Denmark is pioneering a beercycling process by using an abundant summer festival waste product to make beer.
Thirsty festival goers provide an ever ending supply of it and the Danish Agriculture and Food Council along with the Nørrebro Bryghus brewery are putting it to productive use.
Yes – we’re talking urine.
To be fair urine from cows and pigs have been used for centuries to fertilise barley crops. Though this is certainly a break from tradition.
Around 54,000 liters of urine was collected in 2015 at the Roskilde Festival near Copenhagen. In the spring of the following year, it was used as fertiliser, which resulted in 11 tons of malting barley. Now it is time for it come full circle.
“Just as we have seen shops sell goods that would otherwise have been thrown out, Beercycling allows us to recycle a product that is normally flushed down the drain. When it comes to circular economy, Danish farmers are some of the best in the world. If you can brew a beer with urine as fertiliser, you can recycle almost anything,” said Karen Hækkerup, CEO at the Danish Agriculture and Food Council.
The partnership between Nørrebro Bryghus and the Danish Agriculture and Food Council will see 60.000 bottles of the Pisner beer brewed.
“We want to be a part of the Beercycling project partly due to the story it has already told, but also because it is interesting to partake in a project, which addresses the challenges of sustainability and circular economy. Basically, it is a cool project,” says Henrik Vang, Executive Director at Nørrebro Bryghus.
