Even as the U.S. craft beer industry swells past 7,000 breweries, you’d be hard-pressed to find a startup focusing as much energy on sustainability as Sonoma County’s Seismic Brewing Company.
Launched in 2017, Santa Rosa, California-based Seismic is the brainchild of Chris Jackson and Patrick Delves, former college roommates with a passion for the beer and wine industries. (Jackson’s father Jess created the well-known Kendall-Jackson wine label in 1982.)
Their initial discussions about opening a brewery in late 2014 – when the segment was growing double-digits and there were half as many breweries operating – centered around the idea of building a sustainability-minded brand.
“We decided, what do we want Seismic to be, at the beginning of this,” Delves said. “Two of the pillars that we build our business on are [being] uncompromising on quality, as well as being sustainable from the ground up.”
As part of their effort to build out a sustainable brewery from the onset, Jackson and Delves invested in technology from Cambrian Innovation, provider of wastewater solutions to industrial producers.
Located onsite at the brewery, Cambrian’s EcoVolt Mini, a water treatment system, enables Seismic to reuse industrial process water and lower its water usage rate.
“Industry average is roughly six-to-seven barrels of water to one barrel of beer, and we are currently hovering around three-and-a-half to four to one,” Delves said.
In episode 24 of the Brewbound Podcast, which was recorded at the end of 2018, Jackson and Delves discuss Seismic’s sustainability efforts, what it’s like to sell beer in wine country, early entrepreneurial lessons they’ve learned, and how the emerging cannabis industry could disrupt the alcohol sector, among other topics.
Also in this episode: Brewbound editors Chris Furnari and Justin Kendall talk about Anheuser-Busch InBev’s latest acquisition and discuss a pair of compromise bills in Texas that could finally give manufacturing breweries the right to sell beer to-go.
Listen to episode 24 of the Brewbound Podcast above, as well as on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and Soundcloud. New episodes of the Brewbound Podcast, which is co-hosted by Furnari and Kendall, are published every Thursday.
Episode 25, featuring Bissell Brothers Brewing co-founder Peter Bissell, will be released on Thursday, February 28.
For questions, comments or suggestions, please email podcast@brewbound.com.