Brewer To Turn Beer Waste Into Fuel For Its Trucks

Sierra Nevada Brewing, already one of the greenest breweries out there, just bought into a new way to turn waste into money. The brewer has worked out a deal with the inventor of the EFuel100 MicroFueler to turn beer byproduct into fuel for the fleet of biofuel trucks that Sierra Nevada already owns.

The amazing thing is that any brewer could do this. Many breweries already save the dregs from beer production, which are mostly grains high in nutrients, and sell it to farms as feed. Any brewery with biofuel trucks could keep the stuff on site for fuel. Any brewery without could sell the biofuel to somebody else.

CNET reports on details of the Sierra Nevada biofuel deal:

E-Fuel last year unveiled its $9,995 home ethanol machine which ferments a mix of water and sugar into ethanol. Ethanol is mixed into gasoline at 10 percent. Flex-fuel cars can run on E85, an 85 percent blend of ethanol and gasoline.

E-Fuel on Tuesday said that the beer company will start testing EFuel's refrigerator-sized portable ethanol refineries in the second quarter of this year using discarded beer yeast as a feedstock for ethanol.

Initially, Sierra Nevada plans to use the ethanol in its own vehicles. Once it has excess fuel, it will look to supply employees and distribute through E-Fuel's distribution network, a company representative said.

This video tells the story of a microbrewery taking the same approach:

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