Sewer Water Beer

I just read this article on NPR. An Oregon homebrew club plans to make beer from treated waste water. Would you drink that "****"?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/20...d-wastewater-when-you-could-make-beer-with-it

Somehow there is circular symmetry to this. Like drinking the same beer twice.

It might actually improve the taste of some commercial beers out there.........

Treated waste water has to be cleaned to drinking water standards...

fimpster said:

I just read this article on NPR. An Oregon homebrew club plans to make beer from treated waste water. Would you drink that "****"?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/20...d-wastewater-when-you-could-make-beer-with-it

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My city's municipal water supply comes from the Tar River in eastern North Carolina. My city's municipal waste treatment plant empties into the Tar River in eastern North Carolina. We are not the only town on the Tar River that does this.

So, yeah. We're using a dilution of treated wastewater for everything, on a daily basis. I showered in it just today.

I live in the Clean Water Services/Tualatin Valley Water district. Yes I would totally make beer out of that water.

Wasn't all water waste water at one point or another?

I remember seeing this show take this disease-infested swamp water and turn it into beer.

The point was to show that the brewing ("brewing" literally means "boiling") process killed all bacteria and harmful substances and made the water drinkable. And the idea behind it was how in medieval Europe the water was considered undrinkable in many areas, so most people drank beer. And the reason the beer was drinkable and the water wasn't was because the beer was boiled which killed all the bacteria and harmful substances inside. In short, they really didn't need to drink beer. All they really needed to do was boil the water properly and it would have been drinkable.

I have every confidence in modern filtration. If it's good beer it's good beer, even if it's made by tree huggers.

worlddivides said:

All they really needed to do was boil the water properly and it would have been drinkable.

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Conventional wisdom states that they weren't aware that it was the boiling that killed the pathogens, but I suspect they just came up with the best excuse to drink beer all day !

Wife: What the hell Harry! Beer at 8 in the morning?!
Harry: Yeah, the water is unsanitary.
Wife: Very responsible! Carry on.

On-topic: I live in Amsterdam, and recently the municipal water treatment company handed out samples of purified canal water to show how clean it's become. Good treatment along with the self-cleaning properties of water can quite easily turn contaminated water into something perfectly drinkable.

markvale5 said:

Treated waste water has to be cleaned to drinking water standards...

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Yup.

worlddivides said:

I remember seeing this show take this disease-infested swamp water and turn it into beer.

The point was to show that the brewing ("brewing" literally means "boiling") process killed all bacteria and harmful substances and made the water drinkable. And the idea behind it was how in medieval Europe the water was considered undrinkable in many areas, so most people drank beer. And the reason the beer was drinkable and the water wasn't was because the beer was boiled which killed all the bacteria and harmful substances inside. In short, they really didn't need to drink beer. All they really needed to do was boil the water properly and it would have been drinkable.

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Double Yup.

I'm really getting sick and tired of people who think that something dirty, or non-sterile is ruined forever. If they treat the water and have regulations in place that deem is safe for drinking it's fine. Even if you don't trust it by brewing you're boiling the hell out of it, thus taking matters into your own hands. I once found a couple strands of long hair while cleaning out my mash tun. "Oh no, my beer is ruined" said nobody ever.

To go farther into this look at how many parents carry alcohol sanitizer (what a waste of ethanol!) and use it religiously. Baby soother touched the ground? Take new one out of ziploc bag, rinse debris off one from ground, sanitize, rinse, autoclave, put into ziploc. In my day... Now I'm raging. Thanks HBT.

To continue the rant on a grade school camping trip someone failed while trying to strain the pasta from giant stock pot. Most of it ended up right in the dirt. The whole pile was deemed as being wrecked. I pointed out viable options include: Carefully pulling from the top of the pile where no dirt contact was made, or using the pot and strainer to rinse them clean. Boil it again if need be. "But we only had 2 jugs of water." We're on an island! Water should be near impossible to not find! Oh well, time for that pre-9AM IPA...

Not to mention probably a good portion of the potable water in the world was at one point in time peed or pooped out of some form of animal.

Zepth said:

I'm really getting sick and tired of people who think that something dirty, or non-sterile is ruined forever. If they treat the water and have regulations in place that deem is safe for drinking it's fine. Even if you don't trust it by brewing you're boiling the hell out of it, thus taking matters into your own hands. I once found a couple strands of long hair while cleaning out my mash tun. "Oh no, my beer is ruined" said nobody ever.

To go farther into this look at how many parents carry alcohol sanitizer (what a waste of ethanol!) and use it religiously. Baby soother touched the ground? Take new one out of ziploc bag, rinse debris off one from ground, sanitize, rinse, autoclave, put into ziploc. In my day... Now I'm raging. Thanks HBT.

To continue the rant on a grade school camping trip someone failed while trying to strain the pasta from giant stock pot. Most of it ended up right in the dirt. The whole pile was deemed as being wrecked. I pointed out viable options include: Carefully pulling from the top of the pile where no dirt contact was made, or using the pot and strainer to rinse them clean. Boil it again if need be. "But we only had 2 jugs of water." We're on an island! Water should be near impossible to not find! Oh well, time for that pre-9AM IPA...

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I'm not sure if this is directed at me or not?

But as the OP I guess I should have said in my original post that 'yes, I would drink that ****'. It was just meant as a tongue-in-cheek question to get people to look at the article. I for one am strongly in favor of any type of water conservation effort. (Watch the movie Blue Gold if you're not)

FWIW the article did point out that in the state of Oregon, treated sewage water is not approved for public consumption, and that this project was given a special approval for a home brew club, and not to a commercial brewery, to test. Depending on how things go they are hoping to get approval from the Oregon Health Authority to use this water for public consumption. Oregon seems like the perfect culture for breweries to embrace this new water source if and when it is approved.

fimpster said:

I'm not sure if this is directed at me or not?

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No, not directed at you at all. In fact I only read the article now and discovered that it's not permitted to be consumed. Still doesn't change anything. I actually know a guy quite well who is on the tap water supply side of sanitation and he has gone in detail as to what they do with water before providing it to the township. This means that "sewer water" would likely be treated yet again at the supply side before going through the water mains.

article said:

"...although the initial knee-jerk reaction might be 'yuck,'" he said.

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This is what I am against. I have seen this way too often and as you may have gathered can't stand it. I'll admit did go a little off the handle. Sorry for any confusion or hurt feelings.

I work in a town that uses only ground water and recycled/treated water. I have no problems with this, considering the water in drinking was probably dinosaur pee at one point.

Oberon67 said:

So, yeah. We're using a dilution of treated wastewater for everything, on a daily basis. I showered in it just today.

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I thought something smelled funny in here..

It's not like the drinking water we get comes from the pure untouched heavens. Most of it is river water that is treated. And the sewers from the previous town was put back in the same river.

It sounds disgusting, but it's not really that bad.

One of my favorites quotes is "Pollution is a cow p***ing in a creek, Conservation is a deer p***ing in a creek"

In the end everything is just recycled star.

NickTheGreat said:

It's not like the drinking water we get comes from the pure untouched heavens. Most of it is river water that is treated. And the sewers from the previous town was put back in the same river.

It sounds disgusting, but it's not really that bad.

One of my favorites quotes is "Pollution is a cow p***ing in a creek, Conservation is a deer p***ing in a creek"

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As both a conservationist, and someone who also works designing and permitting animal feeding operations.... I LOVE THIS.

fimpster said:

I just read this article on NPR. An Oregon homebrew club plans to make beer from treated waste water. Would you drink that "****"?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/20...d-wastewater-when-you-could-make-beer-with-it

Click to expand...

Unless you live on top of a mountain, odds are that some portion of the water you drink has been through a wastewater treatment plant upstream.

Direct and indirect wastewater reuse is becoming more common. Most are indirect, injecting into a drinking water aquifer. But there are a few "toilet to tap" systems where the effluent from the wastewater treatment plant is piped directly to a drinking water treatment plant.

Well, I just posted pics of my new homemade conical, dubbed "The Sewer Brewer", so, yeah, I reckon I would.