Craft brewing, cider making and distilling

All businesses have a legal duty of care for business waste. It is your responsibility to store, handle, transport and dispose of waste safely and without harming the environment. This duty of care applies to brewery, cidery and distillery waste.

Types of brewery, distillery and cidery waste

Breweries, cideries and distilleries can generate large volumes of organic and process waste, including:

• spent grain, malt and potato (draff)
• trub (solids from liquid wort)
• malting by-products
• waste yeast
• spent hops
• apple waste
• pot ale (liquid distillation residue)
• spent lees (liquid distillation residue)
• used kieselguhr (filter material)
• used carbon

You must classify each waste stream correctly and check whether it is hazardous or non‑hazardous before deciding how to handle or dispose of it.

Options for brewery, cidery and distillery waste

Much of this waste can be reused, recycled or recovered rather than sent to landfill. Some activities need a waste management licence or a registered exemption, and you may need to meet certain conditions.  

Consider the following options for your business waste:

• Use as animal feed - feed spent grains, malt, yeast and pot ale to cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry.
• Landspreading - use pot ale, spent lees, spent hops and trub as a crop fertiliser. You can apply for an exemption so you don't need a licence to do this.
• Composting - compost draff, spent grains, yeast, used kieselgur from beer filters, spent hops and the dust, small grains and culms from malting. You will need a waste management licence.
• Burning for heat or power - you will need an exemption for appliances with a net thermal input of less than 0.4 Mw.
• Discharge to sewer - you will need trade effluent consent from the sewer provider and authorisation from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA).
• Discharge to water after treatment - you may need to put in your own adequate effluent treatment system before you will be approved by NIEA.
• Anaerobic digestion - you can use materials from distilling and brewing such as draff, spent grain, pot ale and spent lees in an anaerobic digestion plant to generate biogas and materials suitable for soil improvement. You will need a waste management licence or a pollution prevention and control permit depending on how much waste you have the capacity to process.
• Having waste collected by a contractor - you can dispose of waste off-site, using a registered waste carrier that takes it to a licenced site. Most waste companies will be able to take organic materials to composting sites or anaerobic digestion plants. None of the waste products listed above need to be landfilled. 

Effluent and discharges 

Breweries, cideries and distilleries use significant amounts of water and produce trade effluent with high organic loads. Read our guide on brewery water efficiency for advice on reducing water use and disposing of effluent.

Food and drink businesses producing significant food waste must also follow separate food waste regulations, including requirements to segregate food waste for separate collection.