Green beer. Green beer is not the same as the one served on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s the one that’s helping the environment.
Young Henry’s Brewery in Australia is using green algae to make an environmentally friendly beer.
Oscar McMahon, the brewery founder, insists that even though there are tanks of bubbling algae, the algae is part of the production process.
“It never touches the beer. This is not green beer,”He said.
Algae is a good example of this. The fermentation of beer produces carbon dioxide. The algae blocks the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
“Basically, the CO2 is then ingested by the microalgae, which uses it to photosynthesize. That creates more algae, releases oxygen, and the world is a better place for it,”McMahon added.
“For combating climate change, algae capture CO2 up to 400 times more efficiently than a tree,”Professor Peter Ralph, University of Technology in Sydney, explains.
The carbon dioxide that is emitted from fermenting enough hops to make a six-pack can take up to two days for a tree to absorb.
Young Henry’s beer goes beyond combating climate change. They’re also looking at another way greenhouse gases are released into our atmosphere.
As an example, leftover grain from brewing is currently used to feed cattle. Algae can be used to feed cows, reducing the amount of methane gas that cattle emit in their burps or farts.
According to Dr. Ralph many people will see more of algae or other substances in products. “eat” carbon.
“I think that’s going to be the future, where industries want to use recycled carbon, not fossil carbon.”
