Epic Cleantec is recycling shower water and making beer
A startup operating in the field of clean water is making an interesting bet on beer. It’s interesting because the beer is made from recycled shower and bleach.
San Francisco-based Epic Cleantec launched in 2015 as a wastewater recycling company that uses its proprietary technology to clean and reuse water in office and apartment buildings.
CEO Aaron Tartakovsky said at the time: “We need to get over our anger and forget about society.”
Now he’s taking it to the next level.
“A lot of it was psychology,” he said. “This makes people comfortable with the concept of recycled water. And we found that if you tell people the water is clean, maybe they’ll trust you, maybe they won’t. But if you take those same recycled water molecules and put them in a nice can of beer, suddenly people love it.”
According to the company, Epic’s systems simply collect water for beer from showers and laundries and then put it through various stages of purification, including filters, biological treatment, membrane filtration, granular activated carbon, reverse osmosis and disinfection.
The resulting clean water is then taken to Devil’s Canyon Brewing Co. and turned into beer.
The beer is available for online orders in California, Virginia, Oregon, Ohio, Kentucky, Vermont, New Hampshire, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Alaska and Washington, DC, and at retail locations in California.
It takes about 10 gallons of water to make one gallon of beer, so using recycled water has a big impact on the water supply. Epic’s IPA is also made with drought-tolerant and energy-efficient hops, grain, and yeast; this highlights the environmental impact from grain to glass.
But again, it’s not about the beer.
“Buildings use about 15% of all freshwater on this planet,” Tartakovsky said. “We need to do things differently, and that means we need to tell the story differently. We need to engage people differently.”
Jordan Langer, CEO of event company Non Plus Ultra, was one of Epic’s original investors when it came to just buildings. He now serves beer at his events.
“I was a little skeptical. I don’t believe in gimmicks,” Langer said. “But I was wrong. It blew up like crazy. It shed a lot of light on Epic Cleantec, which made it really interesting.”
Epic Cleantec is backed by three family offices, as well as J-Ventures, J-Impact and Echo River Capital. Total funding to date is $25 million.
Epic currently has two beer offerings: Shower Time IPA and Laundry Club Kölsch. Tartakovsky said the company is also considering producing non-alcoholic beer.
— CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this article.
