Bar flies to return the favour

06 July 2015 - 02:09 By Leonie Wagner

Festival-goers could soon be sipping beer brewed with the help of urine. A European organisation will collect urine from thousands of festival-goers this week in an attempt to recycle it as a fertiliser for barley.The concept is called "From Piss to Pilsner" and will launch this week at Roskilde, one of northern Europe's biggest rock music festivals, in Denmark.The organisers will attempt to collect 25000litres of urine from the more than 100000 music-lovers attending the festival.The UK's The Guardian reported that guests at the festival could be served beer brewed with barley fertilised with urine by 2017.But SAB is unlikely to join this trend any time soon.Jan Coetzee, the extension officer of SAB's Better Barley, Better Beer Project, said that although using urine and sewage in beer-making was not uncommon, it was not easy."This is not something that SAB would consider doing. In fact, if any traces of urine were picked up, [the barley] would not be used," he said."Certain elements in urine might give you the different elements that the soil [in which the barley is grown] needs, and I guess if you can get it at a big event then it's cheaper. But in South Africa it would be very controversial," Coetzee said.Food scientist Nigel Sunley, however, said: "I don't think there is anything wrong with doing this from a food-safety point of view. It is no different to using manure for fertilising agricultural crops."It is actually quite an eye-catching initiative."..

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