2beerguys beer blog

Discarded yeast to be transformed into Ethanol

Here’s an interesting story that was posted last week about Sierra Nevada investing in turning their yeast extracted from brewing into Ethanol. If this is successful, then the small and large breweries can assist the green movement. It would be interesting to know how much yeast it would take to create XX amount of ethanol. Unlike corn, we wouldn’t be losing any additional resources to create the ethanol. The yeast is a by product of brewing and we all need beer, right?

I’ve read before that many farmers have increased their corn production, solely for the production of ethanol. With government assistance, this has been a way help them stay afloat. Unfortunately, the shift to corn production had a major effect on other items like wheat/grains, hops, and other products. This shift also created a bigger dependence on importing good to make up for what we are not making domestically – AND it was mentioned as one of the causes for the hop shortage in 2008.

Let us know what you think.

Thanks

Sean
2Beerguys.com

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Old Sierra Nevada Beer to Become Ethanol Gas

Are we really this hard up for gasoline? Are you absolutely certain that there’s no other way??

In truth, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company has teamed up with those E-Fuel guys we told you about. E-Fuel has developed a system/machine to turn simple sugar and yeast into alcohol and then ethanol. (Really, it’s not so different from brewing beer.)

Sierra Nevada is installing an EFuel100 MicroFueler in-house to turn 1.6 million gallons of otherwise discarded yeast for brewing (yearly) into the source ingredients of what we’re sure is a very, very tasty high grade ethanol gasoline. We can drink to that. (beer, not ethanol)

Link to article posted on Gizmodo.com