• The environmental risks of beer brewing can be minimized with better production processes.Prepare beer image by Mykola Velychko from Fotolia.com
  
  The environmental risks of beer brewing are concentrated primarily in the disposal of extras created during the process, such as wastewater and solid waste, as a typical brewery requires a great deal of electrical and thermal power to boil water and refrigerate beer. To reduce waste, an environmentally conscious brewery owner should streamline its operational procedures.
  
  

Wastewater

• An efficient brewery uses between 4 and 7 liters of water to produce 1 liter of beer. Wastewater is generated in numerous other processes, including rigorous cleaning of machinery to prevent the growth of microbes, the pasteurization process, and heating and cooling. Residual beer, such as that from bottles broken or rejected in the packaging areas along with liquid in the process tanks, also contributes to wastewater. So-called "weak wort" water can also be reused with freshly boiled wort instead of being thrown away.
  
  

Solid Wastes

• Spent grains are among of the most significant solid waste products generated during the brewing process. Some can be mashed and sold as animal feed. Yeast, which is produced during fermentation, can also be an environmental hazard because it produces a high chemical oxygen demand. However, if the yeast is collected a large percentage of it can be reused.
  
  

Energy Consumption

• Wort boiling and water heating require high-powered thermal heaters, while refrigeration systems consume tremendous amounts of electricity. To help eliminate waste and reuse power, brewery owners should try to use a heat recovery system for the wort vessel. Additionally, they should optimize the wort evaporation process and keep the condensing temperature in refrigerators to the lowest possible setting. For every drop of 1K in condensing temperature, energy use can be reduced by 2 percent.