Reducing our CO2 is good for the environment, business & beer!

Did you hear the good news? Sebago Brewing is reducing our carbon footprint! We recently installed a brand new DALUM CO2 Recovery Plant at our brewery in Gorham.

Just like other breweries, we use carbon dioxide widely in the brewing process. You might be familiar with CO₂ adding carbonation to beer, but we also use it to purge oxygen out of cans, bottles, kegs, and tanks to make sure that the flavors and aromas that give beer its distinctive character stay true.

Carbon dioxide is produced as a natural part of the fermentation process as brewer’s yeast converts sugars into alcohol, but for most craft breweries this CO₂ bubbles out of the fermentation tanks and into the atmosphere because there have been limited ways to capture and reuse it.

The DALUM technology we’ve installed is scaled for craft brewers, where existing technology was only scaled for mega breweries. Now we can capture and reuse CO2 produced during the fermentation process. The CO2 is captured, purified, and liquefied to beverage-grade CO2 with a +99.9% purity that is used in the brewing process and to carbonate Sebago beer.

According to Chet Kiedrowski, head of DALUM USA operations (and the guy who helped install the new system and trained our team on it), by using our own CO2 and not trucking it in from an industrial source, we will save 128,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into our atmosphere every year. That’s the equivalent of the emissions from 6,533 gallons of gasoline!

Our own Director of Brewing Operations Peter Dahlen had this to say: “We’re really excited to implement this sustainable advancement in our facility and hope to see other brewers be able apply it to theirs as well.”

Self-guided tours of the new equipment will be available soon!