A Danish brewery is using over 50,000 litres of human urine collected from the largest music festival in Northern Europe to produce a novelty beer called ‘Pisner.’
The idea of creating a beer made from barley fertilized with urine was first announced back in 2015 by the Danish Agriculture and Food Council and Danish Brewery Nørrebro Bryghus and now it’s a reality.
‘Pisner’ contains no human waste, but is produced from fields of malting barley fertilized with human urine rather than traditional animal manure or factory-made plant nutrients.
Having accumulated over double their target volume at Roskilde Festival near Copenhagen, the urine was sprayed over crops in the spring of 2016, producing 11 tons of malted barley. The brewing process then began at the end of March this year and the finished article will be available to taste in June.
Commenting on the project, Karen Hækkerup, CEO at the Danish Agriculture and Food Council, said “Just as we have seen shops sell goods that would otherwise have been thrown out, Beercycling allows us to recycle a product that is normally flushed down the drain.”
“When it comes to circular economy, Danish farmers are some of the best in the world. If you can brew a beer with urine as fertiliser, you can recycle almost anything.”
Henrik Vang, the Executive Director at Nørrebro Bryghus, added: “The reason why we make this ‘Pisner’ beer is because we are a craft brewery out of Copenhagen and about four years ago we converted into organic, so all our beers are organic today. We thought it would be a great idea also to go into recyclable beer. So we want to test our brewers and test our opportunities to make recyclable beer.”
