The only distillery designated a National Historic Site is also one of the first to begin powering itself with its own waste. Maker's Mark, purveyors of the famous red-wax sealed whisky, has begun to squirrel away its stillage (the yeasty, grainy porridge left after production) to fuel distillery boilers.

Formerly, Maker's Mark dried their stillage and sold it for cattle feed. Now, using anaerobic digestion, the distillery converts up to 150,000 gallons of stillage a day into methane and carbon dioxide biogas. The biogas from the stillage is expected to initially produce 85 million BTUs daily, cutting between 15-30% of the distillery’s natural gas use, and will allow Maker's Mark to nearly double their production of whisky over the next decade.

The on-site waste conversion system was designed by Ecovation, owned by Ecolab (producers of rainbow colored cleaning liquids omnipresent in the hospitality industry.) Ecovation has also installed a smattering of biogas systems for dairy and non-alcoholic beverage producer giants Kraft, Breyer’s and Coca-Cola.

Ranchers, however, may not be thrilled about all this food waste hoarding. Already facing increasing feed costs, the unavailability of cheap food inputs like whisky stillage and whatever chemically-processed junk comes out of the butt-end of Coca-Cola will only make matters worse. But perhaps we can all drink away our food-cost woes – whisky will be cheaper, right?

Via GreenBiz

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