LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

GROUP 5, SESSION B: FOOD PRODUCTS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
144. Life cycle assessment of an artisanal Belgian blond beer
Raphaëlle Melon 1,* , Roberto Renzoni 1 , Angélique Léonard 1 , Vincianne Wergifosse 2
1 Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, University of Liège, 17 allée de la Chimie, 4000 Liège, Belgium, 2
Brasserie des Légendes, 19 rue du Castel, 7801 Irchonwelz, Belgium, * Corresponding author. E-mail:
raphaelle.melon@ulg.ac.be
In the framework of the Wal-Aid project funded by Wallonia aiming namely at developing valorisation
means for co-products of the agro-food industry, a life cycle assessment applied to the production of artisanal
Belgian blond beer of ‘ Brasserie des Légendes’ was carried out.
This analysis focuses on the production of a golden triple beer and the packaging step. The functional unit is
the production of 1 litre of beer and the used method is ReCiPe endpoint. This production is carried out in six
steps: (1) culture of barley, malting, grinding and transport of malt flour at the brewery, (2) brewing (heating
and mixing) of malt flour and water in two steps, heating at 62-63°C during 70-90 minutes, then 73°C for
10-15 min. (3) Boiling wort at 105°C during 2h30 with steam generator. Hop is added to wort but only
transport of this material is considered. (4) Then beer is kept at 4°C during 25 days, (5) packaging in brown
glass bottle of 33 cl with a crown cap chrome steel. The mass of steel capsule is estimated at 2 g and 0.3 g of
label’s paper. (6) Washing of spent grain recovered after brewing with H2SO4.
Most used data in this analysis come from the industrial site except for the production of barley malt and
packaging. Information about these steps are taken from the literature. Generic data come from the ecoinvent
v2.2 database (www.ecoinvent.org). Analysis was performed using SIMAPRO 7.3.2 software from PRé
Consultants.
Electricity consumptions were calculated on the basis of energy balances and Belgian energy mix of 2008
released by the International Energy Agency. This mix shows that Belgian electricity is mainly produced
from nuclear energy (57%), gas (31%) and coal (9%).
Figure 1 shows the percentage contribution of environmental impact for production’s steps of one litre beer
in bottles. The most penalising step is glass packaging with 74.1%; then we find the preparation stage of malt
flour with 19.8%. This stage represents culture of barley, malting, malt grinding and its transport at the
brewery. Washing of spent grain step does not appear in this table because its impact can be considered as
negligible.
Figure 1 shows the single score results of the production of one litre of beer and compares this production
with and without packaging in glass bottle. First, we note that the packaging step greatly increases the overall
impact of production process. Secondly, whatever the system boundaries, i.e. with or without packaging, the
most important impacts are fossil depletion and climate change human health due to the energy demand of
packaging step for the production of glass bottles and energy for growing, grinding and transporting malt
flour. Impact of agricultural land occupation remains the same whatever the system boundaries as the packaging
step is primarily energy consumption and no culture is associated.
For the rest, climate change ecosystems, particulate matter formation and human toxicity are consequences
of use of fossil resource to produce electricity and fuel.
This analysis shows that the most penalising step in the production of this artisanal beer is the packaging.
So, it is on this step we have to work to reduce the environmental impact of this beer. In this study, we consider
a packaging in brown glass bottles and it seems interesting to analyse a packaging of 20 litres in a keg
and compare the results.
Acknowledgments: The authors gratefully acknowledge the Walloon Region of Belgium for the financial
support of Wal-Aid Wagralim project.
References
Kloverpris, J. H., N. Elvig, et al. (2009). Comparative life cycle assessment of malt-based beer and 100%
barley beer, Novozymes A/S, Harboes Bryggeri.
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