Barnaby’s Brewhouse is a small brewery based in South Hams with a difference. Sustainability is baked into its ethos as it aims to be a completely sustainable business using renewable energy sources and repurposing or reusing all waste products to create vegan-friendly beers. 

This includes: utilising second hand and reclaimed materials (largely from other breweries or dairies); using solar panels on his farm; developing a range of innovative process controls to manage brewing, fermentation and conditioning; and using only organic (vegan & vegetarian friendly) produce, with utilisation of spring water from Riverford Organic Farm nearby, and composting hops in the polytunnels at the local Riverford Field Kitchen. 

Its director, Barnaby Harris, has already carried out a lot of work to make his brewery as sustainable as possible using these methods, with the assistance of business partner Tim Stacey. With the team’s combined efforts, they won the 2019 South West Environmental Sustainability Award from Taste of the West. Not one to rest on his laurels, Barnaby was committed to improve the efficiency of his brewing process and reduce his carbon footprint even further.  

A colleague tipped Barnaby off about the Decarbonise Your Small Business programme through their business support network. From there, he applied to gain support on how to carry out improvements to his processes through a carbon footprint and recommendation report. He found the process of receiving support straightforward with excellent support from our team and other participants in the programme. 

What new processes have you picked up as a result of the programme? 

“Our approach, as a brewery, had previously been around innovations in the actual brewing processes and the repurposing of outputs from the business (trying not to create waste). The programme made us think more about practical and easily implementable actions regarding insulation, metering and renewable energy options.”

What sustainability measures have you currently implemented to reduce your carbon emissions? 

“We are more energy conscious than ever before and have changed our brewing processes by reducing the amount of chilling and heating required. We have managed to reduce the amount of chilling without affecting product quality, and we have managed to speed up our production cycle so that each batch is processed more time efficiently and requires less energy.  

“We have daisy-chained certain processes (particularly cleaning of vessels and filters) to use hot water generated through the heat exchanger when chilling wort on brewing days.”

As a result of implementing these changes, Barnaby has become more focused in carrying out his goals through SMART targets and has significantly improved his company’s profit margins. He aspires to continue decreasing his carbon emissions by adding more insulation to his brewery and introducing solar thermal panels to generate additional heat. All of this will contribute towards his goals for the brewery to operate completely off the grid. 

You can visit the website here: https://barnabysbrewhouse.com/  

If you would like to find out more about how to decarbonise your small business, get in touch with BIPC Devon now to find out how we can help!