How we're saving water at YH
Our mash filter has reduced water usage by 40%. Image: Yeah Rad
DID YOU KNOW, our earth's water is close to 5 billion years old?!
Yet even at such a ripe old age, water continues to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to making beer, with traditional brewing methods using an average of FOUR LITRES of water to produce a single litre of beer!
To lighten some of the load on our old mate H2O and the environment, we’re working hard at our Newtown brewery to reduce, reuse and recycle the water we use to make your favourite YH frothies. See below.
REDUCING WASTE
Like that much-needed shower after a long night down the local, we’ve gotta give our equipment a thorough clean after each brew. In doing so, we make use of a few common chemicals. Unlike your shower, rather than letting these simply run down the drain, we’ve designed a circular system that stores and reuses them time and time again. Furthermore, in partnership with the legends at Sydney Water, we’ve designed a trade waste system that sees us neutralising our wastewater to lower the BOD (biological oxygen demand). This means, we’re not sending any of these chems into Sydney’s wastewater system, making it easier for our community to reuse.
MASH FILTERING
We’re stoked to be one of only FOUR breweries in Australia making use of a mash filter system (pictured at top) that sees us compressing our grain rather than rinsing it. Not only does this allow us to extract as much of the good stuff from our grain as possible, but it’s helped us reduce water usage by 40%.
RECAPTURING & RECYCLING
The brewing process sees a lot of temperature tweaking to ensure all the ingredients can do their job. A lot of this tweaking to the tanks is done via thermal energy – using you guessed it, water. We recapture any water used during this process to use in other areas of the brewery i.e. cleaning and sanitation.
As a result of these efforts we’re now using just 1.4 litres of water per litre of beer – less than half the average! While we’re stoked with this number, we’re continually gunning to improve our environmental impact across the biz. Hit this link to read more about some of our other sustainability initiatives and let’s raise a glass to the old clear stuff!