The bottle isn’t the only thing that’s green at Steam Whistle.
The Toronto-based brewery gets its electricity from Bullfrog Power, which uses wind and low-impact hydroelectric sources. Its cooling is by Enwave, which uses cold water from deep in Lake Ontario, and new brewing equipment that captures steam cuts their wastewater by a third. Its trucks run on biofuels and, thanks to improved route planning, they cut the amount of fuel they used last year by more than 7,000 litres – while increasing sales.
They’re not satisfied yet.
“None of these are perfect,” says Sybil Taylor, the company’s communications director and a member of its environment committee. “We’re trying to always be self-aware and improve.”
Tonight, as Canadians raise a glass to Irish pride, the greenest beer may not be the one that’s been dosed with food colouring. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and water to make beer, and the process emits a lot of carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas. With that in mind, here are some of the ways Canadian brewmasters are going greener.
Water usage
Typically, for every bottle of beer that’s filled, 4 to 10 times that volume of water is used for cleaning or lost as steam while boiling the wort. At Steam Whistle, the ratio is 5.5:1, which includes toilets and washing facilities in their event space. In the brewery alone, it’s 1.17:1, according to Ms. Taylor. The brewery collects the steam it creates, condenses it and re-uses the water, rather than allow it to flow down the drain.
Many brewers are looking for ways to cut water use. Brasserie McAuslan in Montreal, Que., makes about 100,000 hectolitres (one hL equals 100 litres) of beer a year, and has experimented with using rinse water for floor washing. But brewers need to be careful because some rinse water will contain bacteria, brewery president Peter McAuslan cautions.
Since 2006, Molson Coors, one of Canada’s biggest brewers, has cut water consumption in its five Canadian breweries by 20 per cent. “Water is a key strategic mandate over the next three years. We want to be a leader,” says Daniel Pelland, vice-president of global operations strategy at Molson Coors. “We will be the best-performing leader in our industry by 2012.”
But for some small breweries, the conservation process is just beginning.
“For us, the biggest change was just getting a water meter,” says Warren Smith, brewmaster at the Fernie Brewing Company in B.C. With metering comes the ability to assess how much water is saved by each measure. The Fernie brewery was also built with a steeper slope in the floor, allowing them to use less water for cleaning.
Facilities
Steam Whistle’s chief competition for the title of greenest brewery may be Les Brasseurs du Nord. The Blainville, Que., brewery produces 70,000 hL of Boréale a year. The company has a solar wall, and uses geothermal energy and a system to recover heat from cooling vats. It also uses a host of energy- and water-saving programs and even changed construction plans to preserve a 100-year-old hemlock tree.
In addition to reducing its water use, Molson Coors has cut consumption of natural gas and electricity by 10 per cent. As with other large-scale brewers, Molson Coors captures the carbon dioxide created during fermentation and uses it to carbonate the beer.
At Mill Street Brewery in Toronto, a new heat-recovery system uses steam from boiling to heat water for brewing. City water comes in at 5C, and this system can heat 150 hL a day to 90C.
Ingredients
Traditionally, beer is made from just barley malt, hops, water and yeast. But larger breweries today may use hundreds of ingredients, from dextrose to preservatives – which increase the beer’s environmental footprint.
