A brewery teamed up with a fish farm to recycle their old water and grain to

Companies looking to invest in sustainable practices to help make the planet a better place want to go with the best way to their waste go somewhere positive. This brings companies together in unorthodox partnerships many wouldn’t have imagined working well together. However, some feel all too natural. Such as the cooperation between Five & 20 Craft Spirits and Brewing, a brewery based in New York, and fish farming startup TimberFish Technologies. The brewery gives the fish farm its used water and grain to use as food for the fish.

The partnership started with TimberFish creating a 70-foot long tank system for fish and smaller creatures to reside in. Five and 20 then had to set up a water system to filter their recycled brewing water into. The brewing grains don’t go directly in, they get chopped up and mixed with local wood chips that were sustainably harvested.

This mixed in wood releases nitrogen and phosphorus into the water, feeding the microbes inside. These microbes clean the water as they settle at the bottom, growing throughout this process to then feed worms and snails in the water, which act as feed for the fish. The fish then excrete their food back to the bottom of the tank, providing another food source for the microbes to feast on. This feeding process provides the fish with a sustainable ecosystem to live in.

The new fish farm provides a great way for Five and 20 to reuse their water, but it also helps them financially. Previously, they were hiring a service to take their water and grain waste to get used in fields to turn into compost. While it was a way to give their byproducts a new purpose, it cost the company nearly $30,000. This partnership removes the payments Five and 20 were routinely making, and it provided a new series of jobs for TimberFish to create to have new personnel manage the tanks. TimberFish hopes to use their successful partnership with Five and 20 to create additional fish farms in other local areas for consumers looking to buy closer to home.

The first of the fish gets harvested sometime in the spring or summer of 2018 where they will go to local markets and to Five and 20’s featured restaurant, Bird.

Fish Farm and Brewery