Georgetown brewery first in Kentucky to install new carbon capture technology

GEORGETOWN, Ky. (WKYT) - Country Boy Brewing in Georgetown is working to reduce its carbon footprint with newly installed technology.

In a new partnership with Austin, Texas-based company Earthly Labs, Country Boy Brewing is now the first Kentucky brewery to use new carbon capture technology.

“Previously, you had to produce a whole lot of CO2 to be a brewery of a huge scale or distillery of a huge scale, but these guys with Earthly Labs have been able to pioneer a system that the smaller guys like us can us,” said Daniel “D.H.” Harrison, owner and co-founder of Country Boy Brewing.

Prior to using this new technology, the CO2 produced naturally through beer fermentation was blown off into the ambient air of the brewery. Even though this isn’t harmful to employees, D.H. says implementing this new technology is a big step forward to helping future generations.

“As brewers, we wanted to be good stewards of our surroundings of our community and ultimately the environment where we’re at to leave it better for the next generation that comes along,” Harrison said.

Now, while this carbon capture technology is still in its early stages of use at Country Boy Brewing, officials tell us they’ve already been seeing promising results and, one day, they hope to become completely carbon neutral.

“We produce CO2 naturally, we buy CO2 on the open market to help with the brewing process, to clean kegs, to run our canning system, so, if we can reuse, reclaim something that we’re producing naturally and then repurpose it, it’s the ultimate win-win,” Harrison said.

According to Harrison, their environmental impact from carbon capture is expected to be significant.

“With the production that we did in 2019 and 2020, we’ll reclaim the amount of CO2 and repurpose it the same amount that 5,000 trees would produce over a year,” Harrison said.

Country Boy Brew is also continuing their efforts to send all their grain byproduct produced from brewing to local farms in Georgetown to feed cattle.

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