How We Transformed 271 Beers into a Single, Unique Spirit

Beer waste at competitions is a serious problem – and we’ve found a solution.

Every year at beer tasting competitions, such as Czech Brew Star, hundreds of liters of beer are left over. These samples, whether unopened or remnants from judging, are often treated as liquid waste. Pouring hundreds of liters of quality beer down the drain is not only uneconomical – it’s a huge loss.

Just imagine: at a competition with 300 samples, as much as 600 liters of beer are discarded. This kind of waste is not only environmentally unfriendly but also directly harmful to our planet. The carbon footprint rises unnecessarily because beer was produced that nobody drank – beer that could still be put to use. Clearly, this is unsustainable.

At Czech Brew Star, we decided to tackle this challenge and create a sustainable model. Instead of pouring leftover beers and tasting samples down the drain, we used them to produce a unique beer spirit with 50% alcohol content. From 271 samples from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Cyprus, we crafted a premium product now available at Mendel University in Brno. Not a single drop goes to waste – the distillation residues are used as feed for bulls at the university’s research station. With this approach, we saved 50–90 kg of CO₂ and became pioneers in the field, not only in Europe.

Support the sustainable Czech Brew Star project and get your own bottle of beer spirit, available at Mendel University in Brno.