HYOGO, March 31 – A small plant factory is created inside a Japanese sake brewery.
Hakutsuru Sake Brewing Co., a major sake brewer in Kobe, launched a pilot project on March 2 together with Spice Cube, an Osaka-based indoor cultivation equipment maker, to grow herbs using carbon dioxide produced during the brewing process.
The harvested herbs will be used as ingredients to make gin and other products at the brewer.
Hakutsuru is aiming at realizing sustainable brewing through adopting such recycling initiatives.
The project will run through the end of June at Hakutsuru Sake Craft, a microbrewery that opened in September last year inside Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum in Kobe.
Vertical farming equipment is set up next to the brew chamber, allowing trial cultivation of 40 pots of herbs that can be used in sake making, such as shiso leaves, basil and mint.
CO2 is a byproduct of sake brewing, produced during the process of saccharification of malted rice and alcoholic fermentation of yeast.
Roughly 2,000 to 3,000 tons of CO2 are produced every year at Hakutsuru’s three factories.
In the project, CO2 is collected from the brew chamber, compressed to concentration levels of around 800 to 1,500 parts per million and then transported to the vertical farming equipment.
“We plan to use 40 to 60 kilograms of fermentation-derived CO2 during the period of trial farming,” said an official of Hakutsuru’s corporate planning office.
The herbs can be harvested in a month or a month and a half, and will be used as ingredients to make gin and other products.
“We hope the microbrewery and the small plant factory can establish a new model of circular agriculture,” said Tsubasa Sugai, head of Spice Cube.
Herbs are grown at a plant factory in Kobe using carbon dioxide produced during sake brewing and collected from a brew chamber.