Yeah, it's a silly line, like saying your code isn't authentic if you didn't own the laptop you wrote it on. It's funny the things people will find to pass judgement on.

Yeast contamination can be an issue, as can water sourcing.

Well yeah, that's why you use a well-run brewery until you can afford the upkeep of your own. Besides, Meantime is a great brewery. I doubt those concerns - while legitimate - were high on the list with that brewery.

Was a great independent brewery now a SABMiller profit center.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32747973

I think water (assuming the brewery is competent/has decent quality control) is a big issue wrt resulting taste. Anything we drink is mostly water after all. This is the only explanation I have for why all the "Japanese" beers one can get outside of Japan taste so awful -- they're all produced on license -- and I assume the recipes are the same. Note I'm talking about industrial beers here -- so hardly the best beers in the world -- but I still think they taste markedly better if you get them in Japan. Could be a consequence of rosy memories, of course.

The really excellent homebrew site brulosophy focuses on doing triangle tests to determine which factors have the strongest influence on the resultant beers - while a shocking number of things they've tested don't reliably produce a noticeable change in the finished product, water chemistry was one of the few where there was a reliably significant difference.

http://brulosophy.com/2015/04/06/water-chemistry-pt-1-mash-m...