Epic OneWater Beer is made from recycled wastewater by Devils Canyon

A water treatment company in San Francisco has partnered with a brewery to create a beer made with recycled water from a residential building.

Epic Cleantec partnered with Devil's Canyon Brewing Co. to craft Epic OneWater Brew, a Kölsch-style ale made with recycled grey water from Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury high-rise building in San Francisco.

The building has a grey water reuse system designed to recycle 7,500 gallons of water per day, or up to 2.75 million gallons per year, according to Epic Cleantec's website. The system is the first approved and operational grey water reuse system in San Francisco.

The grey water used to make the beer is collected specifically from laundry and showers, and is "treated to exceptional standards and is then reused for toilet and urinal flushing within the building."

In September, Epic Cleantec transported over 2,000 gallons of this recycled water to Devil's Canyon Brewing Co. to begin its two-week transformation into beer.

The beer is not available to purchase, as regulations prohibit the use of recycled wastewater in commercial beverages.

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While many may perceive recycled water to be of lesser quality, Epic Cleantec says that is not the case.

According to the company, recycled water is not only safe to drink, but is often cleaner than many sources of water we commonly drink after being purified with advanced treatment technologies.

Before consumption, the water is treated to "an extremely high level of purity that meets (or even exceeds) federal drinking water quality standards," according to the company.

There is research to back up the company's claim.

In 2022, researchers at Stanford University found that recycled wastewater can be more dependable and less toxic than common tap water sources, including rivers and groundwater.

“We expected that potable reuse waters would be cleaner, in some cases, than conventional drinking water due to the fact that much more extensive treatment is conducted for them,” said William Mitch, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

“But we were surprised that in some cases the quality of the reuse water, particularly the reverse-osmosis-treated waters, was comparable to groundwater, which is traditionally considered the highest quality water,” he said.

According to Epic Cleantec's website, the wastewater is stored on-site and then filtered and cleaned using a "multi-step process that includes membrane filtration, UV treatment and chlorine disinfection to remove impurities and contaminants."

Once the water is recycled, it can be reused on-site for things like irrigation, toilet and urinal flushing and laundry.

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Epic Cleantec posted a "behind the scenes" video to its YouTube page in December 2022.