hopefully, after we do these tests everything comes back fine and there won't be any issue whatsoever."

And if the beer doesn't pass the testing, "we'll have to dump it down the drain," he said.

Keller said the company hopes to have the complete results of the testing by Friday.

In the meantime, the company will be looking for more information from the city. What concerns Labatt, he said, is the supposedly sporadic occurrence of elevated manganese levels.

"The beer that we brewed yesterday, as an example the manganese levels that came in were well under the national standard 0.03 parts per million," he said.

"We're not anticipating problems, but because it's so sporadic and when you're making large amounts of beer you're using water for an extended period of time and we have no way of knowing. You test now, and it's fine, and 15 minutes later, is it still fine? Well, we don't know because of the sporadic nature of the problem."

Too soon to know impact

Keller also said it's too soon to know what the impact will be on the St. John's plant, which employs between 80 and 90 people.

"I think that'll largely depend on the outcome of the tests," he said. "If the tests come back and they're fine, there won't be any impact. If it comes back that they're not fine, then that's a serious issue."

In addition to the Labatt-branded beers, the brewery makes Budweiser, Bud Light, Keith's, Rolling Rock, Blue Star, Jockey Cluband Michelob Ultra.

Read more from CBCNewfoundland and Labrador

With files from The St. John's Morning Show.