Handover then off to the brewery

Back home if guests would come to town and I wanted to show them a good time, I might head to St. Louis and take the tour at Anheuser-Busch. Well that's exactly what the Coomera Club did for us when we arrived. After a little luggage juggling we headed to Carlton Brewery which makes all kinds of beers we've never heard of in the States except one. They do make Foster's but it is not their most popular brand. VB is by far Carlton's version of Bud-Light back home.

The current size plant has been at it's current location since the 1990's and is one of the most "green" breweries around. It is near the Gold Coast and the Gold Coast council charges something like $2.00 per liter to buy the water needed for inputs but charges $2.60 per liter to discharge it. My volumes could be off here, but the pricing is right...things are very expensive here. And when the company wanted to move into the area, the council said that's fine, you can come, but the company has to install all of its cleaning systems for all waste products involved. This plant captures and reuses all of its CO2 to use in the carbonation process and in cleaning the already clean bottles that arrive from the glass factory. None is given off into the atmosphere.

The only thing discharged from the site is sewage, which they could clean if they wanted to but choose not to. All water, bad beer, spilled beer, gray water etc. is captured on site and purified back to a state that is cleaner than the original clean water purchased from the Gold Coast water supply. In essence, Carlton's "dirty" water that has been used, is cleaner than what the Gold Coast sells them. But because it's used water Carlton can't discharge it into the system...even though it is cleaner. It is so clean and so purified that it wouldn't sustain life. Our guide explained that if you used only their purified water to drink from...in two weeks your teeth would be gone because your body would rob the calcium from them. And in a month's time your bones would start to deteriorate. I had one glass...I think I'm OK.

Of course any brewery tour ends with samples. We had a card we could use to get us 4 samples. I had three. And their sample was a full serving, not just a few ounces.