So I've truly been enjoying brewing my own beer. However, I have quite a bit in reserve now and am going to take a pause for a while. While I'm taking a brief hiatus, I'm going to take the opportunity to reflect on 'zero-waste' my project actually is.
Home Brewing Process
Industrial Brewing Process
To begin, going zero-waste on an individual or household scale is pretty near impossible no matter what the subject is. The technology required is just too expensive and unnecessary for small scale projects such as this one.
The largest 'waste' that home brewing accrues is one that I have not been able to find a solution to, other than a side effect of reduced heating in the winter. Brewing beer requires about 2 hours of boiling a large amount of water, requiring a large amount of energy. In the fall and winter this produces the wonderful by-product of heat and allows me to give the apartment heater a break. Is this zero- waste? I would have to compare electricity bills over the long run and account for a lot of seasonal temperature variation and behavior to find if this saves money or energy. I doubt that is does, but at least the by-product is useful and achieves duel purposes!
I don't know what the proper definition of zero- waste should be in regard to this project. Everything in the process can be re-used or recycled, such as spent grains and water as I've discussed in previous blogs, but is re-using water and heat still waste? Depends on the definition. For this project, I think I've done the best that I can do and accomplished what I aimed to achieve. Whether or not this constitutes zero-waste is up to you. Let me know what you think or ways I could improve my zero-waste goal!
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