The Next Round

Much has been made of the creative, bold and entrepreneurial spirit that’s energized the beer industry, but the most seismic shifts in beer may come down to good, old-fashioned science. These technological innovations will undoubtedly shape what—and how—we drink in the future.

- Kate Bernot and Zach Fowle

WASTE NOT 

Striving to use fewer resources is one way that breweries can lower their environmental impact. But breweries are also pioneering creative methods for repurposing waste from their process, transforming what would have been trash into new, usable materials. At Boulder, Colorado’s Up slope Brewing Co., this requires the help of some aquatic, neon-green algae. The algae float in the excess rinse water that’s used in the brewery’s canning line and are grown in jugs that reside between the brewery’s 120-barrel fermenters. A pilot program partnership with Boom Algae takes carbon dioxide and other waste byproducts of fermentation and feeds them to the algae. The algae is harvested and sold to Living Ink Technologies, which uses it to make a 100-percent biodegradable green ink."It sounded wacky at first," says Up slope's founder Matt Cutter. "But we're hoping this is successful and leads Boom Algae to the next step, where eventually it becomes something that can handle more or all of the CO2 from our brewery"