Turning Whiskey Into Gas

I wrote a story for Offrange about whiskey stillage. It is about how a couple of large distilleries – Jim Beam and Jack Daniels – are letting little critters eat their stillage and burp out methane, which is then cleaned up and used as renewable natural gas.

The process of writing this one was a doozy – I spent so long researching it that I made less than California minimum wage on it. I started looking at the Buffalo Trace/Meridian announcement, but when I tried to get more information, both companies refused to tell me anything.

I then started looking at corn fuel ethanol plants and how they process their stillage. They mostly make DDGS it seems, but are increasingly harvesting some other higher-value products like high-protein animal feed and corn oil.

I learned that, due in part to regionality (where the distilleries are located) and part due to the value of corn ethanol vs bourbon, the fuel distilleries see stillage as a coproduct while the distilleries see it is a byproduct – and many distillers give it away for free to farmers to use for animal feed or to apply it as fertilizer.

Then I further learned that in Scotland, having a renewable natural gas plant next to distilleries is pretty common, so we’re just lagging behind.

Anyway, check out the story I spent a long time writing.