With the goal of creating an environmentally friendly product, especially considering California's historic droughts, a U.S. company has taken the idea of craft beer to a whole new level: a kölsch-style beer brewed from recycled wastewater.
Specifically, the beer, which they have called Epic OneWater Brew, is made from recycled gray water from showers, laundry and sinks of a 40-story apartment building in San Francisco called Fifteen Fifty, where they have equipment to capture, treat and reuse water for non-potable purposes, reports The Guardian.
The 40-story apartment building where water is recycled (Charles Russo/SFGATE).
The City of San Francisco has established a groundbreaking law requiring large urban projects to install water reuse systems. These systems purify greywater and use it in the same place for things like toilet cisterns or irrigation.
"What we wanted to do as a company was really show the untapped potential of water reuse," Aaron Tartakovsky, co-founder and CEO of Epic Cleantec, the company that along with Devil's Canyon Brewing Company, brews the beer, told weather.com. "We believe there is no waste in wastewater," he adds.
They have already produced 7,500 cans
Epic Cleantec brought more than 2,000 gallons of the highly filtered, cleaned and purified water to Devil's Canyon, where it was brewed and packaged in 7,500 beer cans.
The beer is not for sale, but samples are given out at special events such as the recent United Nations Water Conference in New York. The idea is to spark a debate on water sustainability. According to its creators, beer is a "demonstration product."
"We wanted to make something fun that was an engaging tool to talk to people, to excite them, but also to show the untapped potential of water reuse," Tartakovsky told The Guardian.
For those concerned about the safety of drinking recycled water, Tartakovsky argues that Epic's product may actually be safer for consumers than other beers because of the rigorous testing process they demand.
The beer is not for sale, but samples are given out at special events (Charles Russo/SFGATE).
"A lot of times in a brewery you turn on the tap and the water that comes out is used to brew the beer," Tartakovsky says. "In our case, we have so much control over the treatment process that we were able to modify some of the steps to give brewers a blank canvas," he adds.
And, if the other concern is the taste, its creators claim that this has nothing to envy to beers made in a traditional way.
"I think a lot of people, at first and understandably, were skeptical of the project or hesitant to try it, but I would say 99 percent of those who came in feeling a little apprehensive, once they tried it, they were enthusiastic," Tartakovsky says.
Many recycle to brew
In recent years, brewing beer with recycled water has gained popularity in different parts of the world.
In 2019, a beer contest in Oregon challenged home brewers to brew beer with purified water supplied by a local utility, while in Singapore, recycled wastewater from a sewer plant was used to produce a beer called NEWBrew.
The Water Recycling Machine (Charles Russo/SFGATE).
Recently, the state of Colorado passed a new rule allowing the use of highly treated wastewater for drinking.
Other states, such as Ohio, South Carolina and New Mexico, are working on similar ideas to encourage sustainability and reduce drinking water waste.
Source: Deutsche Welle.
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