How Some Craft Breweries Are Greening Your Beer -- Without You Knowing It

There are many ways California’s punishing drought is affecting the entire country, even if we can’t see or feel it. This includes craft beer which uses roughly five to six pints of water to brew one pint of beer.  Some savvy and eco-conscious breweries like Stone Brewing Company, based in Escondido, California, just north of San Diego and nestled among gentle rolling hills and avocado and citrus groves, use about 33 percent less water.

At a press conference last week, California’s Governor Jerry Brown ordered a 25 percent statewide reduction in non-agricultural water use to stem the effects. “People should realize we are in a new era,” Brown says. “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”

When Steve Wagner, President and original Brewmaster, and Greg Koch, CEO and co-founder of Stone Brewing Company started the brewery in 1996, they were limited in what they could do as far as green practices could go. The company’s major concern was financial survival. Survive they have, in this competitive market, and as they’ve grown, they’ve slowly upped their sustainability efforts. Some are more visible to their customers, like the natural, sustainable, organic food it serves in their restaurants while others are done back of the house, in how it operates its business.

That’s not to say the drought hasn’t affected their business. “As a result of the current drought, we are using more energy to treat water because the incoming water quality has changed,” notes Koch. “All San Diego County water is currently supplied by Colorado River water (CRW). CRW is much higher in salt and minerals. For this reason, we have to treat more of the incoming supply using reverse osmosis (RO) to obtain the quality needed for our brewing process. RO is energy-intensive and, thus, results in more energy usage, which ultimately creates higher brewing costs.”

Even before the drought, Stone Brewing Company has been operating with lower levels of waste water than the national industry average. While most breweries use between five to six pints of water to brew one pint, Stone uses about four. For a brewery that brewed and packaged 285,000 barrels of beer last year (1 barrel = 31 gallons), the amount of water saved is significant. This is made possible to their water reclamation system, something they’ve had in place since 2009. “Reclaimed water is used for cleaning our brewery and the captured waste water solids are blended with green waste and composted by the city of Escondido,” explains Koch.

They’re not even close to being where they want to be when it comes to their green practices. As their brewery continues to grow, Koch and his team continue to look for ways to decrease their carbon footprint. “For example, we could better educate Team Stone members and our fans on the importance of actively participating in ways to improve the world and its citizens’ quality of life,” he offers as an example. “At this moment, we are in the process of setting up a production brewery in Richmond, Virginia. A motivating factor for us to have a facility east of the Mississippi was to reduce our carbon footprint related to transportation needs. This way, we will no longer have to ship beer across the country to our fans, and the fact that it will ultimately arrive fresher and less expensively is an added bonus.”

Moving forward, they plan on formalizing a water program across all three sites: Escondido, Richmond, and Berlin, Germany. “Our location in Richmond will be built to lean standard, where it’s heavily focused on the reuse of natural materials and we also plan to have solar roof panels,” he adds.

Is this all to say that customers gravitate to breweries with eco-friendly brewing and operation practices? “Mostly no, but that was never the point,” says Koch. “We aren’t doing this to be gimmicky or in hopes of getting more business out of our environmentally-conscious efforts. We do it because it’s part of what Stone is about, a company demonstrating a commitment to sustainability.”

Koch may be right.

Do Customers Care About a Brewery’s Green Practices?

“I think brewery practices do come into play in the fact that we pretty much only drink craft and mostly drink local,” says Shannan Hofman Bunting of Barley’s Angels Chicago Chapter. Barley's Angels works to expand the appreciation and understanding of craft beer among women through events with craft beer professionals.

“With craft, you know that the beer you are drinking is made in smaller batches and it did not travel hundreds of miles. Also, many of the smaller breweries work with local farmers to give them their spent grain or in the case of Tribes Beer Company (Mokena, Illinois), they will be using some portion of the grain to create housemade crackers & breads. That kind of forethought matters.”

Kylie Snowaert Bunting, also with Barley’s Angels Chicago Chapter, makes it a point to highlight a brewery’s sustainable practices during their events, but as they’re discussing taste profiles of the beer and explaining the differences in beer types and styles rather than just the practices in general.

While taste is driving factor, knowing about sustainable practices would push Snowaert Bunting more towards one beer over another. “On the other hand, very few breweries go to the trouble and expense of being certified organic—because they realize that they will not achieve very high ROI with that label. That said, I certainly gravitate towards the craft beers that I know have good practices and may have a sustainable certification—but for beer it is more about taste and selecting a beer that tastes good.”

Hofman Bunting appreciates how some breweries use their spent materials just as much as how they use alternate energy sources. “I know that Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland really prides itself in its sustainability," she says. "They use the cool air in the winter to chill the brewery, use skylights for natural light and have a comprehensive recycling and composting program. Another brewery, Oskar Blues in Colorado, was reportedly the first craft beer in cans—as aluminum is lighter & easier to transport (their founder is an avid outdoorsman) and easy to compact when empty, so you leave nothing behind. Both Oskar Blues & Great Lakes have farms where grain and compost are put to use. Oskar Blues has cattle and Great Lakes has fruits vegetables and herbs.”

Brewery Climate Declaration Campaign

To help breweries use their collective bargaining power to urge the public, policymakers and business leaders to seize the economic opportunity in tackling climate change and to share what they’re doing, almost four dozen have signed the Brewery Climate Declaration Campaign. Large and small breweries, from Allagash Brewing Company in Portland, Maine (which uses 100 percent renewable energy to generate electricity, as do Brewery Vivant, Deschutes Brewery, Odell Brewing, Redhook and Widmer Brothers), to Brewery Vivant in Grand Rapids (which was also the first LEED-certified brewery in the United States) and Guinness, where their St. James Gate Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, was the first large-scale brewery in the world to attain LEED-platinum certification.

Stone Brewing Company is part of several eco-friendly initiatives and constantly reviewing others, including the Brewery Climate Declaration Campaign. “For example, both menus for Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens restaurant embrace the international Slow Food movement, which celebrates artisanal, natural and old-world approaches to food,” notes Koch. “We’ve also achieved SITE certification for the outdoor landscape at Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens - Escondido.” The Sustainable Sites Initiatives (SITES) is like a LEED certification for outdoor spaces.

Regardless of all of the eco-friendly efforts the breweries incorporate, if the beer doesn’t taste good, people won’t buy it, during Earth Month, on Earth Day, or any day of the year. Luckily for Stone Brewing Company, that’s not a problem. Based on sales and production figures, Stone IPA, the quintessential West Coast-style IPA, is its number one selling beer. And the company is growing. The challenge is to continue to grow while keeping Mother Nature in mind.