By Brian Smith
I love hot springs. When I was 5 or 6 years old, my uncle Duncan, or Doc, as everyone called him, took me to a secret hot spring that he had discovered during one of his walk-a-bouts. “Now listen here, tub-a-guts” he said as we were hiking through the woods, “This here water is the oldest and purest water on earth, it ain’t seen the sunlight since God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, and after thousands a’years of percolatin’ up through the rocks it comes out hot as hell, killin’ all the microbes and bacteria in it’s way. Just sittin’ in this water’ll fix you right up, may be even fix whatever’s gone sideways in that brain o’ yours.” After another mile or so, and learning about his “parabolic micro-wave gun” he had invented, we came to a place where two streams converged, one big one with cold water, and a tiny trickle of steaming hot water. We sat where they met, so the water was comfortably warm. I don’t know if it fixed whatever was wrong with me, but I remember sitting there listening to the rushing stream and watching the big fluffy clouds roll by and thinking that something this extraordinary must be good medicine, just like Doc had said.
An Extremophile called a Tardigrade
Later, when I studied geology in college, I learned that my uncle was wrong about the hot water killing all of the bacteria, and there are in fact many organisms that thrive in hot water called extremophiles. There’s even life in near boiling hot alkaline water. I also learned later on that the hot spring we went to wasn’t actually a hot spring at all, but run off water from a nearby chemical refinery mingling with a seasonal stream. I also learned that Doc killed his neighbor’s cat with his parabolic micro-wave gun, and the sheriff took it from him, and he was arrested trying to break into the jail house to get it back. It didn’t matter though, those 30 minutes of sitting in chemical plant run off, watching the chemical plant clouds, had turned me into a life long hot spring enthusiast.
For the last couple of years as a full-time wanderer, I’ve explored hot springs all over the country. The northwest quarter of the country is basically one giant caldera, and little hot springs come bubbling up through fissures of various rocks and minerals all over the place. Some of them are too hot to get in. Some of them are too acidic. Many of them smell like eggs rotting in a festering armadillo corpse.
In Idaho, hundreds of little springs dot the Snake River and people build little bathing pools by moving the river rocks around, trying to get the right balance of scalding hot spring water and freezing river water. On the border of Oregon and Nevada I drove 20 miles down a dirt road to find a desert spring (Faver-Dyke Springs) that some outstanding citizen had piped out of the source, down a hill, and into a smattering of haphazardly arranged old bath tubs.
All of this just say: Of course, I made plans to check out Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas.
Filling up my water bottles with delicious hot spring water.
Back in 2019 I read an article that said Hot Springs would be a great place to view the 2024 total eclipse of the sun, and decided I would knock out two birds with one stone. A lot of National Parks are pretty straight forward. For instance, Glacier National Park is mountains covered in glaciers, Grand Canyon National Park is a grand canyon, and Yosemite National Park is where Yosemite Sam is from. Hot Springs National Park pulls a little trick on you; there are hot springs there, but you can’t get in them. The waters there have been a federally protected natural resource ever since 1832, but the only way you can enjoy them is by filling up your canteen from one of the public filling stations, or staying in one of the federally protected bath houses that were built back in the heyday of the early 1900s. Don’t get me wrong, it’s neat being able to fill your water bottle up with hot, mineral laden water, but it really doesn’t satisfy.
Also, unlike other National Parks, there isn’t much nature there. There’s a wooded area with some trails, but for the most part the park is located on a busy main street called “Bathhouse Row”. Eight bathhouses that were built between 1892 and 1923 serve as the main attraction of Hot Springs National Park. One of the buildings is preserved as it was during the heyday of Hot Springs. Two of the buildings are still operating as bath houses. A couple of the buildings are hotels. Sadly, a couple of the buildings are just closed. There was a third place called Superior Bathhouse that closed in 1983 and sat empty for 30 years until Rose Schweikhart convinced the Department of the Interior to let her open a brewery in 2013, and Superior Bathhouse Brewery was born.
Superior Bathhouse Brewery
It was a bold plan. While every other bathhouse on the street focusses on sitting in the spring water, Rose wanted to brew beer with it. It turns out it’s actually a very good idea. The water comes out of the tap at 143°F. The hottest they mash any of their beers at is 153°F, which takes a fraction of the time and energy that a normal brewery would use to heat their strike water. The pH is reliably 7, which makes water adjustments simple. Upon speaking with one of the brewers, I found out that the water actually comes from 23 different springs in the area and is mixed together, checked for modern water purity standards, and then pumped into the buildings on bathhouse row, losing a couple degrees of heat in the process.
The Courtyard at Superior
1/6 of the beer I had at Superior
Not only is Superior Bathhouse Brewery the only brewery in the world using hot spring water, it’s also the only brewery inside of a national park. The bathhouse is leased directly from the Department of the Interior. I asked if there were any additional fees or caveats that come with that and I was told that they offered very long-term leases, and there’s a list of things they are not allowed to do that would result in immediate termination of the lease. I asked what kind of things and they said “open a strip club, or a casino, stuff like that” which seems reasonable to me.
So, it’s a neat brewery, but how are the beers? I am happy to report that the beers are very good. While I personally liked all of the beers I sampled (and I think I tried all of them), you may not have the same taste in beers that I do, but even so I think you’ll find something that you like because they had a wide variety of styles of beers and they were all true to style. It seems like so many breweries these days just have 6 beers on tap and 4 of them are IPAs, but Superior Bathhouse always has 18 beers in rotation, plus a secret “brewer’s choice” tap that can be anything fermented including beers, ciders, sparkling wine or kombucha. My favorite beers were the Czech Yo’ Self Czech Pils, the Killer Irish red, the Foul Play Oatmeal Stout, and the Bubbles Belgian wit. The beers do rotate, so those beers may not be available when you go, but just order a style you like and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
As I mentioned before, Superior Bathhouse Brewery is in an historical building that well situated for watching the happening downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas scene. It’s their (much tamer) version of Bourbon or Beale Street. The building is 3 stories, but you can’t access the top floor. There are hundreds of tables and chairs to accommodate a party of any size, but there isn’t a bar, so if you drink alone (like me), try to grab one of the rocking chairs at the entrance. There’s also a very nice courtyard that you may like to sit at if the weather is nice.
If you’ve made it this far then allow me to recommend a good schedule for visiting Hot Springs National Park. Start your day by filling up a canteen with natural hot water and let it cool as you hike along Gulpha creek, which is set in a beautiful old growth forest. Drive up to the Hot Springs tower and take the tour to see the interesting history of Hot Springs and head to the top for a 360° vista of the area. After that head over to Bathhouse Row and walk the street, do some shopping, get a bite to eat, and enjoy the quirkiness of Arkansas. Next take a tour of Fordyce Bathhouse, which is a beautiful place that has been preserved by the park services. Next, take a bath at the Quapaw Bathhouse. Once you are relaxed and feeling good, take a stroll over to Superior Bathhouse Brewery and order some beers. Sit outside and smoke a cigar if that’s something you’re in to. Go home and sleep well, secure in the knowledge that these hot springs are not actually chemical refinery run off.
The Cooling Room at Superior Bathhouse Brewery
Why can’t we have nice things anymore?
Crescent City Brew Talk 