Beer Powered Beer: Alaska beer brewery is powered by...beer

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The Alaskan Brewing Co. (ABC) will use spent grain from the brewing process to power some of the brewery's functions, ABC wrote in a statement. In turn, the company will lower their energy costs by 70 percent.

ABC is the first craft brewery in the world to use the wet grain known as "spent grain" for sustainability purposes.

The company began the grain energy process in 1995 by installing a gain dryer to dehydrate the grain they used as cattle feed, but given the lack of farms and ranches in the area, they began using 50 percent of the grain as fuel to heat the dryer itself. The process reduced the oil required in the drying set-up and was their first step toward creating the beer-fueled boiler system.

Later, in 2008 ABC became the first craft brewery to install a mash filter press, an energy saving piece, to their brewing equipment. Besides providing greater energy, water and material efficiency, the press produced a lower-in-moisture spent grain that dried considerable faster than regular one, and went on to become the fuel for the brewery's grain dryer.

Four years and $1.8 million later, ABC built a "first-of-its-kind" spent grain steam boiler that is expected to eliminate the brewery's use of fuel oil in the drying process and reduce the oil needed in the rest of the brewery's operations.

The company expects to save about 1.5 million gallons of oil over the next ten years.