No aroma, no color, no hop or malt flavor. When Epic Cleantec and Devil’s Canyon Brewing joined forces a few months ago to create a new beer, they decided to take a risk on another aspect of the beverage that is perhaps lesser-known but equally important: water. And they decided to go big. Rather than resorting to liquids sourced from springs, icebergs, and even glaciers—an area that other markets in the industry, such as vodka makers, are exploring—Epic Cleantec and Devil’s Canyon opted for gray wastewater. That’s for sure: the same stuff that comes out of showers, sinks, and washing machines.

Anyone who has tried it does not speak ill of it.

Beer with shower water? Exactly the same. Or rather, from the showers and laundry of a building. What Epic Cleantec did almost a year ago was collect nine containers containing thousands of liters of recycled water taken from the pipes of a building in San Francisco and take them to Devil’s Canyon, a producer who had already used them two weeks later to make Kölsch beer in the summer. Once the drink was ready, the companies packaged it and labeled it with their trademark: Epic Onewater Brew. The resulting more than 7,000 cans were then distributed at Greenbuild, a conference on sustainable construction.

“Educational effort”As Epic Cleantec co-founder Aaron Tartakovsky recently explained to CNN, they approached this as an “educational effort” rather than a product to sell. Which makes sense when you consider that regulations currently prohibit them from using recycled wastewater to make commercial beverages. The result was surprising: They got attention from newspapers. New York Times any Guard and has received an “overwhelming response” from the public. Despite its popularity, Epic Onewater Brew is not actually for sale.

But… Why? Behind Epic Onewater Brew there is no exaggerated gourmet passion for wastewater, but instead technological advancement and a deep environmental awareness. To understand this, you must first understand the work of Epic Cleantec, a company that dedicates itself daily to tasks that have little or nothing to do with barley fermentation.

Normally, his work focuses on treating water for non-potable uses, which led him to design a wastewater treatment system for Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco. The Epic Cleantec system allows you to collect rainwater and graywater that leaks from showers, sinks, and washing machines and purify it before reusing it in other facilities on the block, such as toilets and washing machines.

What does the system offer? The company estimates that it recycles 28,400 quarts of graywater each day, which, in cash, translates into more than $90,000 in annual utility savings for Related, the developer that hired it. The recycled water Fifteen Fifty received was the same water that was sent to Devil’s Canyon for beer production last year, making it a resounding and striking demonstration of the scope of its proposal during Greenbuild.

Making it visible isn’t your only strategy. The San Francisco residential tower also has a garden near it that feeds on treated waste.

How do they achieve this? The company says its One Water system recycles up to 95% of wastewater, both the “black” water from toilets and the “grey” water collected from drains in bathtubs, sinks, showers or pipes connected to washing machines. The liquid can then be used for uses that do not normally require drinking water, such as toilet cisterns. That’s not the only advantage the company claims. The heat from the wastewater is also used to save energy.

DifficultyThe entire process is a bit more complex and involves different stages, such as pre-filtration, balancing, biological treatment, filtration with a membrane with pores as small as 0.04 microns (μm) in diameter, and disinfection with ultraviolet light and chlorine. As CNN explains, the Epic Cleantec system is not designed to produce drinking water, but some US state legislation allows for the reuse of wastewater for drinking purposes.

So why beer? With Devil’s Canyon Brewing, they wanted to go one step further. “Thanks to advanced purification technologies, recycled water is not only safe to drink, it’s also cleaner than many of the water sources we typically consume,” the California-based company explains. “Common uses include flushing toilets, irrigation, cooling towers and laundry. The water is treated to an extremely high level of purity that meets or exceeds federal water quality standards.”

It’s no coincidence that they chose beer. Drinking some recycled shower water, no matter how pure and pure it is, can cause rejection. If the liquid seems like something different, let’s pour a glass of beer, let’s slide it. New York Timesmaybe that “yuck factor” can be overcome. Epic Cleantec isn’t the only one exploring this path. There are even cities that hold competitions for breweries to try making beverages with recycled wastewater, and years ago, Scottsdale Water in Arizona invited several companies to brew beer with water from the city’s advanced treatment plant.

Extravagance or responsibility? The question at this point is why we should use shower water to make beer when we can use water from reservoirs or springs. The answer is simple: it is a simple matter of environmental responsibility and availability of resources.

After all, until recently California itself was suffering from a historic drought after three years of particularly low rainfall (the worst since 1896), leading its residents to demand that consumption be controlled. Another country struggling with drought, a phenomenon no stranger to Spain, is Uruguay, which has been forced to take emergency measures.

What if sinks were a solution? This is the question left by Epic Cleantec, who remember that buildings collect around 14% of their drinking water and barely reuse it. “We are on a mission to change that. What better way to showcase the untapped potential of water reuse than to brew beer with it? We created Epic One Water Brew to highlight that water reuse is truly the next frontier of recycling,” he points out.

He’s not the only one thinking about it. In San Francisco, officials have already adopted measures to encourage water reuse: For years, all new buildings in the United States that exceed a certain size, more than 20,000 square feet (9,300 m2), must have a system that allows water to be recycled.

Pictures | Epic Cleantec

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*A previous version of this article was published in August 2023.