Fermenting Change

Locations:

Laramie Wy, Colorado Springs Co.

Goal:

My project focuses on the effectiveness of using non-traditional ingredients when brewing beer in order to test ways to reduce the environmental impacts of the brewery industry. My goal was to brew a beer that followed traditional beer brewing methods, was more environmentally friendly than beer brewed using only traditional ingredients, and still tasted good.

Introduction:

My journey with brewing beer started with a few friends pooling our resources to buy some beginner brewing equipment for fun and for the free beer it promised. What we found was a pretty complicated process with lots of room for innovation. We messed up a couple batches while learning but got the hang of it fast and after a while we were getting weird and mostly unpleasant flavors not due to operator error, but instead because of our modifications to existing recipes. These modifications also got some great results, most memorably for me in a surprisingly delicious oatmeal stout. While I was abroad in France I got the opportunity to intern at a brewery for a few months and it helped both reenforce fundamentals and expand my knowledge of the science behind fermenting beer and extracting sugars from grain.

This project was inspired by my previous experiences as well as my classes at CC focused on business with an environmental bottom line. In France I saw the volume of grain and water being used to brew beer at even a medium scale. Although there are ways to get full use from your ingredients such as giving spent grain to local farmers to feed their livestock. There are still however many areas that could use optimization in order to reduce both waste and environmental impact. In this project I am only experimenting with the base ingredients in order to reduce the impact of my supplies. In the future there I hope to investigate other areas such as re-use of water however that is a far more complex problem.

Methodology:

Planning:

The Planning phase of my experiment was honestly the hardest part of all. I had to figure out which ingredients in traditional beer were responsible for the most environmental strain. I decided that substituting barley and wheat were going to be the easiest to do at my scale. I decided on three batches in order to have a control and two test batches. A control wasn't strictly necessary here as the goal was exploring new recipes, however I wanted to do a test run first to make sure I had the technique more or less right before I brewed the other Batches. I also wanted to have something to compare to in case there were other confounding factors.

I decided on a homebrew kit recipe from craftabrew.com (Fat Friar Amber Ale) for the control.

For my second beer I substituted a portion of the wheat in a traditional German wheat beer recipe with Kernza - a perennial grain high in proteins and antioxidants that also has been proven to reduce soil erosion and improve soil health.

My Final recipe was the most highly experimental and also the most logistically challenging. I wanted to use sugar kelp and flaked rice alongside some traditional grains to make a seaweed rice stout.

Gathering:

This was surprisingly easy given all the specialized equipment I needed. My first stop was Old West Homebrew in downtown Colorado Springs where I got most of my equipment and ingredients. I had to order some things like a specialized thermometer to determine the temperature during fermentation and ingredients such as the sugar kelp which I had to have shipped from Maine and the Kernza which came from Minnesota. I brought all of my supplies home with me to Laramie Wyoming where I began the brewing process.

Brewing:

Brewing the first batch (control) went very well, unfortunately when I measured the gravity of the wort before fermentation I wrote down the wrong number so my calculation of the alcohol/volume was an estimation.

The second batch (seaweed stout) was an obvious failure by the end of brewing however I have several thoughts on how to change the process for when I attempt it again. Because the seaweed was dried it absorbed a large amount of the water I was using to boil the mixture. This led to the bags holding the grains in the pot touching the internal thermometer and getting torn which caused some trouble but wasn't unmanageable. The nail in the coffin however was the salt. We brushed the salt off as we cut the seaweed into manageable pieces and I did want at least some salt in the beer for flavor, however the amount of salt that made it into the wort was too high and I think it killed the yeast instantly as there was never any fermentation.

The third batch (kernza) took longer than expected because the kernza grain kernels are too small to be cracked open by a traditional grinder used for wheat and barley. To get around this I attached an electric drill to a pepper grinder and was able to grind all four pounds of kernza without having to invest in a specialized grinder.

The rest of the process went smoothly and I even had the idea to add some cardamom and orange zest for flavor. Like with the first batch I wrote down the wrong number for the gravity so my abv calculations are an estimate.

Kegging/Bottling:

I only had access to one keg because they are expensive so I had to use two methods for carbonation. The first method I used for the control was the keg method. Because the amber ale didn't require as much fermentation time I put it in the keg and used carbon dioxide to pressurize and carbonate it.

The second Method I used was natural carbonation. I filled individual bottles with the kernza wheat beer and added sugar for the leftover yeast before capping the bottles. I chose to add sugar individually to each bottle which I think looking back may have been a mistake.

Results:

The amber ale (control) turned out great which wasn't super surprising given I used an existing recipe.

I am very disappointed in the seaweed stout. It was a total failure and I feel like I probably could have anticipated the salt issue however I am excited to return to the problem again in the future.

The kernza wheat beer turned out well. I think I used a little too much sugar when bottling because the carbonation is enough to foam over when they are opened. They taste good though (according to my parents but I did tell them to be brutally honest for the purpose of science). I have yet to try it but I will be going back home over block break and will sample it.

Overall I am satisfied with my experiment because I am counting success on two out of three batches and my errors have given me places to improve in the future.

Impact:

The use of alternative materials for brewing is already being investigated by private companies such as Sam Addams as well as institutions such as the University of Minnesota. As it becomes more and more important to optimize for sustainability in all sectors, it is an interesting challenge to examine each piece of the process. Here I was focused on ingredients however there were several drawbacks. The transportation cost is first and foremost a concern. Transporting goods across the United States is arguably more environmentally impactful than using locally sourced traditional grains in the first place.

Another concern is Water. The beer brewing process uses and incredible amount of water to sanitize everything, soak the grain, top off after boiling, cool, wash, and sanitize again before bottling. If there were ways to reuse some of the water being used in the process that would be a big step towards sustainable brewing.

Personal Impact:

For me, this project has re-ignited my desire to do something proactive with business. Social entrepreneurship is a super valuable tool for shaping and improving communities and the world. I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the beer industry and although I don't know if that is what I want to do in the long run, I think introducing these ideas to more people in the microbrewery industry and even the larger beer industry could be a large step towards lower environmental impact.

Next Steps

The next steps for me are to continue experimenting. I have the equipment now which was a huge roadblock to start with. Once I find something that works I hope to introduce the idea to some of my friends who work as brewers in Laramie and at Odell in Fort Collins. I am interested to see how some of these recipes turn out when I am done refining them.

I would also like to attempt to tackle the problem of water use while brewing but that seems like a more long term experiment. I expect I may invest in some larger scale equipment in the future if things continue to fall into place and when I do that I will try to implement water saving strategies to mitigate waste.