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Help the environment - make you own beer or buy it?


PB2

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Now that it's uncool to not care about the environment,[rightful] it got me thinking whether, us making our own beer, is IN or OUT...

 

Most of my beer goes into kegs - no new materials required, that's a big tick!

I source ingredients from a brewshop close-by, with each buy making many brews - minimising fuel costs, etc or am I kidding myself??

 

Will do some asking about the brewery to come up with a resource comparison between production of beer kits and finished beer. This might take some time...

 

 

Are there any other claims we can make about the planet being helped by "making our own"??

 

 

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home brew saves water, as when i did the tour i believe coopers uses 4 litres of water to produce one litre of beer..... which was said to be good for breweries....

 

i use 21 litres in fermenter, 4 L sanitiser and prolly another 4 litres to clean prior to sanitisation ...... which works out to 1.25L water per litre of beer, of course this isnt taking into consideration the water needed for production of malt extract and sugar making....

 

possible reductions in power consumption?

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Of course we are saving the environment. we recycle our bottles (or kegs) Because we wash and reuse it must be beter than smelting down and remaking bottles.[biggrin] Save on packaging as we don't have that annoying plastic wrap to dispose of we even recycle our (well Coopers) yeast so we are way cool [cool] compared to buying commercial beer products. Actually we should all lobby the government to introduce a rebate to home brewers for such a good job we do. [devil]

Finally I was in Cairns for work this week and so a FNQ Lager on the menu made by blue sky brewery. I went to their web site which showed what they do to reduce their imnpact in the brewing process. Found that very interesting indeed.

 

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I think I use awful lot of water now to clean out bummed bottles - about 3liters per 1 bottle - bleach soak, rinse, brush, rinse, soak to remove label, rinse. Of course, this will go down as I recycle them, but at the moment stuff that lives in the bummed bottles sometimes scares me :D

 

btw, any useful tips on cleaning out those bummed bottles (yea, I rinse mine, but its hard to persuade neighbors to clean out their bottles before giving them to me)? At the moment I have found out that soaking them in about 10-15ml domestic bleach diluted to half liter for some 40mins does good job.. its just that I hate chlorine smell and I really would rather use something more environment-friendly than bleach going down the drain.

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Way back when I started brewing, I built up my bottle stocks by telling friends and relatives, Christmas and birthday, "if you don't know what to get me, swing-top Grolsch bottles are always appreciated". Got to 450 bottles in no time and they came full of beer [biggrin]

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Ssssh!!! Don't tell them anything. If they knew how cheap and fun it was to make your own beer they'd slap an excise on HB products tomorrow. Keep it on the down-low bro. [ninja]

 

Borris, mate, you cant be the village idiot cause you really do know how our government works

[bandit]'s the lot of them .lol

 

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Another way to get bottles is to host an international beer night. Get ya mates to bring over a 6 pack of their fav international beer (more likely to have a crown seal)to share. As the bottles get empty stick them straight into cleaning solution. Problem solved [joyful]

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Borris, mate, you cant be the village idiot cause you really do know how our government works

[bandit]'s the lot of them .lol

 

Grumpy, I don't think our our government knows how it works too.. Just look at that environmental disaster of a De-Sal plant down your way...

That makes my blood boil...[crying]

 

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We save fuel by home brewing. Do a pub run and buy 1 slab, do a hb run and come home with enough for 10 slabs. for me that's a saving of 306km's.[biggrin]

 

Luke,I'm not a fan of the de-sal either, hard to get a decent fish out of Williamson's or the Killy Cemetery beach now [crying]

 

 

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