Ice-cold beer takes a lot of energy to make. From boiling thousands of gallons of liquids to affixing labels to bottles all along the line Alaska Brewing Company has industrial-sized energy needs. To help fight volatile energy costs the brewery has installed a one-of-a-kind spent biomass boiler to dry grain, boil wort and someday heat the beer tasting area.
Alaskan Brewing Company Brewing Supervisor and Engineer Brandon Smith is the guiding force behind the brewery’s biomass boiler.
Alaska is a unique place to brew beer due to its remoteness from brewing supplies and from the places breweries traditionally dispose of mountains of malt and other spent grains left over after it is boiled, mashed and dried.
The brewery has installed a series of energy saving technologies over the last decade that have led to cost savings through energy saving and less waste in the brewing process.
The brewery has been burning its spent grain since the mid 1990s. Until the boiler arrived in 2011, Alaskan burned half of its spent grain and the leftover portion went to feed farm cows in the states.
“It makes great cattle feed,” Smith said. “Lots of protein.” In an effort to save both ingredients and energy the brewery installed a mash filter press. The press produced a drier, finer-grained fuel that allows for the spent grain boiler.
Now the award-winning beermaker burns 100 percent of its spent grain in a two-story boiler housed behind the main brewery building. The boiler looks like an upended steam locomotive or a barbecue fit for two or three elephants.
The boiler came from King Coal Furnace Corporation of North Dakota. Steam from the boiler is currently used to dry spent grain in preparation for the boiler, Smith said. This alleviates not only the need for diesel fuel for that process but also need to ship half the spent grain out of state. However, the brewery expects to extend its use of steam, he said.
“The steam we can use anywhere,” Smith said.
King Coal sent a technician to Juneau to help install it and work some of the bugs out of the system. It will be lessons brewery staff have learned over nearly two decades of burning spent grain that will have to keep the fires burning.
“[Spent grain] is a unique critter,” Smith said. “It doesn’t burn like wood, it doesn’t burn like coal, it doesn’t burn like anything else really. But we’ve learned to work with it pretty well.”
Installation and set-up took several months. After several short test runs, Smith said the boiler has run continuously since Oct. 2012, save for the occasional stop for maintenance.
The $1.8 million system is a world’s-first and is expected to reduce the brewery’s oil fuel use by 70 percent, Smith said. Over a decade the brewery could save 1.5 million gallons of oil fuel. As cattle feed, spent grain was worth very little, Smith said. He said, as a heating fuel it is worth 10 times its previous price.
“We expect the boiler to pay for itself in four years,” Smith said. “Fortunately the farmer has a lot of breweries to choose from.”
Alaskan Brewing Company has produced beer in Juneau since 1986. It brews nine beers on a regular basis along with a varying array of small-batch Pilot Series brews.
• Contact reporter Russell Stigall at 523-2276 or at russell.stigall@juneauempire.com.
Comments (34)
Add commentProof
Proof that Green for the environment means green for the wallet. Just need to keep the corporations and government out of the mix (to some degree) and things will work.
Yes, LibHater, clearly the
Yes, LibHater, clearly the brewery has been scammed. (I need a sarcasm font)
Like recycling
Such a scam. Net positive for environment, can provide reductions in waste costs for manufacturers (not to mention the public), chaing to lower energer systems, light bulbs, etc, while more costly at the onset will result in long run savings.
Be green, make green. The primary hinderence to some of the green movement are people like libhater who thinks it is all a bunch of crap. My electric bill is lower because of the higher efficency products I use, imagine if a company did that, oh wait, AK Brewing did!
If cyber BS text was flammable...
...we could heat all our homes with Empire comments. We could call it GREENY ENERGY!
Explain, LH
You have two statements:
1. Green is far from cheap
2. Green is a scam pushed by companies for profit
Can you expand those? Did someone claim that practices reducing environmental impact and waste were cheaper than simply tossing things into rivers, oceans, and landfills? Your subtext is that the bottom line (profit) is the primary measure of an business practice, and if it's not "cheap", it's wrong.
But then you state that such practices are actually a scam for the sake of profit. If true, then by your first statement, there's nothing wrong with them because they are increasing profit, which is the main criterion for all capitalism.
Your second statement also needs clarification - are you asserting that "green" practices don't actually exist? That everything is equally polluting and that companies claiming reduced impact are lying for the sake of selling more product? The subtext there is that companies should not lie about their products or practices, a sentiment with which I can wholeheartedly agree. But then profit becomes secondary to honesty, something that predatory capitalism will never allow.
Burning mash doesn't fit...
...into the green definition of recycling. Neither does feeding it to flatulent cattle. Too big of a carbon footprint. Of course the greenhouse gasses produced by composting is overlooked by environmentalists. Maybe sell that fermented grain as breakfast cereal. BEERIOS!
Possibly
You've got to feed cattle (assuming everyone is still eating meat or drinking milk) and heat water for the brewery - any time you can use a traditional waste product to do both instead of using fresh materials seems like a good way to reduce waste. It's true that both have environmental results. The task is to find and develop absolute minimal impact processes based on scientific research.
Two words...
Smoked Porter
Amen, Sobie2!
dust. It doesn't take scientific research to conclude that burning spent grain to supplement energy consumption makes good sense.
@skirkz
The brewery used to let anyone who wanted spent grain for composting to come get it.
For several years-I think intil 1933 or 1994-the brewery brought the spent grain to the community garden for composting. Unfortunetaly the production of beer far outstripped the available space for composting. I am not sure if they are still working off the pile that was created in the early 1990's, but the last time I was at the community garden in 2010 they were still using that same pile of composted spent grain.
Make no mistake...
... I applaud Alaskan Brewery for this innovation. And accolades to the maintenance mechanic that made it work. The brewery is at the top of the list of local business accomlishment as well as community participation. What is this mechanic's name?
Um... yeah, Skirkz..
That was rather my point. But was your earlier post simply saying it doesn't fit the bill as "recycling", not that it is not a good idea? I think I might have misunderstood...
@ADA30...
Do you know if you can still back up your truck and get spent grain for composting?
I could just call them I suppose...
And good job to the hubby for getting that thing running smooth. I know firsthand what a flippin' bear that thing is!
@ El_ Boorba
Yes I think they do still allow folks to come and pick up spent grain...you should call :)
libhater - not bright......
I don't get you.
What exactly do you find wrong with this - seems like a win/win to me.
The brewery needs grain to make it's product.
The brewery needs energy to make it's product.
We want to buy cold beer.
Cows need to eat in order for you to enjoy a hamburger with your beer.
If the brewery buys oil and does not use the by-product of spent grain, costs increase for producing the beer, and waste is high since spent grain is not used.
If the farmer does not use the spent grain to feed his cows, he's buying fresh grain and grass, which takes additional space and money and fertilizer/materials to grow, in addition to the resources already used to grow the beer grain.
If spent grain is used by the farmer - landfill space is saved, and space/resources for growing additional grain is saved.
If spent grain is used by the brewery - landfill space is saved, energy to transport the spent grain to the farmer is saved, oil expenditures for the brewery are saved.
What's the downside here?
If you could buy a system for $500 that would turn all of your garbage/garbage disposal waste into heat for your house, eliminating your need for AEL&P forever, wouldn't you do it? I would, in a heartbeat!
No dust.
I think burning organic biomass is the ultimate recycle. My post was to cast aspersion on the so called "green" mentality of burning = carbon dioxide = greenhouse gas = anthropogenic global warming = climate change = Kyoto Protocall = ...etc, etc, add nauseum, precipitating into nothing less than wealth distribution. And I wouldn't miss hearing your peer reviewed, advanced liberal frontal lobe cortex, study the damned thing to death hypothesis.
Somebody posted...
...that they wished they had access to sarcastic font. I agree. It could clear a few things up for advanced thinkers.
But, seriously...
...I would try a bowl of Beerios!
The brewery could create a subsidiary: General Swills
And for biomass fuel: Paleloggs
Just curious skirkz,
what would you pour over them, Vitamin R.......
@skirkz - I'm nominating your
@skirkz - I'm nominating your last post to dust for the Empire's Nobel Prize for Best Comment this year!!
It's laugh-out-loud funny and oh, so true.
For your reading pleasure -
"No dust.
I think burning organic biomass is the ultimate recycle. My post was to cast aspersion on the so called "green" mentality of burning = carbon dioxide = greenhouse gas = anthropogenic global warming = climate change = Kyoto Protocall = ...etc, etc, add nauseum, precipitating into nothing less than wealth distribution. And I wouldn't miss hearing your peer reviewed, advanced liberal frontal lobe cortex, study the damned thing to death hypothesis."
Care to weigh in, dust?
49er
Ask Sobie2
Calypso...
... Thank you! What an honor! I would humbly like to thank ... ... ...
You're perfectly correct, Skirkz
Burning things creates CO2 which contributes to climate change. Absolutely! I would, however, separate the science of climate change from the politics of something like Kyoto, which involves all sorts of power jockying.
Of course
I did indeed hear of Solyndra. How does that affect climate science?
Dang, dust!
What can I say? You've caught me totally off guard. I did not expect that answer from you. I don't deny the concept of climate change/global warming. I find it hard, however, to accept the anthropogenic (Manmade) aspect that, in my opinion, exalts man above God and/or nature. I definitely am convinced that a large contingency would exploit a natural cyclical phenomenon to capitalize on it by blaming the folks with the most money in order to tax their success by assessing guilt in proportion to the energy they use. Your post about power jockeying lines up with my opinion of the Kyoto Protocall and, quite frankly, leaves me flabbergasted coming from you. Now I have to time out and let my conservative lower lobe cortex wrap itself around your post.
Skirkz
You get quite a few points for that honest and open post! I completely agree with you that as soon as anything hits the political arena and/or the capitalist markets, all bets are off. People in those arenas will utilize anything they can to advance their interests, be they political or bottom line, and they usually haven't the vaguest idea what they are talking about.
Not being a politician, I don't follow a lot of the political noise regarding climate change too closely beyond some basic news; I probably should. But as a scientist, I do read some of the research coming from the published literature. I'll also toss out that while not everyone is (or should be!) a climate researcher, folks who insist that human beings affect climate without doing some basic research, simply because it agrees with their world view, are no less guilty of bandwagoning than those who insist the opposite without having ever even opened a science textbook.
The statement regarding the elevation of man above God/nature is a faith statement applied to a scientific problem, and thus I can't really say anything about it. I'd submit, however, that we obviously affect planetary things all the time! Even LH will admit that we affect fish populations left and right, and we've driven a number of species extinct.
I will point out that, if human influence on climate were negligible, practically the entire scientific community would be publishing on that very fact - contention and conflict sell science just like everything else. The first person to publish such a paper would gain a lot of scientific fame.
LH -
you've got quite a laundry list there, but some of it is wrong. The fact that Solyndra failed does not imply that human beings do not affect climate. Plenty of companies that made cars, computers, and pharmaceuticals have failed over the years, but we know very clearly that cars, computers, and drugs work.
You are absolutely correct that climate changes due to factors completely outside human influence. The primary drivers are fluctuations in planetary orbit (Milankovich Cycles) and solar input. Simply because it changes on its own, however, does not logically lead to the conclusion that human beings do not affect it. Fish populations fluctuate constantly - would you then make the case that because they do so, overfishing does not occur?
The idea that volcanic eruptions contribute more CO2 than humans is untrue. In the mid 2000s, human CO2 emissions were estimated to be roughly 26.4 gigatons per year; by contrast, annual volcanic output over the last 50 years has been relatively constant at 0.3 gigatons. And even if volcanoes DID produce more CO2 than humans over the long term (a large eruption can produce quite a bit), it doesn't follow that what we produce does not matter. For example, if you pay $2,000 per month for your mortgage, you will still notice if I help myself to $250 per month out of your account.
If you are interested in facts, begin with the scientific literature and begin with solar influence.
Krivova, N., S.K. Solanki, 2004: Solar Variability and Global Warming: A Statistical Comparison Since 1850. Advances in Space Research, Vol. 34, Issue 2, p 361
Solanki, Sami K.; Usoskin, Ilya G.; Kromer, Bernd; Schussler, Manfred; Beer, Jurg (2004), "Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years" Nature 431: 1084-1087
Solanki, Sami K.; Krivova, Natalia A. (2003), "Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970?" Journal of Geophysical Research 108 (A5)
A summary of a Harold Jeffery's lecture presented by Solanki in 2002.
http://noorderlicht.vpro.nl/attachment.db/18258097/Solanki.pdf
Bard, Eduard, and Frank, Martin. 2006. Climate change and solar variability: what's new under the sun?Earth and Planetary Science Letters Volume 248, Issues 1-2
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BardPapers/Bard06EPSL.pdf
Lockwood, Mike, and Frohlich, Klaus. 2007. Recent oppositely directed trends in solar
climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature. Proceedings of the Royal Society A
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2009Q1/111/ReadingsLockwood2007_Recent_o...
Scafetta, N., and West, B.J. 2006 Phenomenological solar signature in 400 years of reconstructed
Northern Hemisphere temperature record. Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.acrim.com/Reference%20Files/Sun%20&%20Global%20Warming_GRL_20...
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On a lighter note
Greener beer yay, St. Patricks day here we come.;-)
@libhater
Wind farms shutting down?
Let's factcheck statement...
https://www.google.com/search?q=wind+farm+shutting+down&rls=com.microsof...
Lessee, #1 is from 2011, and relates to a BPA windfarm being shut down for a period in the spring due to excess hydro power.
A March 7, 2012 report from Fox News is about #1. "Demand could not keep up with supply, so BPA shut down the wind farms for nearly 200 hours over 38 days."
A NY Times article reports and wind turbine makers are having a rough time: "...stiff competition from cheap natural gas and cheaper options from Asian competitors."
So what do a call a person who says something easily disproven?