Sewer brewers: Oregon home-brewers join Pure Water Brew Challenge

If Oregon’s hipster home-brewers can make beers brewed with treated sewage water sound cool, wouldn’t that make other brewers in water-stressed areas around the world more willing to do likewise?

Treated sewage water is the main ingredient in a Portland-area home brewer competition to raise awareness on reusing a vital resource. Various media reported at the end of April 2015 that for the upcoming Pure Water Brew Challenge an Oregon wastewater treatment operator has asked home-brewers to make beers from hops, barley, yeast and treated sewage water.

The point of the contest is not to find Portland’s next trendy craft beer. Rather, it’s an effort to get people talking about how a vital resource can be reused thanks to advanced water-filtration systems.

Media said the utility plant will release over 1000 litres of highly purified water in early June to roughly 20 home-brewers from the Oregon Brew Crew, the state’s oldest home-brewing club.

A panel of experts will judge the beers in late July or early August. The winner will receive USD 100, five others will get USD 50, and their kegs will be taken to an international water conference in Chicago. Although state regulators have approved the safety of the water, the beer will not be sold to the public.

In actual fact, places from Singapore to parts of California and Texas already use treated effluent for drinking water, generally mixing it into the regular supply. They just don’t make a fuss about it.

With the Pure Water Brew Challenge receiving national publicity, media commentators said it could draw a lot of entries.