From toilet to tap to beer - 1st December 2023

The American West has been hit hard by drought, resulting in people looking into different ways of reusing wastewater. Two companies in San Francisco have now come up with an unusual way to recycle grey water from the laundry, showers and bathroom sinks of a skyscraper in the city - they're turning it into beer! Aaron Tartakovsky's the CEO of Epic Cleantec, which treats the wastewater.

Aaron Tartakovsky: "It tastes like a nice, crisp, Kölsch style ale. You'd have no idea the source of the water. It's just nice, pristine drinking water and it's a fantastic beer. And I'm going to drink another sip."

The 28,000 litres collected daily from the building are put through an advanced treatment process including filter membranes one thousandth the width of a human hair and disinfection using ultraviolet light and chlorine.

While much of the treated water's directed back into the building for use in showers and irrigation systems, a remainder is piped to the Devil's Canyon Brewery to be turned into beer. Chris Garrett, the brewery's owner, was initially shocked at the thought of turning bathwater into beer.

Chris Garrett: "When Aaron reached out to us at first we were a little set aside, and we were like, well what are people kind of think? And then the more we thought about it, it made a whole lot of sense. And we, we have to make a change today. We're running out of water and we need to find a way to incorporate that into every day and things like beer."

Prevented from selling the beer commercially by California law, the two companies have been distributing free cans of the beverage in order to raise awareness. And despite some hesitancy, with naysayers in the US calling water recycling 'toilet to tap', the need for water is great. California's planning to adopt new measures to introduce this technology more widely by the end of the year, and Tartakovsky believes the public are finally open to the prospect of recycled water.

Aaron Tartakovsky: "When I first entered the industry, a lot of people said that the public is just not ready for recycled water, that public perception is too difficult for people to overcome. And I think what our beer project has showed people is that the public is a lot more ready for recycled water than we give them credit for."