Not the smell, not the color, not the lingering taste of hops or malt. When Epic Cleantec and Devil’s Canyon Brewing teamed up a few months back to create a new beer, they decided to focus on a less well-known but crucial aspect of the drink: water. And they didn’t hold back. Instead of using water from springs, icebergs, or glaciers, which is common in the vodka industry, for example, they chose to use treated wastewater. That’s right: The same wastewater that comes from showers, sinks, and washing machines.
While that may make some people recoil, those who’ve tried it have only good things to say about it.
Beer from shower water? Yes, you read that right. Shower and laundry water, to be precise. Almost a year ago, Epic Cleantec collected nine containers of recycled water from a San Francisco building’s pipes. The company then took the water to brewery Devil’s Canyon, which used it to brew a Kölsch-style beer just two weeks later. The resulting brew was packaged and labeled as Epic Onewater Brew, and over 7,000 cans were distributed at Greenbuild, a sustainable construction conference.
“An educational effort.” In late 2023, Epic Cleantec co-founder Aaron Tartakovsky told CNN, the company approached this project more as an “educational effort” rather than a product they wanted to sell. This approach makes sense, considering that current regulations prohibit the use of recycled wastewater to make commercial beverages. Surprisingly, the project garnered attention from major news outlets such as The New York Times and The Guardian, and received a “tremendous response” from the public. Despite its popularity, the Epic Onewater Brew is actually not available for sale.
But why? Epic Onewater Brew isn’t about a fancy taste for wastewater, it’s about technology and environmental responsibility. To understand this, one needs to look at Epic Cleantec, a company that usually engages in tasks that have little or nothing to do with the fermentation of barley (the process to make beer).
Epic Cleantec typically focuses on treating water for non-drinking purposes. Its work led the company to create a system to recycle rain and gray water for the Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco. This system collects rainwater and gray water (used water from showers, sinks, and washing machines), treats it, and then reuses it in the building for things like toilet flushing.
What does the system offer? The company estimates that it recycles 28,400 liters of gray water each day, which translates into more than $90,000 a year in utility savings for Related, the developer that hired it. The recycled water the company gets at Fifteen Fifty was the water it sent to Devil's Canyon last year to brew beer, providing a clear and eye-catching demonstration of the scope of its proposal during Greenbuild.
It’s not Epic Cleantec’s only strategy to make it visible. Near the San Francisco housing tower, there’s also a garden nourished by the purified waste.
How does Epic Cleantec clean water? The company claims its One Water system can recycle up to 95% of wastewater, including black water from toilets and gray water from bathtubs, sinks, showers, and washing machines. The recycled water can be used for non-potable purposes like flushing toilets, while the heat from the wastewater can be used to save energy.
Challenges. The full process is a bit more complex considering it involves prefiltration, equalization, biological treatment, filtration with a membrane featuring tiny 0.04-micron pores, and disinfection with ultraviolet light and chlorine. As CNN reports, although Epic Cleantec’s system isn’t designed to produce drinking water, some U.S. states allow the potable reuse of treated wastewater.
Why beer? Devil’s Canyon Brewing wanted to take things a step further. “With advanced treatment technologies, recycled water is not only safe to drink, but is often even cleaner than many sources of water we commonly consume,” the company states. “Common applications include toilet flushing, irrigation, cooling towers, and laundry, however, the water is treated to an extremely high level of purity that meets (or even exceeds) federal drinking water quality standards.”
Choosing beer was intentional. Drinking water from showers, even if it’s purified, can be off-putting. However, if the same liquid is presented as beer, it might help overcome the “ick factor,” as The New York Times suggests. Epic Cleantec isn’t the only company exploring this concept. Some cities have organized contests for breweries to use recycled wastewater to produce beverages. Years ago, Scottsdale Water in Arizona invited several companies to brew beer using water from the city’s advanced treatment plant.
Extravagance or responsibility? The big question here is why should we use shower water to brew beer when we can use water from reservoirs or springs. The answer is simple: It’s a matter of environmental responsibility and resource availability.
For instance, California recently suffered from a historic drought after three years of particularly scant rainfall—the worst since 1896—which led the state to demand that its residents control their consumption. Outside the U.S., Uruguay and Spain are also dealing with drought.
Could drains be a solution? That’s the question posed by Epic Cleantec, which points out that buildings hoard about 14% of drinking water and hardly reuse it. “We are on a mission to change that. And what better way to showcase the untapped potential of water reuse than by brewing beer with it! We created the Epic OneWater Brew to highlight that water reuse truly is the next frontier of recycling,” the company states.
Epic Cleantec isn’t alone in its thinking. In San Francisco, the authorities have already taken measures to encourage water reuse. For a few years now, they've require all new buildings over a certain size in the country (more than 100,000 square feet) to have a system that makes it possible to recycle water on site.
This article was written by Carlos Prego and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Image | Epic Cleantec
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