Deep dive into CO2 crisis

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Welcome to Friday beer lovers. Take a big breath because we’re about to do a deep dive into carbon dioxide. This email will be a little longer than usual but I think the current crisis justifies it.

The CO2 crisis was the big talking point of the week until Jacinda Ardern’s unexpected resignation pushed it aside (on that note check out this cheeky TradeMe sale of a Double Vision Juice Cinda).

I’m only slightly kidding, but heck, imagine if the country ran out of beer. What Prime Minister could have survived that? Joking aside, I do think this actually is a political problem — not because of the beer angle but because CO2 is so critical, in many unseen ways, for so much of modern living: from medicine to food safety.

And Garage Project helped put the CO2 ball in the government court, with their agenda-setting tweet this week:

Garage Project @Garage_Project

We’re officially out of CO2 at one of our sites, with 64,000L of finished beer waiting to be packaged. No word on when we can expect a delivery. With small tweaks to @eeca_nz funding breweries could be investing in recapture technology to ease national demand & reduce gas imports

Here they are referring to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority which is funded by the various levies we pay for fuel, gas and electricity. EECA made a big deal last year about helping breweries reduce carbon emissions. They do offer co-funding to help businesses meet emissions goals. I had a brief gander at their funding page but good luck trying to decipher what’s there. But based on GP’s tweet, it seems there’s more that can be done to make it easier for businesses to quickly transition to carbon neutrality.

I’m realistic this crisis will be resolved, as similar CO2 catastrophes were in Britain and the United States. For some of my thoughts, you can listen back on Radio NZ, which asked for some comment during the week.

One thing I touched on in that interview is that this has been a long time coming, but it accelerated quickly with the shutdown of Marsden Point refinery last year and then the safety-first closure of Todd Energy’s gas plant in Kapuni this month.

Hopefully, that will reopen soon and there might be some normality, but the likelihood is CO2 prices will remain high for a while. The other alternative is imported CO2 but that’s also costly because of the problems Britain and America have had over the past three years. Plus, shipping delays. The rising cost of gas prices from the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and they were already going up before that) has impacted CO2 production in Britain, where the bulk of their supply comes from fertiliser producers who need natural gas to drive the process. They’d already had shutdowns before the Russian invasion but the British government came in with a bailout. The US scenario was caused by a drop in ethanol production as Americans stayed at home during the pandemic and didn’t need ethanol for fuel. No ethanol production, no CO2 byproduct. And then America’s biggest natural supply of CO2 in Jackson Dome, Mississippi, got contaminated.

Being at the bottom of the world, and without our own supply, leaves New Zealand in a precarious position for CO2 which is needed for so many things from making vaccines, medicine (dry ice), food safety and … well down the line of priority, beer and other beverages.

CO2 is used not only for forced carbonation, but other tasks inside the brewery such as clean-in-place and purging oxygen out of bottles and cans before they are filled (CO2 being heavier than O2 it pushes it out when it’s fed to the bottom).

There are ways around these things with nitrogen (though not for forced carbonation), but breweries that are not set-up for nitrogen need new kit. Smaller breweries might be more adept at that.

Brewtopia @Brewtopia500

@southstarbrew Brewshop in Hamilton have N2 regulators in stock. They’re decent. When we first moved Te Aro to Brewtown, we used Nitrogen for packaging, CIP, cleaning kegs, etc. CO2 usage was down to a couple of G cylinders per month

Kieran Haslett-Moore @southstarbrew

@Brewtopia500 Cheers! Ordered

At the higher scale there’s carbon recapture, which Lion and DB have and which Eddyline invested in (they will be delighted with their foresight!). Their Earthly Labs kit is super-pricey and GP have one ordered but are waiting on shipping (another thing that holds up stuff these days). Hawke’s Bay-based Viniquip is close to introducing a carbon recapture kit that doesn’t do a full recapture like Earthly Labs or Hypro, but gets a percentage back.  Spunding valves can help save CO2 by keeping natural CO2 sealed in tank and adjusting the pressure via the valve.

That’s within the brewery, and many will find ways to get beer into package, one way or another.

But it’s in bars where the current high prices might have a huge impact, as taplines required CO2 to push the beer out of kegs and into your glass. If prices go up too much or there’s simply no supply, bars will need to switch to nitrogen, or more likely they will do away with draught beer and just serve packaged options.

Anyway, there are many avenues out of this which is why, if I’m not optimistic, I’m not thinking the end of the world is nigh. And I will also want to taste whatever beer GP eventually do package from the 64,000 litres getting extra-long conditioning … it will probably be yum.

Phew! Speaking of long-conditioning…

Beer of the week No 1

I’ve always loved McLeod’s Longboarder Lager and it’s almost my perfect summer beer, hovering nicely in the ambient space between hoppy lager and Bohemian Pilsner. It’s so deliciously smooth in its texture with a floral-honey sweetness and then just at the end of the palate ride you get this late spicy bitter kick. It’s so damn good. It undergoes a long conditioning process and as brewer Jason Bathgate pointed out: “That beer is mostly naturally carbonated too. Because of its long conditioning time under pressure.” Double win!

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Fantastic brewpub for sale

For me, The Laboratory, in Lincoln is one of the finest brewpubs in the country. Owners Martin and Lisa Bennett had their inner-city Twisted Hop brewpub destroyed in the Christchurch earthquakes and they did a fantastic post-earthquake rebuild in Lincoln using recycled materials. It’s a wonderful site with a great little brewery attached. But Martin has literally decided to sail off into the sunset and The Laboratory is for sale.

Martin posted on Facebook: “So for those of you that haven’t got wind of this already, I’m planning to sail off around the world in May. Going with my old sailing buddy Dennis, hopefully all the way to our homeland. The sea is calling me, but it’s not for Lisa who will be following along by plane, train and automobile, meeting us along the way. In order to embark on this crazy voyage of a lifetime, there are a few commitments and belongings that we need to be free of.

“So yes you’ve guessed it, The Laboratory is up for sale, including the building that we lovingly built back in 2014.”

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A brief word now from our sponsor (just joking, there is no sponsor … but if anyone out there wants to sponsor…)

But I do have a few of these very cool Hoppiness hats for sale. The blue ones in particular have been popular, so now that the sun’s out again you might want to order one :)

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