Environmental Impact of Homebrewing - Page 3

Parker36 · 11-01-2009, 11:21 PM

The best ways to save water are to recirculate the chilling water and to reuse starsan (also avoid using the dishwasher). You can also use wort chilling water for gardening or save it for later.

As far as boiling, electricity is way more efficient (and cheaper per batch, too). If you get your electricity from solar or wind (like New Belgium), more power to you.

As for the solid "waste", I sometimes make bread or cookies and anything else is dumped in compost.

Parker36 · 11-01-2009, 11:26 PM

There is also this: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/brewing-green-87644/

**kornkob** · 11-01-2009, 11:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parker36

As for the solid "waste", I sometimes make bread or cookies and anything else is dumped in compost.

I don't even compost it but just scatter the spent grains into the yard.

Parker36 · 11-01-2009, 11:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yogensha

I saw an article somewhere about Brittish brewers using bacteria to derive methane from spent grain. The methane is then used to produce about 80% of the energy required for brewing. This requires significant scale to pay off, so it's not exactly something we'll all be doing, but it's interesting nonetheless. I also saw somebody rig up a big fresnel to heat water and wort using solar energy.

Personally, my biggest concern is waste water, primarily for wort cooling. I saw somebody on this forum dumping their waste cooling water into the washing machine to do a load of laundry, which I plan to start doing. Pick the low hanging fruit firstl

I believe NBB does something similar.

flyangler18 · 11-01-2009, 11:32 PM

Reclaiming waste water is what lots of commercial breweries do to minimize water loss. The water run through the plate chiller is diverted to the HLT to serve as strike water for the next batch. Probably somewhat impractical on a homebrew level, but something that we could scale to fit our needs. Count me in the 'use the waste water for laundry' camp, though. I average about 15 gallons of waste water from the CFC per batch.

**agroff383** · 11-01-2009, 11:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bierhaus15

I read somewhere that a single AB brewery uses upwards of $100,000 in water and electricity for each day it is in operation. And that's not even considering the cost/ impact of growing and transporting the stuff that goes into a batch of beer.

Now, tell me why should I be concerned about using 8 gallons of water and $3.00 worth of propane for a batch of homebrew?

I dunno, but if we are all so worried about killing our planet by homebrewing, maybe we shouldn't be drinking beer.

This is along the lines on how I feel about this.

Scrolled through to find a poster that agrees with me....When I go into an urban area and see thousands of lights on in vacant buildings at 3am or trash cans full of wasted food at restaurants, it is our society as a whole is a problem with waste and I don't think us homebrewing in the whole scale of things is any better than Anheuser-Busch brewing 1000x more than us per batch.

Unfortunately most people are all talk with all this great "green" talk but no one ever follows through. To me it is just a bunch of bull**** because the people that actually have money in this world could give a rip, look at Al Gore, these people just do that for PR.

I'd be willing to bet we use more energy per gallon than any big brewer does by a wide margin.

**agroff383** · 11-01-2009, 11:44 PM

And don't anyone think I am anti-environmental, I recycle and use compost and have a small vehicle, (not a hybrid, these pollute more in total than any larger vehicle, do the research) but by no means am I a tree hugger, the resources are there for us to use, so use them. No reason not to be smart and conscious of your impact though, it wouldn't hurt us to step back 100 years and use our brains with energy and what not.

**agroff383** · 11-01-2009, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flyangler18

Reclaiming waste water is what lots of commercial breweries do to minimize water loss. The water run through the plate chiller is diverted to the HLT to serve as strike water for the next batch. Probably somewhat impractical on a homebrew level, but something that we could scale to fit our needs. Count me in the 'use the waste water for laundry' camp, though. I average about 15 gallons of waste water from the CFC per batch.

Yes I took the tour of the brewery at Stoudts in Adamstown PA and the owner mentioned that is what they do. I thought that was pretty cool and a no-brainer once you stepped back and thought about it.

Parker36 · 11-01-2009, 11:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by agroff383

This is along the lines on how I feel about this.

Scrolled through to find a poster that agrees with me....When I go into an urban area and see thousands of lights on in vacant buildings at 3am or trash cans full of wasted food at restaurants, it is our society as a whole is a problem with waste and I don't think us homebrewing in the whole scale of things is any better than Anheuser-Busch brewing 1000x more than us per batch.

I agree, but often times green=more efficient=$avings. That makes me happy.

Orogenic · 11-02-2009, 12:35 AM

You can make up for your water consumption if you drink homebrew instead of water when thirsty. Its a win-win.