Bill Gates ‘wastewater beer’ could be as disruptive as Microsoft

By: Trademagazin editor Date: 2023. 07. 04. 15:09

Disgruntled consumers might refer to bad beer as tasting “like dishwater” but new tech being developed in California could mean that before long beer could be made from purified shower, laundry and sink water, thanks to Bill Gates.

Back in 2012 the Bill and Melissa Gates Charitable Foundation gave a grant to a start-up company called Epic Cleantec, as part of a “Reinvent The Toilet” challenge. The idea was to spur development into water reuse and conservation. Eleven years later, according to CNBC, Epic has produced a test beer, Epic OneWater Brew, which is made from wastewater.

The process used could revolutionise the whole drinks industry at the same time as combating growing water shortages around the globe, not least in the US, where severe shortages are predicted from as early as next year due to climate change and population density.

The San Francisco-based Epic Cleantec is primarily concerned with developing water waste and reuse systems.

In an experiment, Epic fed wastewater from a large San Francisco apartment block through “ultrafiltration membranes” 100 times thinner than a human air. They filter out impurities and the cleaned water is then disinfected by using ultra-violet light. Co-founder Aaron Tartakovsky claims the process is comparable with the biology that takes place in the human stomach.

And seemingly it works.

He claimed that independent testing of Epic’s cleaned water shows it meets US Federal standards for drinking water and often exceeds them.

Cleaned water was passed to Devil’s Canyon Brewing Co in San Carlos California, which produced the Epic OneWater Brew.

As it stands, strict Federal and individual US state laws mean that Epic and Devil’s Canyon are prohibited from selling their Epic OneWater beer.

But they have been giving away samples to test public reaction to the technology – and so far it has been positive.

Changes in the law to allow the brew to be made for sale may be some way away, but as Tartakovsky told a CNBC interviewer “using recycled water for drinking or potable use is quite common, but typically it is done on a municipal level.

The economics of it and its scalability are under wraps but if they are workable Gates and his proteges could be on to a system as revolutionary to drinks production as Microsoft’s Windows was to personal computing.

The Drinks Business