Adnams Sole Bay Brewery & Copper House Distillery

Adnams is the most committed producer to energy saving, environmentally and socially responsible production we have yet encountered. This is passionately driven by Jonathan Adnams, but appears supported by all Adnams’ employees, with the company as a whole continuously searching for innovations which provide sustainable benefits.

Every day at Adnams, the brewery heats large amounts of clean water to wash and sterilise returned empty beer casks before refilling with fresh beer. One innovation which has emerged since distilling commenced is to use water to first cool the stills – this water heats up during that process and is fed to the beer cask washing machine. Thus Adnams now obtains two uses from one input of heat and water.

A huge environmental issue for distilleries is what to do with the waste stillage resulting from distillation. Adnams combines this with other waste from the brewery and tanks it to their anaerobic digester to make green methane gas. In turn, Adnams uses this gas to power the brewery’s boiler and distribution vehicle fleet. Any surplus gas produced from this organic waste is fed into the national gas network. Completed in the autumn of 2010, this is the first anaerobic bio digester in the UK to feed methane gas into the main grid.

All of Adnams’ beer bottles have been redesigned to use 34 per cent less glass, so generating far less carbon emissions during the manufacturing process (a saving of some 415 tonnes of CO2 per annum). This also reduces fuel usage due to lighter transportation. Obviously, the bottles are 100% recyclable.