Cheers to Eco-friendly Beer Production!
Every year we observe World Energy Day with a spotlight on Koda Energy, the energy-efficient power source for Rahr Malting Co.’s Shakopee, MN campus—and cause for celebration of the Rahr malt in your mash vessel.
At the heart of Koda’s power plant is a unique, highly efficient suspension boiler fueled by agricultural byproducts, including waste material from the malting process itself. The boiler produces steam to drive a turbine, which generates renewable electricity for the malthouses and kilns. The chimney is equipped with an electrostatic precipitator strips ionized soot from the burner exhaust, venting clean vapor into the air.
This translates to a lot of malt, made with less fossil fuels.
Rahr Shakopee produces 460,000 metric tons of malt annually—supplying~25% of the entire U.S. brewing industry—and every kernel is malted with clean, renewable energy from Koda.
Since it was commissioned in 2009, Koda has eliminated the use of natural gas as a fuel for Rahr’s malt kilns; it also generates more electricity than the Shakopee facility consumes in a year, for a net CO2 reduction of approximately 260,000 tons per year.
Brewing beer is an energy-intensive process—so is the farming and malting of barley. As we collectively reckon with the realities of climate change and its potential impacts on our industry and our communities, there has never been a more important time for all of us to be more efficient, innovative, and sustainability-minded with our production.