Serving Up Suds with a Side of Water Conservation
Bang Brewing Company is in the Creative Enterprise Zone in the West Midway neighborhood of Saint Paul. The brewing center is a unique, purpose-built facility emphasizing green design and environmental stewardship. The highly efficient operation is housed in a 1,300-square-foot partially prefabricated grain bin, with a brew system custom-designed to minimize water use.
Since the Bang Brewing property was purpose-built from the ground up, Capitol Region Watershed District (CRWD) had the opportunity to influence stormwater management on the site from the beginning. Together with its partner – Ramsey County Soil and Water Conservation Division – CRWD envisioned the space as a chance to educate customers about environmental awareness while helping to protect watershed health.
When first constructing the brewery, Bang Brewing’s owners planted a barley field around the building to strengthen the environmental connection to the brewery’s product. But within one year of opening, stormwater had washed all of the germinated grain into the street. Impervious surfaces surrounded the property.
Native plants surround Bang Brewing's building and help soak up rainwater.
Native plants provide beauty and habitat for pollinators like bees and butterflies.
Using Clean Water Project Grant funds from CRWD, Bang Brewing converted most of their one-sixth-acre lot to permeable surfaces to reduce stormwater runoff and landscaped with native prairie grasses and flowers. With the help of Ramsey County Soil and Water Conservation Division and CRWD, the brewery also installed two multi-celled rain gardens to capture and infiltrate nearly an inch of water runoff from the parking lot. While it may not be apparent to visitors initially, the rocks and grasses in the parking lot can catch and clean more than 100,000 gallons of stormwater runoff annually.
Rain gardens capture and clean more than 100,000 gallons of water runoff from the parking lot annually.
Since opening in 2016, Bang Brewing has become one of the hottest microbreweries in a neighborhood increasingly called the “Brewing District.” The stepped rain gardens of native plants provide a direct reference to both the site’s stormwater management program and Bang Brewing’s over-arching sustainability commitment.
