Brewery Sustainment Report Summary

Brewery Sustainment Report Summary

Given that DashBrew loves community and loves beer and cares about the environment, we spent a little bit of time estimating the total waste water and grain usage.  These are estimates based on calculations shown below.  Initial statistics are from these two links as notated.

What are you doing to reuse resources?  We know breweries are doing a lot and we’d love to hear more.

 

Waste Water Estimates for Brewery

Summary:

Taking a middle of the road number (3BBL of waste per 1 BBL produced)  and based on the 2014 BBL’s produced the waste water estimate for just craft beer is

21,775,905 BBLs * 3BBL WW * 31gallons = 2,025,159,165 gallons of waste water per year.

~2B Gallons of waste water per year for craft brewers.

Basic Guidelines[1]

  • Very dialed in, well managed brewery: 2 bbls ww/bbl of beer brewed
  • Moderately well managed brewery: 3 bbls ww/bbl
  • Brewers with no water constraints but have been in production for several years: 4 bbls ww/bbl
  • Startup breweries doing their first few batches: 5 bbls ww/bbl of beer brewed or more

 

 

Wasted Spent Grain from Breweries

Summary

Based on 2014 Brewer’s Association reported production numbers[2] and middle of the road grain bill for craft brewers (grain bills range from 40lbs – 120lbs per BBL).

21,775,905 BBLs * 60lbs grain = 1,306,554,300 LBs of used grain per year.

~1.3B LBs of used grain.

It’s unclear how much of this is actually wasted.

Re-use possibilities:

  • Cattle feed
  • Dry and mill into flour
  • Fuel
  • Composting and Farming

 

[1] http://brewerywastewater.com/brewery-wastewater-101/brewery-wastewater-101-wastewater-per-barrel/

[2] https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics/national-beer-sales-production-data/