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German Brewers Warn Fracking Could Hurt Beer
Taco Cowboy writes "Those of you who like free beer, watch out! The practice of fracking for shale gas may ruin the beer you drink. Under the 'Reinheitsgebot,' or German purity law, brewers have to produce beer using only malt, hops, yeast and water. 'The water has to be pure and more than half [of] Germany's brewers have their own wells which are situated outside areas that could be protected under the government's current planned legislation on fracking,' said a Brauer-Bund spokesman. The Brauer-Bund beer association is worried that fracking for shale gas, which involves pumping water and chemicals at high pressure into the ground, could pollute water used for brewing and break a 500-year-old industry rule on water purity."
"it sounded like such a good idea!" ..
The Reinheitsgebot stipulates beer have only THREE ingredients: water, barley and hops. The purity law dates to 1516. Yeast wouldn't be discovered until 1680 and even then wasn't recognized as a living organism.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
And what about the ground water? Obviously, beer is not the main concern of the issues with fracking.
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Seriously... People would die if they didn't drink fermented beverages in antiquity.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
You obviously know nothing about Germany's economy. In a country where the average beer consumption is over a liter per person, ruining the beer would also ruin the economy.
The real pollution problem with fracking for gas isn't the fact that it's fracking as opposed to more traditional extraction techniques, but that the drilling sites are not well monitored and even existing regulations are not well enforced. In other words, the same crap can happen with conventional drilling. It's also ridiculous that thanks to Dick Cheney, companies don't have to tell the EPA or state environmental departments what the ingredients of their fracking fluids are. At least that's the situation here in the US - as an American I can't speak to the German situation so well. Hopefully they handle it better.
I'm afraid that this is yet another industry that'll screw itself through short term greed, just as lax safety at nuke plants has trashed that industry.
Yes! Let's destroy our clean drinking water in the name of boosting the fossil fuel industry! What a great fucking idea!
Or if only there was a way to filter the water (they don't already filter it?).
Filtering works great for sand, grit, etc. but is not so easy w/ various mixed in chemicals.
Or if only you could take hydrogen and oxygen gasses and do anything useful with them.
You mean the hydrogen that you get from the electrolysis of water, and the oxygen you get either from that or liquefying air? That'll solve your energy problem.
That's like saying that it's okay to pollute the atmosphere with some poisonous gas (say, for example, chlorine gas) because we can always use technology to re-purify it.
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
If only there were some. . .other. . .source of water for the brewers than their existing wells.
Existing wells which the companies have no doubt spent a lot of time and money developing to make sure they can provide an adequate supply. Do you really expect them to have to dump all of that and start buying it in from a profit-seeking provider just because somebody else has started to contaminate the groundwater?
Or if only there was a way to filter the water (they don't already filter it?).
Any why should they have to pay to clean up somebody elses pollution? Any filtration they have is probably geared for contaminants currently found in the ground, not fracking-byproducts.
Or if only you could take hydrogen and oxygen gasses and do anything useful with them.
Again, this is pollution caused by somebody else which then moves with the groundwater into their wells. Why should it be their obligation to change their practices?
But I guess this wouldn't be much of a story, then, would it?
"Fracking company takes steps to ensure their activities don't pollute groundwater" wouldn't be a story, except in the PR sense. "Established beer company has to dump water well facility for alternative sources because their neighbours are leeching crap into the groundwater" most certainly would be a story.
So distill the water if you need it "pure". I doubt the water coming out of the ground is as "pure" as distilled water.
Forget beer - do you know how much potable water the average person uses in a day? Distillation is very energy intensive, otherwise it would be used all over to get fresh water from salt water. Distilled water also tastes like crap. Even soft water has enough mineral content to change the flavor, and I suspect that's part of the beer flavor. Brewer's tend to be very particular about their exact water source, which wouldn't be an issue if distilled water worked well.
Haven't you ever seen The Lorax or Space Balls?
/end sarcasm.
The obvious solution will be to bottled and sell fresh air and water and let those that can't afford it die. Who cares what happens to plant and wild life that can't buy bottled products when we could be creating a whole new industry for some big corporation to make huge profits off something required to sustain life.
I've myself gone to such meetings and it's quite astonishing the kind of utter rubbish that's being peddled as 'fact'. :)
When I get up and ask questions the organisers get nervous and the press interested
But these agitators seem to get away with it, at least for now.
As an example in my town they showed this slide that 'proves' how water is affected.
The scale is so ridiculous I can't imagine why we haven't produced this shallow gas a century ago.
Fact is the shale in my region sits below 3500 m (~10,000ft.)
Above it are huge salt layers that cap the Slochteren formation, the largest but 3/4 depleted on-shore gas field in Europe.
Would there be any leaks from the frack they'd logically end up in this reservoir.
A lady from the public jumped up and cried "Where should we go once our water is polluted", the organisers agreed with her, this crime should be stopped!
In the mean time they 'forget' to mention polluted water is produced at every conventional oil- and gas field, something that in this part of Europe has never been an issue.
But with shale gas it should be?
Thanks Cheney/Bush for fucking up a good idea with irresponsible legislation.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
We have reverse-osmosis filtering system on the water source for the humidifiers for the environmental chambers in the test lab at work. It's not unknown technology. The old-fashioned alternative is a still.
You think that's a solution? What about the rest of the potable water supply and the cost and energy use of what you suggest.
Are these breweries currently using unfiltered, unpurified water?
Quite possibly. There are places where untouched ground water is quite safe to drink (let alone what the alcohol in beer does to further sterilize it). There are plenty of people in less densely populated areas that get their water from a backyard well.
Perhaps you would be happier if humans went back to living in caves? Nearly all industry causes some type of waste. There are ways to deal with it responsibly.
The problem isn't that it can't be dealt with responsibly. The problem is we fear -- the past being our guide -- that it won't, at least not until it's already caused us problems.
I am not a crackpot.
Do you drive a car, use or own anything made of plastic, ever fly anywhere, take a bus?
Popular Science did a report on fracking. Sits that have been contaminated so far? 1 and that was an unusual site where the gas was near the water table.
Usually the gas layer is several thousands feet below the water table. fracking fluid is heavy and flows down so contamination should be next to impossible.
Mindless fear and opposition is frankly destructive and will just increase the use of coal and imported oil and gas.
Thinking people should look at the science and work towards good regulation and not a simple chicken little style ban.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Keep in mind this Reinheitsgebot thingy first came to light in 1516. I think our notion of "pure" has changed somewhat since then...
We have reverse-osmosis filtering system on the water source for the humidifiers for the environmental chambers in the test lab at work. It's not unknown technology. The old-fashioned alternative is a still.
Are these breweries currently using unfiltered, unpurified water?
As someone who consumes large amounts of beer, there are salts and minerals that exist in the water that come from certain aquifers that are actually desired to be in place for the beer and can have a negative or positive effect on the yeast. An adequate amount of calcium, magnesium, and zinc is necessary for some of the yeast’s metabolic paths. I believe most brewers add in these things to aid the yeast as much or as little as they want but I am almost certain that RO would completely remove any of this out of the water along with anything bad.
This becomes especially apparent when a very large brewery like Anheuser-Busch or SABMiller buys out a smaller brewery like Leinenkugel's and moves production from Wisconsin to Missouri or where ever it is most convenient for their supply lines. Often they keep the same formula, make little adjustments to it and rely on brand loyalty. And as someone who has consumed vast amounts of Leinies in Chippewa Falls, WI and also on the east coast, I can tell you right now that Leinies out here tastes like shit and I'd much prefer Yuengling, Troegs or any of the more local breweries.
And my suspicions are that they take shit water, put it through RO and don't or can't make proper adjustments to add sconnie minerals resulting in an inferior product. Don't get me wrong, I love RO water. I worked at restaurant that only served triple reverse osmosis water and then added some salts and minerals post process and holy hell that was the most refreshing thing I've ever drank. But these breweries are operating on top of hundreds of years of adjustments to their local aquifers and just asking them to insert RO water into their process is probably harder said than done.
My work here is dung.
Just make sure it stays pure and don't allow US-style rape of resources.
Under present EU and German legislation modern oilfield technology is quite well capable of extracting shale gas in a clean and responsible way without the American effects on the environment and population.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
These are the same people who are now building new coal burning plants because they shut down their nuclear power industry. And the coal they are burning is low quality crap lignite. In some countries in Europe coal consumption is increasing 50% per year.
Some have called it a new golden age of coal in Europe:
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21569039-europes-energy-policy-delivers-worst-all-possible-worlds-unwelcome-renaissance
Now of course they are going to turn their back on much cleaner natural gas because they are afraid that they can't write effective regs for shale gas production?
MOAR COAL!!!
Europe's environmental policy is flat out nuts.
Except for a simple solids filter it's pretty much used the way it gets out of the ground, yes that's how these natural water supplies are, clean and ready for consumption.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Are you saying he's another Hollywood tree-hugger distorting facts in order to sell movie tickets?
Except that the cost is probably a large multiple of the win you can get from fracking. So why would this be considered an acceptable solution?
Oh, right, because those who get the profits are not the same as those who have to pay the cost.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
silly americans think their beer is beer...
FTFY
Good thing you said that about Americans, who are quite forgiving about such "jokes". If you'd said that about Canadians, you could be in real trouble
What about the water? I know it is the national drink in Germany, but they do drink water too, correct?
1 site contaminated? really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_hydraulic_fracturing#Groundwater_contamination
Skimming 3 paragraphs shows 3 sites in the US and I'm sure proper research would turn up a lot more. There is a movie about this (arguably propaganda) called Gasland that I have yet to watch. Considering potable water is a necessary resource, and natural gas is not necessary (although it is important). I am very very wary of the proposition of risking one for another.
I think you misunderstand how fracking works. Fracking works by pumping water into the earth. The water is typically not potable, because potable water is expensive. So there's no amount of "monitoring" that can prevent "leaks" because the whole point of the process is to leak. You leak water into the ground under high pressure, and that releases natural gas which can then be exploited.
The problem with fracking is not so much that it would pollute ground water, although it could well do so, but that it will pollute aquifers.
Also, whenever an industry flack says "however, done right..." I wonder if said flack recalls any time in the history of extractive industries when things were "done right." Extractive industries are at their most profitable when things are not "done right," because doing things right is expensive. As long as the costs of not doing things right can be laid off on someone else, the stockholders would sue the asses off of a company that did things "right," because such a company would not be maximizing shareholder value.
So let us not pretend that things will be done right. Let us assume instead that they will not be done right, and plan for that, because that is what is going to actually happen.
I drink from an aquifer. Most of my neighbors drink either from an aquifer or from ground water. People who are on town water in my town do in fact drink from a lake; the lake water is chlorinated, because it has to be, because animals poop nearby. But if you dumped a thousand gallons of hexane in it, the town would be drinking bottled water for the foreseeable future—there's no way to filter that out at the treatment plant. So don't give me this crap about it not mattering whether the water in streams and lakes is contaminated.
Umm.... no? Good cementing practices will seal off the freshwater aquifers. In some plays this is more difficult than in others, but it's nonsense to say that it can't be done right, only that many states are trying to regulate the wrong things to ensure that it is.
It would only be a flaw in their argument if the Reinheitsgebot called for distilled water, which of course it does not. "Pure" in reference to water means "safe to drink." If the well has been poisoned, the water is no longer pure. That is precisely what we are talking about here.
Or if only there was a way to filter the water (they don't already filter it?
In much of Germany, the water in the brewers' wells is so pure, they do not need to filter it.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Nobody drinks from a lake river or stream anymore.
The entire city of Vienna, Austria - and that is: millions of people - drink from mountain streams, whose water is led to Vienna by aquaducts and pipes.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
All water can be cleaned using energy. Nobody drinks from a lake river or stream anymore.
No, no it can't. And cleaning it will not be cheap. Ethyl glycol ethers often dissolve the separation membranes on reverse osmosis systems. Many other chemicals are costly to remove. The disposal of the chemicals they were able to retrieve is an added expense. Most companies do not disclose the 'cocktail' of chemicals they're using, therefore testing for contaminants is an added cost. Most wells require a minimum of 500,000 gallons of water to frack and can consume up to 16 times that over a well's lifetime. How can that be useful for people that need water in western states like California, New Mexico, and Colorado? What about the slurry waste that is often pumped back into an unused well? No cleaning of the slurry is preformed. It's just pumped back into the ground. Many farmers and ranchers have been selling their water rights for fracking instead of making food. I see an unsettling pattern towards scarcity. This is manufactured and we don't have to settle for it, but I have a feeling that we're gonna be drinking someone's tainted Kool-Aid at the rate we're 'progressing'.
From the Dec. 17, 2012 edition of The Nation:
"No one doubts that fracking fluids have the potential to do serious harm. Theo Colborn, an environmental health analyst and former director of the World Wildlife Fund’s wildlife and contaminants program, identified 632 chemicals used in natural-gas production. More than 75 percent of them, she said, could affect sensory organs and the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems; 40 to 50 percent have potential impacts on the kidneys and on the nervous, immune and cardiovascular systems; 37 percent act on the hormone system; and 25 percent are linked with cancer or mutations.
"Fracking a single well requires...400,000 gallons of additives, including lubricants, biocides, scale and rust inhibitors, solvents, foaming and defoaming agents, emulsifiers and de-emulsifiers, stabilizers and breakers. About 70 percent of the liquid that goes down a borehole eventually comes up—now further tainted with such deep-earth compounds as sodium, chloride, bromide, arsenic, barium, uranium, radium and radon."
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Why do we have to pump toxic chemicals into the ground, though? Why not just pump water down? For that matter, why frack at all? There are plenty of high producing gas fields around. Just use those.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Beer isn't typically made with distilled water. Mineral content plays an important factor in beer brewing both in terms of the brewing process as well as the resulting character of the beer. Some breweries take pride and even advertise the fact that the water in their beers comes from wells sunk at the brewery itself. I don't know of a German example but the Samuel Smith Brewery in England uses the same wells sunk in 1758 as stated on the labels on the bottles. If groundwater at a brewery were to be contaminated there is no doubt there would be a real economic impact to that brewery. Even if distillation and re-adding minerals were an option it would be a very costly and would never match the original composition of the groundwater.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
Your post in one line (to save time):
You don't know it'll be done right, I don't know it'll be done wrong, so let's assume I'm correct because I told you I am.
Did that about sum it up?
I am not the original poster, but let me respond with: Yes, and that is why any sane person should err on the side of safety.
After all, if I can't prove you are guilty and you can't prove yourself innocent; I have to assume you are innocent. Because if you are actually guilty, I have merely just not punished you for what you already did. But if you are indeed innocent, I would commit a crime (or at least wrongdoing) on top of yours.
On the other hand, if someone has told you that I wrecked my previous 10 cars, you would probably not lend me your car; even if you have no proof for it and I don't have a proof against it. Here, the safe approach is to not lend me the car (unless I can prove to you I desperately need it and you believe me).
Erring on the side of caution is in itself always a very good thing.
The fine details come from when you believe the scales are in balance. For example, in the above case of the car, the person who told you that I'm a car-wrecker could've been a person that you know very well, or a random maniac with soiled clothing. I think in the latter case you'd be more inclined to believe my (still equally baseless) statement of innocence in terms of car-wrecking.
Now look again back at the track record of all parties in the question of "Is fracking safe?" and ask yourself: Are the scales in balance or even tipped in favour of the safe approack of not allowing fracking? If yes, then choose the safe route. If not, then you can contemplate being adventurous -- but be ready to examine the scales if new evidence comes up.
You see, the problem is not the question itself; just which side you find more trustworthy and reliable in its arguments and proofs.
Except that 80% of German beer that is drunk it good or better beer and 80% of american beer that is drunk is mediocre or worse. You can find very bad beer in Germany and great beer in the US. The big difference in Germany is that most beer that is sold in bars is from the one of the local breweries, which on average is 3 per town (from 1000 pop.). In many cases you have larger beer houses that brew and sell their own beer. On average you get better beer in Germany than the US.
- from a USA/German national
And 100% of Belgium beer is as good or better than German; as is their chocolates relative to the Swiss.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
We also shouldn't be paying attention to any 500-year-old rules that have something to say about chemistry...
I don't know about that. "Do not drink from the water the goat just pissed in" remains a sensible rule, even after all this time. Different centuries, different goats, but the principle remains sound.
I think you misunderstand how fracking works. Fracking works by pumping water into the earth. The water is typically not potable, because potable water is expensive.
Isn't one or the key ways of making water potable by filtering it through the ground?
Its not that the fracking water is impure it is that it is actually Fracking MUD, an intentional mix of water, chemicals, (bentonite and others), as well as propellants. It starts polluted.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
*why, oh why...
Because companies deriving large profits from fossil fuels will do whatever it takes to maximize and prolong those profits, everyone else be damned. The better-paid workers and executives can buy clean bottled water from current "known good" sources and presumably can pay for better-ventilated showers.
In all the articles and research, left unsaid is what effects the contaminated water will have on crops and livestock.
Were they anyone else (corps being people, after all), they'd be up for a Darwin award.
That is an extraordinary claim and it requires extraordinary evidence. Specifically, it requires explaining why fracking liquid injected into a gasfield inevitably ends up in an aquifer, despite these being separated by impermeable layers (which is a requirement for gas to stay put in the first place).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
All fracking is not the same.
Bad fracking
1. Shallow wells
2. permeable layers between fracked shale and aquifer
3. Poor handling of fracking chemicals
Good fracking
1. Deep wells
2. Impermeable layer between shale and aquifer
3. Close monitoring of site and disposal of chemicals.
By the way, a similar thing has bee done for decades in oil fields where hot water is injected down one well to increase production on others. The difference with fracking is the chemicals used to create and hold open the cracks so the natural gas can flow.