Alaskan Brewery Is Beer-Powered

Fratthew_Broderick12 years ago

Beer: is there anything it can’t be used for? Whether it’s bonding with Dad, getting shitty with friends, passing the time, or making that 7 at the bar look like a stone cold perfect 10, beer has proven to be one of the most versatile of drinks. Now it seems like we can add another use to that list: generating electricity.

That’s right. A brewery in Alaska is literally being powered by beer.

The Alaskan Brewing Co. (ABC) plans to use spent grain from the brewing process to help power the majority of the brewery’s functions and reduce energy costs by 70 percent.

Of course this type of innovation comes out of Alaska. What the fuck can you do up there other than drink, draw snow penises on everyone’s car windshields, and hunt moose from the sky? Nothing — nothing except try to figure out how to do some of that stuff more efficiently.

Normally, beer companies sell their spent grain to farms nearby. Unfortunately for the Alaskan Brewing Company, nothing really grows in Alaska except the rate of alcohol consumption. So, the guys at ABC did what any brilliant businessmen would do: they made lemonade out of lemons. Or, you know, beer out of grains.

So, let me see if I’ve got this straight — the beer is made from grains, the spent grains power the brewery to make the beer, the beer is sold to people to drink, the money from those people is used to buy more grains. And so it goes, forever in an alcoholic version of the circle of life.

The brewery spent $1.8 million on a special broiler in order to convert spent grain from the brewing process into steam. With a $500,000 federal grant and expected savings of $450,000 per year, the Alaskan Brewing Company’s broiler should pay for itself in just a few short years.

No word yet on how wind energy is taking this additional step into complete uselessness and irrelevancy, but let’s hope this revelation is one of the last nails in the coffin of an obnoxiously over-hyped and unreliable energy source.

Let’s all hope that this trend catches on at other breweries. If so, in the very near future, fraternity houses alone could very well power the entire nation several times over. So, go ahead and finish that case. You’re just doing your part to solve the energy crisis.

[via Yahoo! News]