Fresh beer - "urine beer", surprisingly, has become a new windfall

Most people who love micro brews like to experiment with different flavors of beer. Exotic hop aromas, varying shades of bitterness, and varying degrees of sweetness all bring a pleasant freshness to the mouth.

But, "sewage beer", do you want to try it?

In April 2022, two major supermarket chains in Singapore shelved a freshly packaged beer - New Brew. This beer is ordinary in appearance, but a bit "heavy" inside.

Up to 95% of the beer's ingredients are Singapore's unique "Ne Water" (Ne Water).

Ne Water is water that is cleaned and ready for human consumption in Singapore by recirculating sewage through ultraviolet disinfection and double membrane filtration.

Similar filtration technology is also used to recycle and reuse urine in space. If you force the newborn water to understand the "toilet water", I can not say you are completely wrong.

Singapore's freshwater resources are very scarce. Since 2003, fresh water has been one of the main sources of water supply in the region, meeting the needs of air conditioning cooling and industrial use on weekdays.

On days when water stocks are low, fresh water is added to the government reservoir and delivered to the water treatment plant. Bottled fresh water is also available locally and distributed to the people for free. For those who have traveled to Singapore, you may have tasted New Life Water.

The New Life Beer is jointly launched by Singapore's National Water Board and Brewer, a craft brewery, and is said to be "the greenest beer in Singapore". In addition to the high purity of New Life Water, the ingredients of New Life Beer include top-quality German malt, American hops, and Norwegian farm yeast.

Beer lovers who participated in the blind test said that the beer was refreshing with a floral aroma, just not enough foam. The Inhuman News Agency reporter who tried the beer after learning about the ingredients of New Life Beer said that he did not notice any unusual taste.

The price of a single can of New Life Beer is about RM 21, which is not a good price/performance ratio, but it is a big seller in restaurants along the riverbank in Singapore. The restaurant has already sold out of New Life and the supermarket is expected to be empty by the end of July.

Singapore is not the first country to brew beer from sewage. Countries such as Sweden and Canada have also launched beers brewed with the sewage water.

Don't think that only foreign breweries are environmentally friendly, domestic breweries are also very spirited when it comes to water conservation. After all, China has long been the world's largest producer of beer, according to the International Food and Agriculture Organization.

In most breweries, the production of 500ml bottles of glass bottle beer consumes more than 1.5 liters of water, mainly for beer production water, water for cleaning glass bottles, and water for living in the factory.

Chongqing Brewery's Angling Brewery has identified 93 potential water-saving points from beer brewing to packaging and optimized them one by one.

After two years of effort, the brewery has reduced the average water consumption to less than 1 liter for a 500ml bottle of beer, which is only 2/3 of the industry standard.

Tarkington Brewery, on the other hand, has taken the unique step of using beer wastewater to help clean the water at the sewage plant. On the road leading to the Qingdao sewage treatment plant, the strong aroma of beer wafts in from time to time. Immediately afterward, a whole truckload of beer is injected into the storage tank of the sewage plant.

According to environmental regulations, beer wastewater is organic wastewater and must be retreated to meet the standards before being discharged into the wastewater treatment plant. For breweries, this per-treatment is a big expense every year.

Meanwhile, city wastewater treatment plants are often worried by a lack of carbon sources. A carbon source is a nutrient that contains carbon and can be used by microorganisms to grow and reproduce.

In the wastewater treatment process, microorganisms will "eat" pollutants, to achieve the effect of nitrogen removal and phosphorus removal. If there is little carbon in the wastewater, the microorganisms will not be able to eat "enough" to work, thus affecting the water purification process. Wastewater treatment plants have to buy additional organic materials such as sodium acetate to supplement the carbon source.

The organic wastewater that the brewery has to get rid of is exactly what the treatment plant needs, which is like a scenario where people sell unused items. Thus, the breweries provide the wastewater treatment plants with more than 600,000 tons of beer wastewater a year, which "feeds" the pollution treatment microorganisms and guarantees water purification.

The thick liquid is mixed with sludge and put into storage tanks to produce bio gas, which is used to generate electricity. In just one year, more than 400,000 degrees of electricity are generated. This can be said to turn waste into treasure, killing three birds with one stone.

According to the statistics of Qingdao Ecological Environment Bureau, if all 60 factories of Tarkington Brewery follow the new emission method, it is predicted to reduce carbon emissions by about 20,000 tons per year.

A glass of cold beer, to the summer and to the people who are trying to save water.