The Boston Business Journal reports that Eric Fitch believes he’s found a way to brew success by turning the waste grain used to make beer into clean energy.
His two-year-old startup, Purpose Energy Inc. in Arlington, is in the midst of constructing a 2 billion BTU digester adjacent to the The Magic Hat Brewing Co. in South Burlington, Vt., where it will take the remnants of the beer fermentation process and break it down into methane that can power a brewery’s boiler and other systems that traditionally run natural gas.
For Fitch, a veteran of the local startup scene, the technology is a way to help breweries increase sustainability and cheaply dispose of beer byproducts as well as help breweries become more energy independent.
Breweries employ a number of strategies in disposing of the grain left after the sweetened liquid, or wort, is filtered before brewing; it cannot simply be dumped down the drain. At Harpoon Brewery’s Boston brewery, the spent grain goes to an area farm for feed.
After a successful pilot with Yuengling’s brewery in Florida in 2006, Fitch said he wanted to construct his first commercial-scale digester at a brewery within driving distance producing at least 50,000 barrels of beer per year. Of the five breweries that met the criteria, he came upon Magic Hat through a neighborhood friend’s brother who had worked at the brewery.
Photo by Purpose Energy Inc..