Sustainability Considerations – Composting Options for Craft Brewers

The best time to start thinking about a brewery compost program is before it becomes an issue. However, it is rarely at the top of any list for brewers who are contending with all other aspects of the business.

Having a plan in place and knowing local composting options can save time and headaches and ultimately work towards making the brewery and region more sustainable. Given that breweries, and other beverage industry companies, produce a lot of organic waste there are numerous ways to collaborate.

For Dirt Hugger, an Oregon-based composting company, the entry into the beer world came through Wyeast Labs. The two companies share a zip code and Wyeast reached out looking for a place to get rid of liquid waste, says Pierce Louis, a co-founder of Dirt Hugger.

“We had no idea about how much they had, we needed a tanker truck to get rid of it,” Louis recalled. “We went along with it and wound up getting involved with the brewing industry sideways.”

Along the way Dirt Hugger has learned a few things about working with breweries on composting programs.

“We’ve always told breweries that we’re not a long-term solution,” he says. “We’re a bridge for a vendor that has some material, like spent grain or brewing water on a small scale if the spent grain can’t get to a local farmer for feed.”

Especially for spent grain, he says that is usually the better option cost wise for breweries, versus composting. For liquid compost, Louis says breweries have nutrient rich waste water that can really help a composting program. Some breweries produce enough to fill a 6,000-gallon tanker weekly while others spend some time getting to the top of a 250 gallon tote. Knowing output and then scheduling regular pickups is important.

There are also options for breweries to start their own composting process on a brewery property, as space allows, or even investing in an industrial composting machine, like the Hot Rot in use at Sierra Nevada’s Chico, California campus.

Or, just let the professionals handle it.

Composters should also know if anything changes with the liquid waste.

“We use the liquid as an ingredient in our feed stock for our product, so while it’s one person’s waste, we hope it’s treated with respect. We had a brewery that tweaked cleaning agents that was super high in potassium and that just bonked us hard and took a while for us to figure out what happened. Communication is key with your composter or it could blow up a recipe.”

And there is a synergy too. Much like how farms will often sell meat that was raised on spent grain back to brewery restaurants, Louis’ brewery-fed compost has been used in orchards that grow peaches that in turn have been made into beers by Pfreim Family Brewers.

“That’s a closed loop all within 10 minutes of each spot,” he said.

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