Life Cycle Assessment of Craft Beer Brewing at Different Scales on a Unit Operation Basis

Beer brewing is a complex process that comprises many fundamental unit operations. Over the last few years, craft brewing has become very popular, and the number of small-scale commercial brewers has drastically increased. However, due to the use of traditional beer-making methods, energy utilization in craft breweries tends to be inefficient, resulting in poor sustainability. Therefore, there is a necessity for a holistic analysis on the energy profile of craft beer brewing to evaluate its environmental performance on a unit operation basis. In this study, a gate-to-gate life cycle assessment was conducted to analyze and compare the environmental profiles of craft beer brewing, including ale and lager, at commercial (microbrewery) and pilot scales. A process simulation model was developed to estimate the electricity and/or natural gas uses of each unit operation, including heating, mashing, boiling, whirlpool, cooling, fermentation, and maturation. The model accurately predicted the steam use for pilot-scale brewing and the electricity and gas bills of a microbrewery. The beers brewed at the microbrewery scale (21.5-barrel brewhouse) had 2-11-fold lower environmental impacts than those brewed at the pilot scale (1-barrel brewhouse), and lager beer generally produced 11-32% higher impacts than ale. The fermentation and maturation steps in brewing were the major contributors to global warming and terrestrial acidification, whereas the mashing step was predominantly responsible for marine eutrophication. This study provides craft brewers with a useful tool for identifying the hotspots of energy use in their processes and developing potential improvement strategies.