Revolutionary Brewery Transforms Shower Water into Beer
Epic OneWater Brew redefines sustainability in brewing This unique beer utilizes recycled water from showers, sinks, and washing machines, delivering a refreshing taste while reducing water wastage A perfect fusion of eco-consciousness and exceptional flavor
Epic OneWater Brew is a unique beer that is made with recycled water from the showers, sinks, and washing machines of a residential building. Despite its unconventional ingredient, the beer is completely safe to drink due to a thorough treatment process including microfiltration and ultraviolet light. This innovative brew aims to raise awareness about water scarcity and the importance of water reuse.
According to Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based water treatment company Epic Cleantec, buildings worldwide consume 14% of all drinkable water. He states that almost no buildings recycle water, which is what his company is aiming to change.
The beer produced is a Kölsch-style ale, a refreshing and light-bodied beverage with roots in Germany. It was crafted using recycled graywater from Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco. However, it is not available for purchase due to regulations that currently prohibit the use of recycled wastewater in commercial drinks. This restriction may change in the future.
A solar moment
Epic Cleantec provides buildings with a water recycling system that eliminates the need to release wastewater into a sewer and transport it to a distant treatment facility. The system can recycle up to 95% of wastewater, including blackwater from toilets and graywater from sinks, washing machines, bathtubs, and showers, according to the company.
Epic OneWater Brew utilizes recycled wastewater from Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco. The innovative brew is the result of the efforts of Epic Cleantec, a company specializing in water recycling systems for buildings.
Epic Cleantec
's water recycling system is designed to treat water from showers, toilets, and washing machines to make it safe for non-potable uses such as toilet flushing, irrigation, and laundry. The company's garden, located across the street from Fifteen Fifty, utilizes recycled waste from the system to cultivate plants and herbs.
There are some places that have been recycling water for many years. One example is Murcia, a region in the dry southwest of Spain, which has developed a comprehensive network of treatment facilities to purify sewage water, allowing it to be utilized for irrigation in agriculture. In a recent announcement, Spain disclosed plans to invest â¬1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in infrastructure to expand the use of treated wastewater in urban areas and to construct desalination plants.
Jose Jordan/AFP/Getty Images
Singapore meets 40% of its water needs by recycling wastewater, with the majority being used for industrial purposes and some integrated into the drinking water supply. The image depicts the tanks used for processing used water at the Changi Water Reclamation Plant complex in Singapore.
During the 1960s, NASA developed a water purification device that utilized silver ions to eliminate bacteria, enabling astronauts to safely drink recycled water. This revolutionary technology has been widely adopted for purifying drinking water and maintaining clean swimming pools worldwide. The PentaPure brand system, originally used on Space Shuttle missions, is now employed in residential settings and during disaster relief operations.
Courtesy of The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) photographic archives
announced in June that it successfully recovered 98% of the water brought by astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS's Environmental Control and Life Support System contains a Urine Processor Assembly, which utilizes vacuum distillation to extract water from urine. The image shows NASA astronaut Kayla Barron replacing a filter in the space station's Brine Processor Assembly.
The issue of water scarcity is growing, making the search for alternative water sources a top priority in many regions. In Ovalle, Chile, these innovative "fog catchers" are erected on a mountain, utilizing nets to capture moisture from the air. Working in conjunction with other fog catchers nearby, they are able to collect over 500,000 liters (132,000 US gallons) of water each year.
Alberto Pena/AFP/Getty Images
While Epic Cleantec made its beer from recycled wastewater, Chile's Atrapaniebla brewery makes this beer using water collected by the fog catchers.
Alberto Pena/AFP/Getty Images
How wastewater is getting a new lease of life
Prev
The system at Fifteen Fifty utilizes biological treatment to eliminate organic matter, followed by microfiltration through membranes that are only 0.04 microns thick (approximately 0.05% of the width of a human hair). Afterward, the water undergoes disinfection using ultraviolet light and chlorine to ensure its safety for reuse in non-potable purposes such as toilet and urinal flushing, irrigation, and laundry. This innovative system has the capacity to recycle 7,500 gallons of water each day, or up to 2.75 million gallons annually.
Tartakovsky explained, "We've taken existing wastewater principles and tailored them for individual buildings. Similar to what solar did for energy, we're diversifying away from dependence on large, centralized infrastructure."
Epic Cleantec highlights additional advantages of the system: recovered heat from wastewater can pre-heat domestic hot water, reducing heating expenses, and the organic matter in the wastewater can be repurposed to create natural soil products for landscaping, gardens, or parks.
On average, an installation takes up the space of a few parking spots, and its cost can range from a few hundred thousand dollars to the millions, depending on the size of the building. However, Tartakovsky asserts that it pays for itself within just a few years by reducing utility bills.
A view of Fifteen Fifty, in San Francisco, from a nearby garden where plants are grown using recycled waste from Epic Cleantec's water treatment system.
Epic Cleantec
In San Francisco, new buildings over 100,000 square feet have been mandated to have on-site water recycling systems since 2015. Epic Cleantec has installed five out of the few dozen currently in place.
"It's just common sense. Why are we still using clean drinking water from our national parks to flush the toilets of tech employees in downtown San Francisco?" Tartakovsky questions. "Scientifically, this recycled water often meets or surpasses drinking water standards."
Cutting water usage
In late 2022, Epic Cleantec initiated a beer project for the participants of a sustainable building technologies conference. "We ended up producing just over 7,000 cans, not as a commercial product, but as an educational effort," Tartakovsky says, using 2,000 gallons of recycled water. "It was meant to tell the water reuse story in a new way. But frankly, we did not anticipate the tremendous response that we saw."
While the Epic Cleantecs system is not designed for the production of drinking water, it is important to note that current regulations in many US states, such as California and Texas, do allow for the reuse of wastewater for potable purposes. Furthermore, additional states like Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, and Washington are currently in the midst of revising their water reuse regulations.
A volunteer in Truetown, Ohio, collects Iron from acid mine drainage leaking into Sunday Creek from a closed coal mine dewatering site, October 22, 2021. (REUTERS/Dane Rhys)
Ohio rivers have been contaminated by toxic mine pollution, causing them to turn orange. However, efforts are being made to transform this pollution into paint.
According to David Sedlak, director of the Berkeley Water Center at the University of California, Berkeley, recycled water is already being utilized for drinking purposes in regions such as Southern California, Singapore, and Australia. He highlights that building-scale water recycling systems present cities with the opportunity to decrease their dependence on water from sources like rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, which are susceptible to the effects of climate change. Additionally, these systems also offer the potential to conserve energy and decrease the release of pollutants into the environment.
Sedlak, not affiliated with Epic Cleantec, states that the company's water recycling system has proven to be an effective method for recycling water within buildings. He affirms, "It is clean enough to use for producing a tasty beer and certainly suitable for toilet flushing and landscape irrigation."
In 2017, two California-based brewers created limited-edition beers from recycled water to be served at local events. Daniel McCurry, an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California, sampled one of the beers. "I drank it without hesitation, but it was brewed using water from a municipal potable reuse project in San Diego," he explains.
He clarifies that municipal potable reuse systems typically involve two additional processes compared to Epic Cleantecs - reverse-osmosis and UV/advanced oxidation methods - which McCurry claims can eliminate chemical contaminants like industrial solvents and pharmaceuticals "to a much higher degree than by ultrafiltration, UV, and chlorine alone."
Diana Kellogg Architects
How this school in the Indian desert stays cool even in extreme heat
Selling beer or other drinks made with this water would require another regulatory step, but it's not out of the question, according to Tartakovsky. "When I entered the water industry, there were often-repeated beliefs that the general public was not ready for recycled water," he says.
"In the industry, we refer to it as the 'yuck factor.' There is a psychological perception that recycled water is not as clean as other sources of water. But what I often remind people of is that all water on this planet is recycled. The water we drink today is the same water that was consumed by the dinosaurs millions of years ago."
Epic Cleantec is now in talks with some of the world's largest brewers, despite it not being their primary focus. According to him, there is a growing demand for their product, not only for its environmental benefits but also for its great taste. He predicts that recycled water will soon be used in various industries, and believes that the potential for innovation is limitless.
