This Brewery Is Making Beer Out of Poop Water, and It’s ‘Delicious’
via Thrillist by Eric Vilas-Boas
The wildly experimental beer folk at Stone Brewing Co. have a new treat in their barrels: beer made from treated sewage water, aka where your shit goes after you shit. Apparently, the new concoction is one of its brewer’s favorite new beers.
“Among the pale ales that I’ve made, it’s probably in the top three,” Steve Gonzalez, a senior manager at Stone responsible for the Full Circle Pale Ale, told San Diego’s KGTV after a tasting where the city’s mayor was one of the first to try the new brew.
You might wonder: What does poop beer actually taste like? Gonzalez said that those who drink the beer will “get some caramel notes, some tropical fruit notes. It’s a very clean-tasting beer.” Attendees at the event reportedly hesitated a bit, but by the time the KGTV reporters arrived on the scene, they didn’t even get to taste any of it, “because it was all gone in about 20 minutes.”
“[I thought] that it would have an off taste or be something different to it,” said Shane Trussell, one of the tasters at the event. “It’s outstanding.”
Another drinker described how much they loved the beer’s hoppiness. Mayor Faulconer called the beer “delicious.”
The beer is made using recycled water reclaimed through the Pure Water San Diego program, an initiative that soon hopes to recycle and recirculate a third of San Diego’s total potable water supply by 2035. People have called the program “toilet to tap,” but Stone Brewing doesn’t sound afraid of using the purified wastewater in its beer.
“We like trial and we like testing and if we can help others jump on the same bandwagon, we would love to do that because it’s a great thing for the City of San Diego,” Stone COO Pat Tiernan told San Diego 6.
The Full Circle Pale Ale won’t be widely distributed immediately, as only five barrels were brewed for its first batch, but Gonzalez encouraged drinkers to taste it when it is.
“Try it first, I suppose,” he said. “You won’t be disappointed.”
