Make Beer. Ferment Revolution.

Homebrewer Boils a Greasy Brew

Making beer is a greasy business for Bob Higgs. He loves the old-fashioned craft of homebrewing but he prefers to brew a new fangled way using two unconventional ingredients – used french fry grease and rays of sunlight.

On one level his homebrew system seems high tech, but on another it’s pretty humble. These two traits seem to reflect his personality. On the one hand, he has a background in mechanical engineering, but on the other his sense of frugality prevents careless spending on unnecessary homebrew gadgets. He started homebrewing about 15 years ago because he says, “I always liked good beer but it was very expensive. So I began to brew good beer to save money. I . . . use a home brewing kit that was given to me as a present. I still use that 5 gallon brew bucket.”

On the technical side, Higgs installed a solar hot water heater on his roof to heat his home and his household water supply. Then recently he installed an oil heating system that he converted to run on used french fry grease, what’s known as Straight Vegetable Oil or Waste Vegetable Oil to those in the know. “The solar system is comprised of three 4’ by 10’ (photovoltaic) collectors and a 135 gallon water storage tank. The storage tank has a heat exchanger to preheat the house domestic hot water. Another heat exchanger is located in the house duct work near the air handler. This is used for the home heat.”

“I started using biodiesel,” he continues, “in an old oil boiler that I connected to my solar home heating system. With some modifications to the nozzle (which preheated the biodiesel) the boiler worked well. I hope to heat using only Waste Vegetable Oil this winter. I also have a 1982 Mercedes Benz that runs on biodiesel.”

Biodiesel is the generic name for vegetable oil that is used as fuel. It can replace conventional diesel fuel in just about any engine. Diesel engines can run on a mixture of biodiesel and regular diesel without any modifications whatsoever. If you want to use Straight Vegetable Oil a few tweaks are necessary, but the pay off can be great since the oil can be acquired for free from restaurants needing to dispose of their used fryer grease.

Higgs is part of a biodiesel cooperative in North Carolina that was started by Eric Henry, who runs a t-shirt printing company that operates in a factory he has retrofitted to be eco-friendly. The factory runs on solar energy just like Higgs’ house. Henry also shares a passion for good beer: “Eric and I have a beer for biodiesel barter going.”

Biodiesel is rapidly gaining in popularity. In the year 2000, Americans burned two million gallons of it. By 2002 that number had increased tenfold to 20 million gallons. An August issue of Newsweek featured the fuel on its front cover. Country music icon and farmer advocate Willie Nelson markets his own brand of biodiesel, BioWillie, at truck stops across America. Any type vegetable oil can be used as a biofuel, including hemp oil (read more about hemp in these Fermenting Revolution stories: Hemp Beer Helps Save the World; TV Bartender Woody Harrelson Advocates for Hemp Farmers; Toronto's C'est What? Serves Up Homegrown Hemp Ale), which was used to fuel one of Henry Ford's first car models.

The life cycle of biodiesl, starting out as french fry grease from Zack's Hot Dogs and ending up as heating fuel for a homebrewer.

Bob’s biodiesel efforts are helping to reduce the waste stream of a local restaurant called Zack’s Hot Dogs, but he also tries to reduce waste from his own brewing set up. “All of the leftover brewing yeast and any vegetable waste gets composted and used in my garden.”

Given all these cool eco-innovations, I asked Bob if he thought beer might be able to help save the world, to which he replied: “I think beer could save the world if all the world leaders got drunk -- maybe they would begin to think straight.” Well, keep up the mechanical engineering and biodiesel work Bob. I wouldn’t recommend a career move into the field politics.

Eric Henry hanging out with Willie Nelson and folks from Piedmont Biofuels.