Every drop counts

When Mandi McKay decided to focus her college studies on environmental conservation and protection, she found herself blazing a new trail. Chico State had no degree in sustainability; she put together a “hodgepodge major” en route to graduating in 2008.

Concurrently, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. had few businesses to emulate in integrating green practices throughout its operations. McKay came on board soon after graduation, assuming a “role that didn’t exist” until she filled it, sustainability coordinator. With the sustainability manager hired two years earlier, she helped transform the Chico brewer into an eco pioneer recognized industrywide.

“Sierra Nevada’s great in terms of their commitment to the environment and limiting their resource use,” said Chuck Skypeck, technical brewing products manager of the Brewers Association, a national trade organization based in Boulder, Colo.

One resource, in particular, receives careful scrutiny: water. That may seem evident, since water is the predominant component of beer, but breweries now place more emphasis than ever on its use up and down the supply chain, along the production line.

“We recognize that we are a very large water user in a state that’s been drought-stricken, even though we’re in a regional area that’s been more or less removed from the worst impacts,” McKay said. “It’s the same straw; we happen to be at the north end of the valley, our aquifer is recharged on a regular basis, and fortunately we had a reasonable amount of snowpack in the last couple years—but we saw it miss for two or three in a row.

“It is a very big concern,” she said. “Everyone knows that if we continue to have these years where we’re not getting that snowpack or precipitation, there could be some very big impacts to us as a business and as a community. We feel lucky we haven’t been impacted yet, but it’s a very real possibility.”

Water worries are universal—from large-scale producers to craft brewers. They look into the farming practices for ingredients such as hops and the milling of barley. They refine brewing techniques to reduce water ratios. They recapture and recycle for cleaning and irrigation, saving fresh water for their products.

“It’s often not one great big fix,” Skypeck said by phone. “It’s often paying attention to a lot of little things to reduce your water use.”

Small, cumulative changes add up in an industry that’s growing. According to the Brewers Association, the U.S. had 6,200 breweries operating at the end of 2017 and 6,665 as of June 30, both 5 percent increases from the previous year. The federal government has granted licenses to 2,500 under development.

California has more than 800 active breweries.

“I really think water is going to be more and more of a critical resource, and I think California has an opportunity to really be on the forefront of this [sustainability],” said Peter Kruger, master brewer at Bear Republic Brewing Co. in Cloverdale. “It’s challenging for us, but I also think that because we’re a consumer-facing business, we have an opportunity to lead by example.”

Bear Republic has faced a water shortage head-on. In 2013, after the second successive dry winter, Cloverdale lacked the supply to meet minimum health and fire-suppression guidelines. The city—located by the Russian River, in Sonoma County—capped Bear Republic’s allotment.

“That was kind of our real firsthand wake-up call in terms of the pinch on water,” Kruger said by phone.

The brewery advanced Cloverdale $467,000 in impact fees to fast-track a well project. Within a year, the city installed two wells and refurbished two others, doubling the capacity of the municipal water system.

In the interim, Kruger said, “we really learned to do more with less.” For instance, Bear Republic reduced its ratio—water used in its brewing compared to the final volume—from 4-to-1 to 3.25-to-1.

Skypeck cites Bear Republic as “an industry leader in terms of reducing their water use.”

Sierra Nevada’s ratio is higher, between 4.5- and 5-to-1, but McKay explained that breweries use different brewing techniques and varying methods to measure. For example, she accounts not just for water in the beer itself but throughout the brewery. Even so, Sierra Nevada has reduced its ratio by 25 percent since 2007, when it started tracking.

“We continue to become more efficient the more we grow,” McKay said.

Industry giants, such as Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors, have ratios around 2.5-to-1.

“The bigger brewers kind of lead the way,” she added. “The bigger you get, the more efficient you can be…. They’ve being doing it forever, they’re doing it on a much larger level, and they get to make investments into equipment and [technologies].”

Sierra Nevada has invested in agricultural research, funded by Brewers Association grants. Skypeck said the company contributes to a grant program that his organization uses to foster scientific study of hops and barley. The goal is to naturally breed varieties that thrive with less irrigation.

The association started awarding grants in 2014. Farmers and brewers may not see results for another half-decade, Skypeck said. In the meantime, his group and breweries collaborate with suppliers on water-wise farming ideas.

“We have always wanted to foster relationships with farmers who are doing things we would do on our own hops fields here at the brewery or our restaurant garden,” McKay said. “There’s this preference, and kind of pressure to do those things—and we request those things of our suppliers. But we’ve not required anything.

“The focus has very much been internal. For Ken [Grossman, Sierra Nevada’s owner and founder], water has always been a really big issue, and he’s constantly pushing that bar lower and lower…. I would like to see us do more of that [externally].”