For those of you have met me, you will know that I am from the UK and “over there” we drink a lot of beer. To be fair, it is at cellar temperature and does not have any carbonation.
The lager industry and the U.S. beer market are entirely different. In the U.S., it is generally a carbonated product.
As many of you know, carbon dioxide is produced during the beer fermentation process and then is either cleaned and re-cycled for carbonation purposes or new carbon dioxide is bought for the carbonation process. The cleaning and recycling process requires very expensive equipment and is generally only used for large breweries.
Smaller breweries or micro-breweries let the carbon dioxide dissipate into the atmosphere during the fermentation process and then buy new carbon dioxide for the carbonation step.
I have just exhausted my knowledge of beer making!
BUT, enter a very interesting man. Robert Zubrin, serial aerospace entrepreneur and President of the Mars Society.
Working with NASA’s Johnson Space Center on carbon dioxide harvesting, liquefying and storage on Mars, the team, including NASA, developed a capability to recycle and clean carbon dioxide on small scales and do it affordably! Check it out.
They have a small mobile cart that does all the work and it is full automated, so it doesn’t even require a human to manage it!
Now this all may seem a bit flat and airy to you, but I think I like the green element . . . and I may have to go to a few microbreweries and see this in action.
Cheers!