 By Jim Lundstrom
Tightly packed masses of lumpy clouds clotted the sky as far as you could see while driving west along Highway 10, promising a dim prospect for a photo shoot with the staff of Central Waters Brewing Co.
The idea in the photographer’s mind was to shoot the staff in front of the bank of solar panels that warm the brewing water and heat the Amherst brewery, with the sun shining down on the young entrepreneurs behind Wisconsin’s greenest brewery. Clouds would put a damper on that image.
But as Amherst grew closer the clouds parted and turned into long, angular striations against an azure sky, exposing a mid-February sun that at least gave the illusion of warmth.
Shine on!
On this particular morning, co-owner Paul Graham was home in bed after working third shift at the brewery. Graham is both passionate and eloquent about Central Waters, so he was missed.
Luckily, co-owner Anello Mollica is equally eloquent and passionate about Central Waters and the direction the brewery is going.
“We’re a small company of two owners and three full-time employees. That’s it. We don’t have a lot of resources behind us, but we found a way to do it,” Mollica said of the greening of Central Waters.
Since going online with the $120,000 solar panel system in March 2009 as part of an expansion that brought the pole barn building in Amherst’s business park to 5,000 square feet, Central Waters has not paid a single heating bill.
Mollica points out that while cost savings are a great benefit for the brewery, that was not the sole reason for turning to solar power.
“We like to stay on top of this stuff as much as possible,” he said. “It’s great that it’s a huge cost-saving measure. We were able to double production because we weren’t paying heating bills with this system. But first and foremost is something that Paul and I believe in: We think it’s the right thing to do. Because we were able to find a way to do it, we couldn’t not do it.”
Having the commitment is one thing. Putting it into action is another. There are upfront costs to going green.
“It’s not cheap,” Mollica said, adding that they couldn’t have done it without help from two different agencies that are out there to help small businesses, and a contractor with the vision and know-how to make a system that produces what they wanted.
First was the CAP Services Inc. Business Development program, leaseholders of the Central Waters building. The brewers have a lease-to-own arrangement with the CAP.
The also received technical assistance and a 25% cash incentive from Focus on Energy, the coalition of Wisconsin energy agencies that help residents and businesses with energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.
“Those people are there to help, just not enough people take advantage,” Mollica said.
The third and perhaps most necessary element was the design and installation contractor. Mollica and Graham talked to several contractors, but only one – Bob’s Plumbing and Heating of Amherst – said he could put together a system to heat the building and the brewery’s water with a solar panel system.
“They are geniuses,” Mollica said. “It’s such an easy idea.”
The 1,000 square feet of solar panels are filled with glycol in tubing. Atop the bank of solar panels are much smaller panels that power a pump that shoots the sun-heated glycol to the brewery and into a heavily insulated 2,500-gallon tank of water buried beneath the brewery floor.
The glycol heats the water, which in turn heats copper tubing that runs under the concrete floor, providing radiant heat to the building. More than a mile of copper tubing was installed for the system, at a time when copper was hovering at about $4 a pound.
Solar-heated water also goes to the brewery sinks and the brewhouse. Two separate gauges tell the temperature of the incoming glycol (it was about 144 degrees on this mid-February day) and of the water in the underground holding tank (85 degrees this day).
“What this is telling me is that I can fill my brew kettle at 85 degrees right now,” Mollica said. “To start a brew we need 180 degrees. If we were using cold water coming in, which is what we always did in the past, in the wintertime you’re looking at 40 degrees or less. In the summertime, between 40 and 50 degrees coming in. You have to heat that to 180. From 40 to 85 degrees takes a lot of energy. It’s not as much from 85 to 180. In the summertime we’re filling the kettle at about 120 degrees. That’s a lot of therms saved, a lot of natural gas saved.”
The Central Waters owners went into the new system believing they were looking at a seven-year payback.
“That dropped to 4 1/2 years and will probably drop again,” Mollica said. “So we’re looking at less than a five-year payback on a system with a 30-year lifespan. It’s a no-brainer. Why wouldn’t you do it if you intend to be around for five years, which we do.”
At the time the brewery was undergoing expansion and installation of the solar system, the owners decided to replace the brewery’s energy-sucking metal halide lights with T8 fluorescents, giving the same light output at half the cost.
“It’s really paying off fast. The old lights really sucked a lot of juice. Fluorescent lighting is a fraction of the energy cost,” Mollica said.
According to Focus on Energy, which provided a $1,260 financial incentive to replace the lighting, the annual environmental benefits of the T8 lighting system are equal to offsetting the burning of more than 30 barrels of oil and preventing the release of 25,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“Hopefully we can be a model for other businesses,” Mollica said. “We’re showing people that we don’t have any more money than any other businesses or breweries, but we found a way to make it happen. It wasn’t easy. It took us a long time to figure it out.”
But it doesn’t end with renewable energy at Central Waters. It’s really about sustainability.
“Sustainability is about sourcing products. We’ve done our due diligence. We made sure our suppliers are as green as they can be,” Mollica said. “That’s what sustainability means, not just us, but everyone down the line feels the same way.”
He points out stacks and stacks of bottles waiting to be filled.
“They’re from Saint-Gobain (Muncie, Indiana-based), the greenest bottle manufacturer in the world. We are trying to be as sustainable as possible. Sustainability goes far beyond energy savings. It goes to raw goods as well. We’re one of the breweries in the state leading the charge to get Wisconsin farmers to grow barley and hops for Wisconsin breweries.”
Last August Central Waters released Hop Harvest, a beer brewed with 95% Wisconsin-grown barley and handpicked hops from a Wausau hop grower.
“It was our first run at it,” Mollica said. “We had eight guys picking hops. We didn’t know how many pounds we were going to use. So I was back here getting ready to start brewing and waiting to hear how many pounds we had so I could figure out how we’re going to do this. It’s a beer we’re going to make every year.”
The brewery’s best-selling session beer is appropriately called Shine On. It’s made with Wisconsin-grown barley, but, more importantly to the brewery’s idea of sustainability, it was grown by a farmer five miles down the road.
“It’s difficult to grow barley for brewing, but this worked really well, tested out great,” Mollica said. “We buy our grains from Briess Malting of Chilton. They took the barley and malted it specifically for Central Waters. They’re housing it. So Shine On is not just Wisconsin barley, but barley grown five miles away from the brewery.”
He adds that a farmer two miles away from the brewery is growing hops and has plans to build a hop oast, a specialized unit for drying hops.
“The idea is that at some point in the future all of our beers will be made with Wisconsin-grown ingredients. That’s the ultimate goal for sustainability,” Mollica said.
Central Waters supplies beer for the annual Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Amherst. Last year the two owners were asked to present a workshop on being a green business.
“I would say half the crowd were Wisconsin farmers asking about growing barley and hops. It was really nice to see that. They are eager to do it,” Mollica said. “We refer farmers to Briess. That’s a growing part of their business. They see what’s coming. They want to get Wisconsin-grown barley.”
“The whole idea is that the biggest environmental impact is the transportation, the fuel cost of getting it to us and vice versa,” said Gordon Lane, president of Briess Malt & Ingredients Co. in Chilton. “We’re trying to get local barley so we don’t have to bring it in from out west. We’ve been pretty successful with this. We’re already using quite a bit of locally grown wheat for our wheat program. We have a number of farmers shipping barley for us to malt, that we ship to a number of Wisconsin brewers. Even Goose Island down in Chicago is looking at it.”
Last month Briess invited area farmers to the plant to learn about growing barley for brewing.
“This is the second year we’ve done this,” Lane said. “We talk about what we’re looking for as far as barley, the varieties we need, then we basically say, you really need to talk to Calumet Feeds. They have certified seed. If a farmer wants to grow barley, they go to Calumet Feeds, then buy the seeds from them. That way when they send it in, we know it’s malt-grade barley.”
Lane points out that Wisconsin farmers will never be able to fulfill all Briess’ barley needs.
“There are some specialty grains that we just know are not going to grow around here,” he said. “Growing two row (barley) in Wisconsin is pretty hard. Wisconsin tends to be mainly six row.”
But certainly Briess is returning to its roots by using Wisconsin-grown barley.
“It used to be all locally grown barley that came into the Chilton malt house. That’s the way it typically worked at the start,” Lane said.
Having a willing malting company just down the road gives confidence to the Central Waters owners in their efforts to spread the sustainability around.
“We can source barley one way, hops the other way,” Mollica said. “A local consumer can come in on a Friday night and drink a product made here with 100% of the ingredients sourced within five miles away, so really getting back to the roots of being sustainable. It means a lot ethically and emotionally to use locally grown products. That’s an important part of our long-term business plan.”
The brewers’ commitment to sustainability is even evident in the brewery tap room – open to the public on Friday and Saturdays. It’s constructed of locally recycled materials.
“Even in our tap room, we try to encourage growler sales over six packs because of the packaging. The growler is the ultimate reusable container for home consumption,” Mollica said. “There are bars in the area that will fill growlers. JR’s liquor in Stevens Point put in a tap line so they could fill growlers. They’re the only one in the state doing that. Places that want to do that, we sell them our growlers at cost because we’re trying to encourage that.”
So, forget the food-colored swill classless bars sell to clueless Irish wannabes on St. Patrick’s Day. Instead pick up a truly green beer and Shine On.
|
Brewing beer has never been an energy-efficient process, yet there are some amazing green initiatives and innovations taking place at breweries across the nation. Here are just a few:
New to the area, I was surprised to hear that a death in a paper mill turned the charming city of Green Bay upside down in 1993. The mysterious death of Tom Monfils left six of his co-workers in prison, convicted of murder.
