If there's anything Portland, Oregon residents love—more than their bicycles and their backyard chickens, that is—it's their beer. The keep-it-weird city has long had a thriving craft suds scene, and is currently home to about 53 breweries producing about 125 styles. Some of those beers are made with some pretty out-there flavorings: the city's Rogue Ales & Spirits, for example, offers a sriracha stout as well as chocolate, banana, and peanut butter ale. But soon, Oregon's dedicated brewmasters might have a more, shall we say, exotic ingredient to include in their beers: recycled wastewater.According to a story on Oregon Public Broadcasting, a Portland-area wastewater treatment company wants to demonstrate the efficacy of its sophisticated filtration system by taking the city's toilet water, processing it into ultra-pure drinking water, and offering it up to the Oregon Brew Crew, a homebrewing club that hosts private events. For the time being, such events will be the only way that the public will be able to taste the environmentally-friendly beers; though the Oregon Health Authority has already given the go-ahead for wastewater to be used in homebrews, it won't be legal for paying customers to purchase commercial wastewater beer until the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission also agrees to the gambit. That agency is slated to host a public hearing on the issue next week; if Oregonians support the idea, it's possible that somewhere down the line, commercial breweries could also have access to the liquid, which is processed by Clean Water Services of Hillsboro.CWS spokesperson Mark Jockers says that after being treated at the company's four metro-area plants, Portland sewage emerges sparkling-clean, and meets or exceeds all federal drinking water standards."When people think about it enough it makes sense, although the initial knee-jerk reaction might be 'yuck,'" he tells OPB. Jockers also points out that drought-stricken areas including California and Texas have already started drinking their treated wastewater out of necessity; he wants to make sure Portland is equipped to do so in advance of any crisis situation. "We want to start having this conversation now before we get into the drought situation that California and Texas and Australia have gotten into, so we can get the rules and safeguards in place that will allow greater use of this resource," he says.
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CWS has enough faith in its wastewater treatment technology that it's actually already seen its super-strained sewage turned into beer. Last fall, the facility provided 13 Portland-area brewers with 1,000 gallons of treated wastewater; the brewers used the liquid to create 16 varieties of beer that went head-to-head in a private tasting competition. Brewers were impressed with the quality of the water they used; because the wastewater treatment process strips out excess minerals as well as, uh, all that other stuff, the beermakers had an extra-blank slate from which to build layers of flavor in their brews."Don't fear this beer just because the water has been someplace else before,"Art Larrance, founder of the Oregon Brewers Festival, told The Oregonian at the time. "What water hasn't been someplace else before?"