It was a close call for Denver, but liquor stores are still open across Colorado despite COVID-19. That means local breweries will still make their beer.
In a large warehouse in the Sunnyside neighborhood, Denver Beer Co. brews around 20,000 barrels a year. With all of that fermentation comes alcohol and carbon dioxide — a gas that contributes to climate change. The company used to let all of that CO2 bubble out of their brew and into the air.
“But our new technology allows us to hook a hose up to this fermentation tank and put it through a dryer, a filter and a compressor,” said Charlie Berger, co-owner of Denver Beer Co. “It creates a liquid gas that we can actually use.”
The technology is already available for large beer operations. The challenge for Austin-based Earthly Labs was to scale it down and make it affordable for microbreweries. Berger said this was a struggle until the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment connected him with a cannabis company to buy their extra CO2.
Read the full story at CPR News here.