As the craft beer industry continues to flourish, a crucial responsibility towards our planet emerges alongside its growth. While breweries adopt a variety of sustainability initiatives, true environmental stewardship goes beyond simply sourcing ingredients locally. The prevailing narrative across multiple sectors is shifting towards transparency and sustainable practices, igniting a transformation in consumer awareness that fuels eco-friendly innovations in brewing.
Though many breweries emphasize local sourcing to reduce their carbon footprint, genuine sustainability encompasses a broader commitment. It involves investing in high-quality ingredients, maintaining transparency throughout the production process, and minimizing waste at every step. Dorking Brewery exemplifies the importance of responsible craft beer production. Neel Singh, Managing Director and owner, underscores this philosophy: “Sustainability isn’t just a trend; it’s a responsibility. For us, creating the best beer means doing so thoughtfully and responsibly. This entails collaborating with businesses that share our values for sourcing ingredients, optimizing our water usage, and finding inventive ways to reduce waste while ensuring we deliver an exceptional product.”
How the Industry is Embracing Sustainability
Energy Efficiency: Breweries are increasingly investing in energy-efficient technologies and renewable energy sources such as solar power to meet their environmental goals.
Water Conservation: Water plays an essential role in beer production, with four to six liters required to produce just one liter of beer. Consequently, breweries are implementing water-saving initiatives and recycling programs aimed at reducing their overall water consumption.
Waste Reduction: From spent grains to packaging materials, breweries are discovering innovative methods to reduce, reuse, and recycle waste. Spent grain, for instance, can be repurposed as animal feed or compost, providing additional value beyond the brewing process.
Sustainable Packaging: Many breweries are phasing out plastic six-pack rings in favor of recyclable cardboard alternatives, and exploring creative packaging solutions like refillable growlers, reflecting a commitment to reducing their ecological footprint.
Supporting Sustainable Agriculture: By partnering with sustainable hop farms and maltsters, breweries ensure the long-term vitality of the ingredients essential for crafting their beers.
From Brew to Table
Dorking Brewery stands out as a beacon of commitment to these principles. Neel Singh adds, “We believe that quality and sustainability go hand in hand. By investing in the finest ingredients and processes, we can create exceptional beers while fully understanding what goes into them and how they are made. This dedication sets a high standard for the industry, one we consistently strive to uphold and exceed.”
For Colorado’s Mountain Tap Brewery, sustainability means buying product from local small-scale malt and hops growers. “Supporting small local growers increases the viability of Colorado’s agricultural industry,” says brewmaster Rich Tucciarone. “It also lessens our carbon footprint since the ingredients have far fewer miles to travel to reach us.”
He finds building that local connection benefits the entire community. “Like many brewers, we provide our spent grain to a local rancher who feeds his pigs with it,” Tucciarone says. “This keeps the grain out of the landfill and gives it a ‘second life’ as feed. A few times each year, we purchase pork from the rancher and feature it on our menu as Full Circle Pork: we brew the beer, we give the spent grain to the rancher, he feeds his pigs, we purchase the pork, and finally we serve it to our guests”.
New Belgium’s Fat Tire made headlines last year when it became the first major brewery to achieve carbon-neutral certification. In the process, the brewery created an open source blueprint for others to follow in their path in the process. But while the brewery, the fourth-largest craft brewer in the country, has funneled significant investments into meeting global sustainability standards through renewable energy and heat recovery initiatives, not every brewery has access to that kind of capital.
At Alice Springs Brewing Co in Australia, sustainable thinking is essential. The brewery is located in the heart of the outback, surrounded by miles of orange-red sand. Water is a precious commodity here, so reducing water consumption is crucial. “We employ several tactics to recapture wastewater from our brewing processes and are continually looking for methods to reduce our usage,” describes instigator Kyle Pearson. “We currently reclaim all of our wastewater from our filtering process and use it to water our lawns and gardens.” Wastewater from brew day processes is used to clean down equipment.