Global Courant
When it comes to choosing a beer, I’m not exactly a snob.
Do you have a 25 ounce can of Bud Light? Hand it over. A chilled glass of Stella? Yes please. Is that a room temperature Genesee Cream? Don’t mind if I do.
So when I read my colleague Ashton’s report on the Bill Gates-backed startup brewing beer using wastewater from showers, sinks and washing machines in a luxury apartment building, I was intrigued.
Epic OneWater brew boasts that its beer is brewed with “highly purified recycled water.”
San Francisco wastewater Fifteen fifty block of flats is collected and through a series of “ultrafiltration membranesThen it is treated with chlorine and ultraviolet light. The end result, they say, is clean, potable water.
I would never suspect it was made with waste water from a building where a studio will run you $3,250 a month.
It is a filtration process that has earned Epic Cleantec the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s funding”Reinvent the toilet challenge“, with an end result intended to highlight “the untapped potential of water reuse,” said CEO Aaron Tartakovsky.
That all sounds well and good. But the real question is: what does beer made from recycled shower water taste like?
As nice as it would be to say that there’s an unmistakable tinge of sweat and body odor to the Kölsch-style beer, I have to admit that the brew just tastes like normal beer.
If you handed me a glass of this I would never think it was made with the sewage of a building where a studio will run you $3,250 per month.
It’s clean and drinkable. If you’re a fan of Kölsch-style brews, you’ll probably like this beer.
Not that you can try it yourself. The company is not allowed to sell the beer because of annoying regulations regarding the sale of recycled wastewater.
But if and when the day comes when beer made from filtered wastewater hits store shelves, I’ll gladly pick up a six-pack.
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