Water is both beer's primary ingredient (on average, 90-95% of what’s in your glass) and its largest waste byproduct. And in the future, it may also become the beer industry’s greatest liability.
According to the most recent Brewers Association data, approximately 194.3 million barrels of beer were sold in the United States in 2018. Consider that, even if every brewery operated at an industry-leading water-to-beer ratio of 3:1—with one BBL equal to 31 gallons—the beer industry would be responsible for using over 18 billion gallons of water annually to produce just the beer it sold to consumers.
Consider, too, that approximately 2,900 breweries—nearly 40% of all craft breweries—operated in states experiencing at least a moderate drought during a third of the last decade. Arizona and Nevada were in at least a moderate drought for more than half of the last decade. California, Utah, Idaho, and New Mexico were in a drought for approximately 40-50% of the last decade. And Texas, Oregon, Georgia, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska experienced at least a moderate drought for 30-40% of the past 10 years.
The American Geosciences Institute forecasts drought conditions three months out—beyond that, the start time and length of a drought is extremely hard to predict. However, many international agencies, including the World Wide Fund for Nature, say that there is a growing risk of drought due to climate change, and that droughts will likely become longer and more severe in the coming decades.
Still, access to water isn't breweries’ only concern. As many beer businesses grow, municipal water systems struggle to handle highly concentrated brewery wastewater, which can be harmful to watersheds and local ecosystems. The consequence for breweries looking to safely dispose of their effluent can be costly surcharges, or even production restrictions.
As the stakes escalate, water sustainability and business sustainability have become inextricably linked for many breweries around the country—and finding solutions has become ever more imperative. "Working in California means droughts will inevitably be part of business operations and will most likely become more severe with a changing climate," says Mandi McKay, sustainability manager at Sierra Nevada in Chico, California. "In a way, we're always operating as if we're in a drought scenario and if we all use water efficiently then we can help ensure it will be a sustainable resource in the future."
For many businesses in drought-ridden states like California, water supply issues aren’t a problem for the future—they’re happening right now.
2011-2017 ranked as one of California’s worst droughts of the past century, leading to water shortages and restrictions, wildfires, and significant impacts to agriculture and other water-reliant businesses across the state. As of August 2014, 100% of California was considered to be in a drought, according to the United States Drought Monitor—and California’s Governor at the time, Jerry Brown, declared a statewide drought emergency in 2014 instituting water restrictions that impacted both residents and businesses. During the drought, the Department of Public Health named Cloverdale, California one of 17 communities most vulnerable to water depletion. At one point, the situation was so dire that the city was projected to run out of water within 60 days.
“Wastewater is probably one of the most important environmental impact issues that new and small breweries aren’t aware of.”
For the Cloverdale-based Bear Republic Brewing Company, the impact was especially devastating, due to the city’s heavy reliance on the water supply of the Russian River.
“Bear Republic gets its water from the City of Cloverdale, which has extremely robust water rights to draw from the gravel bed of the Russian River,” says Peter Kruger, formerly Bear Republic’s master brewer and now its COO. “This gravel bed is very shallow and wells are less than 300 feet deep. Thus, these wells rely on constantly running water in the river.”
National craft beer production volumes had grown 18% in 2013 and 42% in 2014, and Bear Republic was experiencing what Kruger called “a period of extremely rapid growth” of 30-40%—and the brewery was poised to grow further.
In 2013, Bear Republic applied to the city for a permit to expand its facility and was denied due to the lack of water resources and wells to supply the town of roughly 8,000 residents. The brewery was forced to cap its annual water usage at 8 million gallons, a move that severely curtailed its growth, according to Kruger.
Bear Republic took two approaches to ease its water-access issues, Kruger says. First, the already water-conscious brewery further reduced usage within the brewery, installing an EcoVolt water treatment system in partnership with Cambrian Innovation, a Massachusetts-based water and bioenergy technology provider. The system created high-quality methane and solved for 95% of Bear Republic’s hot water heating, and close to 20% of its electrical needs. The system also enabled the brewery to reuse up to 25% of its treated wastewater for cleaning. In addition, the brewery installed 26 water meters and a timer system to minimize water use. “We worked hard to build a culture of water conservation. This was all done to be able to produce more beer with the finite amount of water we were allotted,” Kruger says.
The brewery also took steps to assist Cloverdale in gaining access to more water, Kruger says. In 2013, Bear Republic and Cloverdale formed a public/private partnership in which the brewery advanced $550,000 in fees to allow the city to fast-track two additional wells, as well as refit the existing pumping systems for other wells. “This increased daily water production at the city from 1.8 to 2.8 million gallons per day,” he notes.
The wells helped provide more water to the city, but due to the ongoing severity of the drought, by November 2014 Bear Republic still had not gained access to any additional water. That lack of access, coupled with uncertainty about the length of the drought, forced the brewery to scale back production and expansion. As of November 2014, Bear Republic had pulled out of 19 markets over the course of 18 months, including Massachusetts and Texas. The plan was to re-engage with those markets after the drought ended, but as the brewery hunkered down and focused on markets closer to home, craft beer continued flourishing and evolving.
Despite weathering the drought, the lasting impacts of the water shortages on Bear Republic’s business are still felt today. While overall craft beer production grew 42% in 2014, Bear Republic’s production decreased 2%—and it has yet to get back to its peak production level of 81,238 BBLs in 2016.
“The long-term impact has been that we lost our foothold in many of those markets,” Kruger says. “That market share was filled by other breweries and we have had a much more difficult time in those territories.”
Due to the ongoing risk of drought and wildfires, Bear Republic is taking steps to prepare for future disruptions. “I believe that another drought is inevitable,” Kruger says. “We have shored up our water position with the city. Additionally, we have installed a wastewater plant that is expandable into water reclaim should the need arise.”
Many breweries publish their water-to-beer ratio—the ratio of how much total water is used to create the final product. Typically, the all-in ratio, for breweries of all sizes, stands at approximately 7:1, which means that for every BBL (31 gallons) of beer produced, seven BBLs (217 gallons) of total water were used. That water usage doesn’t just include water as an input to beer, but also water used in other processes associated with brewing, such as cleaning equipment. Large, regional players tend to have water-to-beer ratios of 4:1, while sustainably focused breweries, such as The Alchemist in Stowe, Vermont, operate at a ratio of 3:1.
Today, Bear Republic’s water-to-beer ratio stands at 3.25:1, versus its estimated 7:1 ratio at its opening in 1995. The brewery has installed a multi-million-dollar anaerobic and aerobic wastewater plant, which could be expanded to allow for reuse.
“My long-term, 15-year goal is to hit 2:1,” Kruger says. “This is ambitious and probably requires some legislative changes by California in terms of water reuse laws to allow us to hit. We continue to build a culture of water conservation. To really make substantial changes the entire team needs to be on board.”
“Wastewater is probably one of the most important environmental impact issues that new and small breweries aren’t aware of,” says Sierra Nevada’s McKay. “And when they’re faced with unexpected permitting and compliance issues, that can be costly.”
For breweries, water use isn’t just an issue of consumption. It’s also a problem of disposal. “Brewing wastewater contains a lot of organics, which creates a high BOD [Biological Oxygen Demand] that is significantly higher than residential wastewater,” says McKay. “Municipal wastewater treatment plants aren’t designed to handle wastewater from a brewery, so it can place a heavy demand and burden on them, which also means they can increase discharge costs for that water.”
Biological Oxygen Demand (also known as Biochemical Oxygen Demand) is a measure of the energy required to break down the organic components (primarily leftover solids and sugars) in wastewater. As the process takes oxygen from existing ecosystems, a high BOD can be harmful in river and stream ecosystems. The amount of BOD varies based on the type of beer being brewed; higher-ABV beers tend to have higher BODs due to their increased sugar content. And disposing of it can be a headache—particularly if, in the case of Lagunitas Brewing Company in Petaluma, California—your municipality tells you its wastewater processing system is no longer up to snuff.
“This is 2013 in California and it’s peak drought,” explains Eppa Rixey, former director of strategic planning at Lagunitas. “We’re growing like a rocket ship and in a highly resource-intense manufacturing company, that’s really difficult to sustain—especially when the municipality is starting to say their wastewater system is getting tapped out and they don’t have a lot of extra capacity to give us.”
Lagunitas was faced with the challenge of reducing its water consumption, and finding new ways to dispose of its wastewater—all while trying to meet growing consumer demand. Like many breweries, Lagunitas was already selling its spent grain to farmers—the high-protein, low-sugar brewing byproduct is ideal for cattle. Although it’s also of value to farmers, selling the accompanying wastewater wasn’t an option due to California state requirements for testing and sampling its impact on nearby watersheds. And the two acres of land Lagunitas bought to build its own wastewater treatment plant had run into similar constraints.
“If you’re given an opportunity you have a responsibility, not just to your employees and your customers, but to the planet as well. We are using natural resources to create our beer, and it’s of the utmost importance to us.”
The brewery’s short-term solution was to contact nearby municipalities, hoping one would have the ability to accept its most highly concentrated BOD wastewater; Oakland, like many large cities throughout the country, had excess capacity, and agreed to receive Lagunitas’ effluent. Lagunitas began siphoning off its highest BOD-concentrated water and trucking it to Oakland—10 5,000 gallon tankers daily, for a total cost of approximately $2 million per year.
In parallel, the brewery researched more environmentally and financially sustainable options, but commercial solutions were not without their challenges. “They didn’t make wastewater systems for small enterprises,” Rixey says. “Pepsi, Coke, Anheuser-Busch—people design wastewater systems for them because we assume smaller producers can live with whatever the municipal system can provide, or we assume smaller breweries can’t afford a system.”
After exploring multiple vendors and options, Rixey and the Lagunitas team came up with a multi-phase solution that brought their effluent to a standard acceptable to the municipality for disposal, and clean enough for reuse in the brewery—not reusable for brewing, but for use in other water-intensive activities such as rinsing and cleaning tanks.
First, the highest concentrated wastewater, typically from the first tank rinse, is side-streamed into a buffer or equalization (EQ) tank. The effluent then goes through an anaerobic treatment, fed with bacteria and organisms that break down the sugar in the wastewater.
For the second phase, Lagunitas installed a membrane bio-reactor (MBR), which filters and strips out approximately 99% of the remaining contaminants, bringing the water to a reusable state.
To ensure that any remaining bacteria and other contaminants living in the remaining water are killed, Lagunitas further cleaned the water with reverse osmosis (RO) and then UV sterilization at the point of use.
The solution solved for the multiple challenges Lagunitas was facing at the time: eliminating the high costs associated with trucking wastewater to Oakland, treating all of its wastewater on site to create “clean” water that could be reused, and ultimately acquiring the city permits needed to add more brewing capacity.
And Lagunitas’ efforts to reduce its water-to-beer ratio continue to this day. “We have a continuous improvement task force that is focused on water consumption,” says Max Wertheimer, Lagunitas’ senior public relations manager. “We’ve led several kaizen events to highlight our loss points and brainstorm solutions. Physically going out and seeing the water going down the drain, measuring it, and working together to find ways to eliminate or reduce that loss point.”
Lagunitas’ current water-to-beer ratio stands at 4:1, well below the industry average and comparable to other large, regional breweries. Two years ago, that ratio was more than five. At the production levels of a brewery such as Lagunitas, even reducing that ratio from five to four saves approximately 30,000,000 gallons of water.
Wastewater management and the imperative of reduced water consumption aren’t limited to breweries in states at risk of drought. In Vermont, breweries such as The Alchemist are dealing with similar limitations within their local systems.
“Here in the state of Vermont, something like 90% of the wastewater treatment facilities are undersized and underfunded,” says John Kimmich, co-founder of The Alchemist. “It’s a real issue—and I would be willing to guess that it’s a common issue throughout the United States.”
John and Jen Kimmich opened The Alchemist in 2003, originally as a 60-seat brewpub in Waterbury, Vermont. In 2011, just as the Kimmiches were expanding into a new production facility, Tropical Storm Irene hit New England, wiping out the original Alchemist Pub and Brewery. Although sustainability efforts and water consumption were always a priority, it wasn’t until the brewery began expanding and building new production facilities that wastewater fully hit the founders’ radar.
“When we had the pub, we had no need to worry about that because we were so small,” Kimmich says. “Everything we used went down the drain—spent yeast, spent hops, unfermented wort—it could all go down the drain and the wastewater facility could handle it no problem. But, as soon as we opened a production brewery, that changed.”
Similarly to Lagunitas, the Kimmiches were faced with a municipal water system unable to handle their expanding production. “There was no roadmap from the state as to what to do. It was a learn-as-you-go-type situation.”
In both the Waterbury and Stowe (opened in July 2016) breweries—which each produce approximately 9,000 BBLs of beer annually—The Alchemist side-streams its highest-strength wastewater after brewing. The brewery works with a local company, Grow Compost, which transports the waste to an anaerobic digester at the Vermont Technical College in Randolph, Vermont. The college then converts the waste stream into electricity, which assists in powering the campus.
The newer Stowe brewery is fitted with an anaerobic digester to treat the remaining effluent. “We knew what we could do through side-streaming, but we knew we could be doing a lot better if we invested in putting in our own wastewater system—so, that’s exactly what we did,” Kimmich says. In its Waterbury location, The Alchemist does not have a wastewater treatment system on site due to space constraints, so it disposes of its side-stream with GrowCompost and the remaining, lesser concentrated wastewater goes down the drain, able to be handled by the municipal waste system. The Alchemist measures and monitors the BOD, and reports its metrics to the state.
Through the efforts at the two breweries, The Alchemist has been able to significantly reduce the total concentration of BOD in its wastewater. In Waterbury, through side-streaming only, the wastewater is down to 20-30 pounds of BOD per day—well under the facility’s permit limit of 65 pounds per day. In Stowe, using both side-streaming and the in-house anaerobic digester, the brewery produces less than one half of one pound of BOD per day.
“With the system that we have in place in Stowe, we now discharge considerably less waste than a three-bedroom, single-family dwelling,” Kimmich says. "In a conversation I just had with Steve Miller, who runs that wastewater system for us, our latest report was 0.02 pounds of waste. We could probably add a little chlorine to our remaining wastewater and it could probably be considered drinking water. We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved in Stowe for sure.”
The impact of The Alchemist on the local wastewater network goes beyond the brewery. “In Stowe, we are a benefit because we are diluting other waste that goes into the system,” Kimmich shares. “We’re putting thousands of gallons of clean water into the system, which helps dilute everything else. It has a direct impact, and when businesses invent and invest in this infrastructure and go that extra mile, it has very obvious and instant effects on the system.”
As of today, The Alchemist’s water-to-beer ratio is down to slightly over 3:1. “That takes a cohesive effort by everyone in the business to be aware of consumption,” Kimmich says. “Jen and I are both really big environmentalists—we always have been. If you’re given an opportunity you have a responsibility, not just to your employees and your customers, but to the planet as well. We are using natural resources to create our beer, and it’s of the utmost importance to us. To us, it’s part of our core, the foundation of what sustains The Alchemist.”
Sierra Nevada is known for its commitment to sustainability and support of its local community (as demonstrated by last year’s fundraising effort with Resilience IPA after the devastating Camp Fire); little wonder that water is at the top of the brewery’s list of concerns.
“As one of the most critical components of beer, we’re thinking about water from every angle: quality, consumption, waste, reuse, and discharge,” McKay says. “Water reduction and reuse is where we like to focus.”
Sierra Nevada has been treating its effluent since 2002, when it installed an on-site wastewater treatment plant at its Chico brewery. Sierra Nevada’s plant uses anaerobic digestion (a process by which microorganisms break down biodegradable material), followed by an aerobic (when oxygen is added to further break down the solids, producing carbon dioxide or methane which can be repurposed as energy) and settling phase—in total, McKay says the end-to-end process removes approximately 85% of the organics from the brewery’s wastewater, bringing it in line with residential BOD and discharge pricing levels. In addition, the bio-gas byproduct from the anaerobic stage is captured and used as a fuel in Sierra Nevada’s boilers.
In addition to treating wastewater, a significant area of focus for Sierra Nevada in reducing and reusing water has been its CIP (clean-in-place) systems. In general, CIP refers to the use of a mix of chemicals, water, and/or heat used to clean machinery, equipment, pipes, filters or fittings without disassembly. “CIP solutions are used more than once and we’re currently taking water from our bottle rinsers and reusing it in our bottle fillers—after the bottles are rinsed, before being filled, the rinse water is captured and used to cool the vacuum pump of the filler,” says McKay.
“If people don’t have the capital to invest in equipment or recovery systems, honestly the best thing and easiest thing to do is focus on reduction. You don’t need equipment or a whole program or system to just use less.”
The brewery’s various efforts aren’t just limited to its California headquarters. Following its 2014 expansion to North Carolina, Sierra Nevada’s new brewery set-up was tailored to the East Coast setting. “Our Mills River, North Carolina brewery allowed us to be more intentional and creative with water consumption and reuse,” McKay says. Taking advantage of the high annual rainfall in North Carolina, Sierra Nevada installed rainwater cisterns to collect water from the roof, which the brewery utilizes for toilet flushing and irrigation. Similar to the facility in Chico, the Mills River brewery also has an on-site wastewater treatment plant—but one that was also designed to digest spent yeast, providing bio-gas that is used to offset natural gas consumption.
Strategies to reduce water usage haven’t just come through capital-intensive projects. McKay believes that Sierra Nevada’s strong company culture makes employees feel a part of and responsible for sustainability efforts, and has been one of the key drivers of success with the program. “We have a long history of KPIs,” McKay explains. "All of the managers are looking at these metrics every month—energy, water, waste. It’s been ingrained in the manager level that these things are important and it’s our job to address them.”
A few years ago, Sierra Nevada switched from using water to a silicon-based lubricant to ensure bottles move easily along the bottling line. The change saved the brewery almost 1 million gallons of water per year, and originated with a brewery employee who identified the opportunity. “That idea came out of building a culture around sustainability and having a leader and founder that’s always asking, ‘How can we be better, how can we use less?’” McKay says.
Complementing Sierra Nevada’s robust efforts around reducing water use, McKay believes that the measurement system the brewery utilizes to track consumption is an equally important driver of measuring success. Sierra Nevada tracks the water it consumes with various meters throughout each plant, which in aggregate provide a measure of the total water used. In addition, the brewery meters the amount of water being treated at the on-site water treatment plants.
“Both numbers are important in working towards water conservation and efficiency,” McKays explains. "One tells you how much water you’re using in your operations and the other tells you how much of that water is going down the drain. Company-wide, our water-to-beer ratio hovers around 4.5 barrels of water per barrel of beer produced. Water consumption is reviewed monthly by [our] operations teams and is one of the key performance indicators we set annual targets against.”
Beyond the confines of its brewery and its role as a sustainability leader in the beer industry, Sierra Nevada is also beginning to broaden its impact through advocacy. “We’re being more vocal about our values and our commitment by joining organizations that are working to advance climate change policy, renewable energy, and the preservation of public lands. We want to see action at the state and federal level when it comes to these issues,” she says.
Among the many organizations Sierra Nevada is now partnering with, two focus on clean water and water conservation. Brewers for Clean Water, an initiative of the Natural Resources Defense Council that Sierra Nevada has been a member of since 2015, advocates for a clean, safe, and sufficient water supply (Lagunitas and Bear Republic are also members). And Sierra Nevada is also a member of Connect the Drops, a California-based water advocacy program run by the sustainability nonprofit Ceres. “Companies that are part of Connect the Drops advocate for resilient water solutions in California and we’ve signed onto several letters of support for various California water bills as well as attended lobby days in Sacramento as part of the business voice for smart water policy,” McKay explains.
Although advocacy represents a shift for Sierra Nevada, and elevates the brewery to a national platform, McKay feels Sierra Nevada—and other businesses—have a role to play. “We provide jobs, contribute to the economy, and encourage growth—but, we also want to do business better and differently, protect people and natural resources. We’ve been striving to do business in the least impactful way as possible for 40 years and now we can also use what we’ve learned to impact change outside our four walls.”
But, what if you aren’t Lagunitas or Sierra Nevada, producing over 1 million BBLs of beer every year? What if you don’t have the financial means to invest in a wastewater treatment plant, nor the scale to assist in gaining meaningful efficiencies?
Charlie Johnson is the owner and head brewer of the soon-to-be-launched Ronin Fermentation Project, a small, sustainable brewery located on the edge of Tahoe National Forest in Graeagle, California.
“Five years ago, no one was talking about wastewater,” Johnson says. "Only the big regional breweries were. Now you have 500-barrel-a-year breweries and brewpubs talking about wastewater treatment.”
Due to the rural nature of Ronin’s location (deer pass through the property on a regular basis), Johnson had to implement a wastewater treatment process on site, adapting the technology available to larger breweries. “For a brewery producing less than 1,200 barrels a year, to have a water treatment system at the level of a larger brewer like Lagunitas is a pretty big deal,” he says. “We shrunk the tech down to be more approachable for a smaller brewer.”
To Johnson, there are options available to smaller breweries wanting to focus on wastewater. One is to purchase a scaled-down version of the clean-in-place (CIP) system Sierra Nevada uses to clean machinery. “They sell these little systems that are vessels that keep your caustic hot,” Johnson explains. “They have pumps that send the caustic to your tanks and then reclaim them back in—you’re able to continually reclaim and reuse those liquids. So you get some savings on the chemical side, but you’re also not dumping chemicals down the drain every time you brew.”
The second recommendation Johnson has for smaller brewers is to install a small buffering tank to help level out the variability in effluent BOD and pH levels. Even without the more sophisticated bacteria additions or MBRs (membrane bioreactors), by side-streaming the first rinses into a buffering tank, even smaller brewers can aggregate and store the effluent from multiple batches until a blended, more neutral level can be reached. The less harsh wastewater can then be disposed of through the municipal wastewater system. By adding caustic to the blend before going down the drain, breweries can further dilute the wastewater.
“A lot of people will say, ‘He’s a crazy dude who thinks it’s cool to take up tank space in the brewery for water buffering tanks,’” Johnson jokes. “But, a buffering tank is pretty dang easy—a sump pump is cheap.”
In addition to these technologies, Johnson doesn’t underestimate simple ways brewers can lower their water consumption. “I know it sounds silly, but sometimes at the end of the day, instead of using a hose to spray out the big mash tun, I’ll take a broom and brush a ton of it out first—then hit it with a little bit of water. Doing that, I’ll use around nine to 10 less gallons of water for each cleaning.”
Mandi McKay at Sierra Nevada agrees that small acts can add up to larger impacts. McKay says she receives two to three calls a week from breweries of all sizes seeking advice on where to begin. “This sounds easy, but if people don’t have the capital to invest in equipment or recovery systems, honestly the best thing and easiest thing to do is focus on reduction. You don’t need equipment or a whole program or system to just use less.”
McKay says tracking is critical to better understanding opportunities for reduction. “I tell people all the time, you’ve got to track. I don’t care how small you are or how big you are—get a meter, figure out what you’re using or consuming, whether it’s water, energy, or waste. Figure out where you are, because you don't know if improvements are happening if you can’t track.”
As a member of the Brewers Association’s Sustainability Subcommittee, McKay is also a proponent of the organization’s Benchmarking Tool, which assists breweries in tracking their energy, water, and waste metrics—and allows them to compare themselves against other breweries of similar production sizes. In addition, McKay says resources available through the Brewers Association’s site are extremely helpful, including manuals and guidance on wastewater management and other sustainability initiatives.
The unpredictability of climate change has led to a new and growing set of challenges for all industries. That’s certainly true for beer, whose production is dependent on natural resources and leads to byproducts that strain our infrastructure. Water, as both a major ingredient and byproduct of brewing, is a critical resource—and breweries of all sizes have options for how they can contribute to reducing, reusing, and recycling water. More and more, environmental consciousness is not just a side project for brewers, but a necessary lens in ensuring financial sustainability over the long-term.
“You're never just a brewer,” Johnson says. "We all wear so many different hats. But, it’s important now more than ever that people wear that sustainability hat.”
Words, Kristen Foster Illustrations, Ben Chaplek Language
