What is the drought resilience and water use in the UK brewing industry?
While the media gives significant attention to the water management of large brewers (see for example), we explored the drought experiences and water management practices of smaller brewing businesses. We initially we spoke to James Calder, Chief Executive of The Society of Independent Brewers Association (SIBA), who set the scene.
“I’m interested in this area greatly – as we have ambitions to develop an entire cross cutting package of measures that help our members become more sustainable. If it weren’t for Covid- I would have spent the last 3 months doing this!”
“By way of background – beer production is a water intensive business. Through washing (of equipment and bottles/cans/casks/kegs/pipes), through production (water is lost in the boiling process) and in general brewery use. For every pint of beer that is produced, it takes anywhere between 3 to up to 8 or 9 pints of water to create a pint of beer depending on how efficient they are. A big push within the industry is to get this beer/water ratio down as much as possible.”
“The best way to increase drought resilience for brewers is to get that water: beer ratio down.”
This helps brewers save money and at the same time increases their drought resilience.
Over the course of our research, we spoke to breweries in the north, east and west including Wye Valley Brewery, Adnams and Stroud Brewery. They all have significant programmes of investment in water and sustainability, including reed beds for waste, and water recapture, and getting the beer/water ratio down. Fyne Ales provided an interesting Scottish example of a brewery on private water supply.
We would like to thank the breweries for working with us in producing their digital stories. We hope these stories and the case-studies, in return, promote their positive water practices nationally.
Themes that emerged from our interviews with brewing businesses (with links to digital stories)
Reflections from Harley Stoddart (AHDB)
Micronarrative: ‘Breweries are a good example of where knowledge-sharing is not always the case…’
Additional resources
Paul Brewer, from Purity Brewing, shared a podcast on ecobrewing and their estate’s plan for dealing with its wastewater through a Sustainable Drainage scheme.
Case studies:
Here we present brief accounts of the stories we gathered from some of the brewing businesses we spoke to – about water management and drought resilience in their businesses.
