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New Belgium Brewing is well known for their dedication to the environment. Since brewing their first batches in their founder's basement in 1991, they have been employing innovative techniques and technologies to limit their environmental impact. That sustainability drive has been a big part of the brewer’s culture and ethos, and tech has been a big part of making that a reality.
The people at New Belgium pride themselves on being employee owned. They also pride themselves on employing a team that values tech as a vehicle to improve productivity and limit environmental impact.
“We have a strong culture around innovation and sustainability,” Katie Wallace, the Assistant Director of Sustainability at New Belgium said. “Any time we talk about technology we like to say that having the culture that supports that is equally as important as having the technology. Many new technologies have failed because they don’t have the culture around it to support it.”
Tech is only as good as the people who own and use it, after all.
Wallace was nice enough to talk us through some of the tech that helps make New Belgium one of the greenest brewers in the world.
Brew Kettle Heat Exchangers: The company employs a technology that transfers heat from one batch of beer to another, cutting down significantly on energy use. The practice dates back to the days when New Belgium beer was being brewed in the founder’s basement, and the heat exchangers consisted of copper pipes and a large trash can. You can actually see the original heat exchangers if you go on the brewery tour.
Brewing Kettle: Most kettles heat from the outside in, like a pot you’d boil water in. That means it takes awhile to get the water in the middle hot. New Belgium uses a Steinecker Merlin kettle which has a cone-shaped boiler plate inside of it. The Steinecker flushes water around the plate while it heats, resulting in boiling water in half the time it would take in a traditional kettle.
Reusing Water: Not wanting to waste water, the company installed a mechanism that captures water after it is used to rinse the inside of a bottle and reuses that same water to clean the exterior of the bottle. Don’t worry, it’s super clean — they checked.
Process Water Treatment Plant: Used water is then sent to the company’s onsite water treatment plant where microbes are used to digest anything nasty in the water. Those microbes give off methane as a byproduct, which is captured and stored in two giant methane balloons.
Methane Power: The company then takes the methane from the balloons, and uses it to power two giant engines that produce around 12 percent of the electricity used in facility.
Onsite Solar: Another 300 kilowatts of electricity, about 3 to 4 percent of the facility’s total, is captured from solar power panels on the brewery.
Power from Wyoming’s Wind: Possibly their most impressive achievement in this list of environmental awareness tactics, the company’s employee owners voted unanimously to forego profit-sharing for a year to give the company the capital it needed to purchase wind power from a wind farm in Wyoming. That meant that every employee at New Belgium voted to give up money from their own pockets to ensure the company’s electricity consumption came from renewable sources.
So, I guess, drink up Colorado, it’s good for the environment.
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