Environmental Impact of Homebrewing

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Coprinus

Coprinus

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The deeper I get into this hobby, the more I become aware that it isn't the most sustainable activity I could be involved in.
The fuel used for growing and transporting the main ingredients, especially if they are imported, are one problem, while the more obvious one is all the water that I use.
Has anyone thought about these issues, and if so, are there any ideas about ways to soften the environmental blow of brewing a batch of the good stuff?
What do hip breweries like New Belgium and Rouge do?
 
You can always grow your own hops; lots of brewers here do that. Growing and malting your own barley is a bit more difficult but some people have done that with success. Many homebrewers also collect their own water in rain barrels, reducing the dependence on municipal water. You can even harvest wild yeast right out of the air!
 
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this as well. The chance to lessen the environmental impact of my love for beer is what drove me to try homebrewing in the first place. I'm guessing that just by not having to transport and recycle all the glass I used to go through has been a help already, but I'm still looking for ways to reduce impact. Other things I've done or plan to do:

  • Use locally made DME (Breiss is only about 50 miles from here)
  • Grow my own hops (will start this next year as I just moved)
  • Harvest/wash yeast
  • when buying hops or specialty grains, go domestic
  • Use grolsh-style bottles or keg (don't do either currently, but I don't like the single-use of bottlecaps)

Anyone used that stove buffalobrewer linked to? Looks interesting...
 
I grow my own hops and use lots of rainwater. I recirculate all of my cooling water. I recycle thousands of bottles. I am not too worried about the impact of growing wheat and barley- it's gonna happen no matter what. I think my brewing for myself is a lot less impact than 1 customer's share of what the big boys do.
 
The transportation costs are minor compared to the cost for moving pre-made beer, because the heaviest ingredient, water, is delivered by pipe. As far as the amount of water, I only use 2-3 gallons per gallon of beer, but some people seem to use much more.
 
I've actually been concerned with the 'carbon footprint' of making alcohol! Yeast farts contribute to global warming.
I can't imagine beer and wine being as bad as distillates. Depends on how drunk I get, I guess...

My wart chiller flows into my swimming pool, add water when needed.
 
I would think that brewing your own beer would be more "green" than buying commercial. Commercial beer uses some of the same ingredients that we use and they have to get it shipped to there brewery. Then once the beer is made, a distributor has to distribute it. I would think that carbon footprint would be bigger than the ingredients form my homebrew.
 
I was thinking about this the other day... Between the amount of propane used, the wasted water, and the yeast farts there must be some ways to cut down on the environmental impact.

The point about the cost of transporting beer is a good one though, and definitely sets my mind at ease a bit.
 
And then there is the oft missed environmental cost of commercial products: sales and marketing. The sales and marketing folks have a huge amount of waste in their processes. Homebrewers have none of these costs.
 
Here in Chicago, while we are supposed to be a 'green city', there is nothing that requires bars to recycle glass bottles. It always bothered me and when I was going to bars regularly, kept me drinking beers from the tap.

Now that I'm a home brewer, I not only reuse bottles that I buy, but accept bottles from others, so they don't end up in the landfill or in the recycling bin. My wife and I recycle as much as we can, taking a weekly trip to the recycling center. But, reusing bottles multiple times is way better than recycling.

Reducing society's impact on the environment is a very complicated proposition, but the way I look at it, if everyone takes a few important steps, then it will make a huge impact on the whole.

So, while my homebrewing isn't totally carbon and pollution neutral I use mostly natural products, recycle what I can, reuse all those empties, and don't burn the gas in the car that I used to going to the bar.
 
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.
 
Hex said:
I've actually been concerned with the 'carbon footprint' of making alcohol! Yeast farts contribute to global warming.
I can't imagine beer and wine being as bad as distillates. Depends on how drunk I get, I guess...
Click to expand...

The actual fermentation should be near enough carbon neutral, the boiling and transport of ingredients on the other hand could possibly be reduced.
 
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
 
Hammy71 said:
Put me in the crowd of not giving a S&^%..... I don't loose any sleep over my 'carbon footprint' or if I can brew 'greener'. Do I recycle?...sure.... Do I try to conserve?....sure...Does it keep me up at night?....Hell no..... First time it crossed my mind was reading this.... Wait...wait for it.... nope...still nothing...sorry.....
Click to expand...

I think the OP's point was to see if others thought about this, not whether anyone is losing sleep over it. Awareness is the first step to giving a S&^%.
 
I would have to say guys, if you are worried about the environmental issues you really have nothing to worry about. First off, water issues, yes we waste a bit but there are so many ways to cut that down, more efficient heat exchangers... But if you compare it to larger breweries the waste water produced is far worse due to the caustics that they use to clean their equip. However most have CIP systems that do save a TON of water based on the amount of water they already use.

The whole carbon foot print issue... seriously guys, compare it to the daily use that you expel in your car. I have no hard data however a whole years worth of brewing is most likely about even with a days worth of car exhaust.

If you are really worried about the environmental impact do everything you can to conserve energy, but dont worry you are not causing a detrimental impact on the environment. There are much much MUCH worse issues out there. Personally I try to keep all my waste down as many ways as possible and just try not to be wasteful in general.
 
I have thought about how I can reduce my water usage for cleaning and chilling but it is solely a financial concern. The idea that one is wasting water when it comes out of a pipe and goes right back into a pipe has baffled me for years. Yes there is additional water and utilities used in the processing of waste water but running water down your drain is not waste. Watering your lawn at 2pm in August in Texas is wasting water.
The rest you are merely trading for the commercial beer you would buy anyway and with the exception of increased packaging for smaller ingredient units, may come out ahead in other ways.
It takes the same amount of work to heat the water, mill the grains, etc whether it is for a 10,000 batch or a 5 gallon batch.
And yeast by-product induced global warming? Seriously?
 
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.
 
yogensha said:
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
Click to expand...

I believe NBB does something similar.
 
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.
 
bierhaus15 said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
flyangler18 said:
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.
Click to expand...


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.
 
agroff383 said:
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.
Click to expand...

I agree, but often times green=more efficient=$avings. That makes me happy.
 
You can make up for your water consumption if you drink homebrew instead of water when thirsty. Its a win-win.
 
I don't think homebrewing is that bad in the first place. The two worst things we do would be using propane and wasting water. Saving water can be easily done by changing your cleaning methods and recirculating your chilling water.

I'd also say "yeast farts" are carbon neutral. The carbon positive stuff will use fossil fuels that are releasing carbon that has been trapped under the surface and not part of the current carban cycle.

bierhaus15 said:
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.
Click to expand...

$100,000 a day is noting compared to most chemical facilities and a lot of other manufacturing operations. They are the ones who can save lots of money from simple thinks. A failed steam trap can easily waste $8,000 a year of steam and many facilities have way more than 100 traps in operations. Every 10 feet of uninsulated steam pipe can waste $1000 a year in energy loss.

The $100,000 a day really does not mean anything unless you look at energy and water used per barrels brewed. Large scale operations are usually more efficient than small scale.
 
Really? I mean really?

Provided you are going to drink the quantities of what you brew as commercial beer. You are having to ship 41 pounds of water weight per 5 gallon batch (2 cases). Shipping grain around for the same batch size is less than 25% of that. Think of it as beer tang.

My brewery is all electric so there is 99% efficiency in power transfer to the boil/mash (1% loss in system resistance).

All water used to cool the wort is reused to clean the system and then poured into the yard. returned to the local aquifers. Spent Grain is composted as well.

So in one purchase/shipment I have bought my beer and compost. Alone I have reduced the carbon burden of shipping the beer by more than 75%, factor in the burden of transporting the compost and the overall burden becomes smaller.

As for the case study.... I have a hard time digesting that (pun intended) with the half fact statements provided about waste water treatment. There are reasons why most municipalities use aerobic water treatment for the bulk of the process over anaerobic processes, and no it's not because it is cheaper but because it is more stable. Not to mention they completely missed the boat on the amount of time anaerobic processes take, they take much longer than aerobic (up to 4 weeks). Plus, they don't even mention what they do with their sludge.
Here's another thing to ponder, the amounts biosolid/sludge producing materials in the water 'wasted' of brewing is negligible. The bulk of them, though not much, is in the beer. Which you'll process first in your personal little bio-reactor.

I love how people wave a finger at methane and CO2 as eco-evil incarnate, but if we call it bio-gas it makes it okay. Even if you run biogas through a combustion system, CO2 is fairly inert so it's going to come out of that process as, hold your breath, CO2! Don't forget to add the additional 2 CO2 molecules per methane molecule.
Want a solution? PLANT MORE TREES.

Now I have read a few articles about a brewery using their fermentation tanks' co2 to feed algae tanks. Cool concept I thought, though the algae was used as a dietary supplement not fuel.

Reading that Zeri site again, it looks like the whole thing is set up as an elaborate way to deal with the spent grain, not so much the water. Selling compost would be a much cheaper and viable solution. Not to mention it's greener.
 
I've never quite understood the concerns about water usage or wasting water. Where I live, water falls from the sky. It's a renewable resource. Sewer systems and the treatment plants could not function without water entering the drains and diluting the waste. Treatment plants, both water and waste do consume power, so there is that aspect to consider, but our individual contribution is negligible. When you stay home and brew, you are not out cruising around doing whatever and burning fuel. Unless one lives in an arid region or where there are water shortages I just can't get overly excited about conserving water. I see vast quantities flowing down the Ohio river heading to the sea every day and as I said, more falls from the sky for free regularly around here.

IMO, it's much too late to do anything about global warming at this point anyway. We are doomed regardless. Yes, buy a bunch of those little spiral flourescent light bulbs if it will help you sleep better. Buy an ell electric car and ignore the coal fired power plant located about 100 miles away and all of the losses that occur along the way getting it to your little car. Brewing on such a small scale as we do, is extremely inefficient when compared to the big guys. It's simply an economy of scale and applies to almost anything of that nature. FWIW, I do try to conserve resources. I started composting long before it became stylish. I separate the recyclables from my trash and I do make an effort to conserve energy when and where I can. I'm not really that cynical, but from what I observe going on in the big picture, it looks a lot like we are screwed.
 
CodeRage said:
Really? I mean really?
Click to expand...

CodeRage, thanks for the thorough and pointed analysis. It's a tricky thing, being truly green, but I think it's a goal worth attempting.
Your point about shipping grain instead of beer is an important one, as well as the clarification about CO2. I never even thought about global warming effects of yeast farts until I read through these posts.
Imagine if we tried to stop all the fermentation going on every minute in nature to "save the world". It would be disastrous.
I think the best steps I could take personally is to find a use for my spent grain and to adjust my cleaning technique in order to reduce the water I'm using.

Also I'm going to start wearing hemp clothes and become a fruititarian. :D
 
I think the best steps I could take personally is to find a use for my spent grain and to adjust my cleaning technique in order to reduce the water I'm using.
Click to expand...

^^^^^^^^

THIS.

I've been maintaining a compost pile here for a while. Managing waste water can be challenging; collect it in a rain barrel or similar vessel to water the garden later.
 
Coprinus said:
CodeRage, thanks for the thorough and pointed analysis. It's a tricky thing, being truly green, but I think it's a goal worth attempting.
Your point about shipping grain instead of beer is an important one, as well as the clarification about CO2. I never even thought about global warming effects of yeast farts until I read through these posts.
Imagine if we tried to stop all the fermentation going on every minute in nature to "save the world". It would be disastrous.
I think the best steps I could take personally is to find a use for my spent grain and to adjust my cleaning technique in order to reduce the water I'm using.

Also I'm going to start wearing hemp clothes and become a fruititarian. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, sorry for the half awake ranting. Was thoroughly frustrated with some home work at the time. The notion of fermentation is a large contributor to green house gases still rubs me a bit wrong though. The co2 problems stems from carbon that was locked into the ground long long ago. We're pumping it out and reintroducing it to the atmosphere. To really address the co2 problem you need to get it out of the air and into the ground and leave it there.
 
1. Water and CO2 from the environment are absorbed by the barley plant and converted into complex carbohydrate chains.

2. Complex carbohydrate chains are converted to simple carbohydrates in the mash.

3. Simple carbohydrates are converted to alcohol and CO2 by yeast.

4. Alcohol is converted in our stomachs and livers (eventually) to water and CO2.

CO2 from fermentation does not contribute to greenhouse gases. Period.
 

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