Greening your beer with brewery’s CO2 eating algae, blockchain tracing, converting brewery waste into detergents and more

As alcohol consumption keeps rising – thanks in part due to 4^th of July celebrations, Covid-19 and quarantines, a struggling economy, and the start of summer for many countries – how do we compensate for the brewing process carbon footprint?

One way is to just drink enough alcohol that you end up not caring. But a more responsible way is to support breweries and businesses that are making your brewsky or margarita a bit greener…and we don’t mean in color.

In today’s Digest, how a brewery in Australia is utilizing algae that eats up CO2 and spits out oxygen, all the cool things you can make with beer and liquor production waste (going beyond ethanol and biofuel), how blockchain is helping track beer from field to glass in Canada, and more.

Why is this important? Young Henrys brewery points out that the CO2 from the fermentation of just one six pack of beer takes a tree two full days to absorb. Not to mention converting a polluting, climate change causing waste product like CO2 into something valuable is worth doing.

CO2 eating algae at a brewery near you!

News came in from Australia that the Young Henrys brewery is working with scientists at University of Technology Sydney Climate Change Cluster (C3) to utilize algae that consumes CO2 (a byproduct of the brewing process) and releasing oxygen, which could make brewing a more carbon neutral process. In fact, this brewery could become carbon neutral thanks to the CO2-chomping algae.

You can register to get a virtual tour of the brewery and their algae bioreactors, followed by an expert panel about the potential of algae and how they use it in everyday life at their website here.

How it works

Dr. Alexandra Thomson, a driving force behind their algae project chatted to MiNDFOOD recently, check out the interview here. Essentially, the brewery has calculated how much CO2 they are emitting as a by-product of yeast converting sugars into alcohol “and the algae, due to their fast-growing nature, sucks an equivalent amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis.”

The green-glowing bioreactors are on the brew floor among the brewery equipment, with each millilitre containing roughly 5 million microalgae cells – or individual organisms.

“We were inspired by the work the C3 group were doing and wanted to get involved,” said Richard Adamson, Young Henrys Co-Founder. “Some of the skills we have as brewers managing yeast have an analogue in growing algae – it’s almost like they have an inverse relationship. We thought it would be worth exploring how microalgae could work in a brewing operation to lower our carbon footprint and produce real world solutions.”

“Research into algae reveals that it can pretty much save the world,” according to Young Henrys website. “The photosynthesis effectiveness is so strong that algae actually produces more than 50% of the world’s oxygen – that’s every second breath you take being powered by the likes of the humble kelp, spirulina and nori. In addition, the algae that is grown from sucking up all that CO2 can go on to have another life, and be used in a bunch of products like food or even bio-plastics. For a little bit of added context here: The 400 litre bioreactor installed in Young Henrys Newtown brewery produces as much oxygen as one hectare of Australian forest.”

What else is beer and liquor good for?

Just a month ago, the Digest Wolfpack was talking about resilience to the possibilities of renewable methane, but somehow the conversation got to how delicious ethanol is, with Lone Wolf Steve Slome from Nexant saying “ethanol is delicious, checkmate other biofuels” and Wolf Paul Bryan chiming in, “I’ll drink to that! As as my old friend Jack Fossbenner user to say: ‘You aren’t drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.’” So other than drinking it, what else is beer or liquor good for?

• Detergents: There are other cases of using waste alcohol for good, like Ecover who teamed up with InBev to create detergents from the alcohol removed from InBev’s beers, as reported in The Digest in October 2019. Both the water and ethanol in Ecover’s “Too Good to Waste” detergent line come from InBev’s beer making process, making up at least a quarter of the overall content. Ecover sees waste as a major opportunity for its business and products moving forward and is currently looking at what it can do with waste CO2 as well.
• Charcoal Briquettes: Another useful item that many used this 4^th of July weekend is charcoal briquettes for a good ole’ American BBQ, and even better, a UK researcher is now making some out of brewery waste, as reported in The Digest in November 2019. Breweries in the EU throw out around 3.4 million tons of unspent grain every year, weighing the equivalent of 500,000 elephants. Using just 1kg of the grain, a researcher from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering has been able to create enough activated carbon to spread across 100 football pitches. That’s pretty impressive! The researcher is hoping to explore opportunities for the commercialization of the method in creating activated carbon and carbon nanotubes.
• Ethanol and Vinegar: In Belgium, AB InBev teamed with Alcogroup to produce ethanol from the residual alcohol produced in the manufacturing process for alcohol-free beer, as reported in The Digest in February 2019. Three tanker trucks per week transport about 75,000 liters of residual alcohol for processing, or roughly one liter for every 85 cans of alcohol-free beer. That comes to about 8,500 cans of beer result in enough residual alcohol to produce 18 liters of ethanol. In Australia, the company uses the residual alcohol for making vinegar.
• Biofuel: Looking as far back as July 2017 when Celtic Renewables made the world’s first test drive running on Scotch whisky – well, ok, technically biobutanol made from whisky residue – we can see innovation in using liquor waste materials. In December 2018, Celtic Renewables signed an MOU with Dross Energy to produce biobutanol from brewery and distillery waste in an effort to clean up the Ganges River.
• Vice-versa, beer from cacao beans: In an opposite move in Colombia, taking waste and turning it into beer, scientists at the Industrial University of Santander are creating new products like beer from cacao beans waste material. As reported in The Digest in June 2019, the Nextcoa project’s purpose is to create new cocoa flavors (characteristic of the region) and produce biomaterials for the specialized industry and advanced materials for the food and liquor industries.

Blockchain and Transparency for your Beer

Tracking where your beer comes from is also important when you are looking at every stage of production from field to glass and trying to  calculate its emissions, sustainability, and total footprint. Canadian-based “Grain Discovery” is tackling this with a new beer that is fully traceable from field to glass, just in time for summertime drinking.

This project traced and recorded data across the beer’s entire journey: from seed data via the Canadian Seed Growers Association, agronomic data from Decisive Farming, to processing at Red Shed malting, and brewing and packaging at Olds College brewery. Each can of Barley Trail includes a QR code that when scanned, reveals the beer’s digital passport for the consumer.

“Because our food passes through many intermediaries on its journey from the farm, provenance is often lost,” said Rory O’Sullivan, CEO of Grain Discovery. “Blockchain is an ideal solution for this challenge, as it is not a standalone technology, but part of a larger digital ecosystem and can ensure information is recorded accurately, with data originating from multiple sources.”

David Claveau, General Manager, Olds College Brewery said, “Barley Trail is the first Olds College Brewery beer to use blockchain technology to reveal everything about the beer, from its ingredients to the brewing methods and has proven very popular with consumers since the launch.”

The launch of Barley Trail and its digital passport comes at a time when food safety, transparency and traceability have never been more important to farmers, consumers and markets. This is further underscored by the Government of Canada’s introduction of new traceability requirements for manufacturers of alcoholic beverages.

Luke Chapman, President of Beer Canada said, “With the introduction of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations, this kind of technology will prove to be very valuable to the beer industry. It truly reflects the future of food traceability, and the demands of today’s farmers and consumers.”

Barley Trail builds on the success of Grain Discovery’s past traceability pilots. “We’re going from strength to strength and will continue to expand the use of our digital passport with other partners,” O’Sullivan said. “This trend of source verification is set to reshape the industry, which is exciting as every single participant in the supply chain will benefit from this technology as it gets further established. Plus, knowing exactly where it came from will make it even easier to enjoy a few Barley Trail beers over my Canada Day holiday!”

Bottom Line

From using blockchain to track where your beer came from and knowing its full carbon footprint, to converting its production wastes to oxygen, detergents, biofuel, even charcoal briquettes, the possibilities are endless for feeling good while you drink that beer this summer.

Not to mention the beer industry as a whole taking new steps to make it more “green”, like Anheuser-Busch’s beer being delivered using zero-emission hydrogen beer trucks, and Mexico-based Corona beer testing biodegradable, plant-based beer rings, there are many ways to make your liquor more environmentally and socially sustainable. So while you drink up this summer, look for ways you can support a biobased economy, even with a beer in hand.