The Story of the Rainwater Beer on the Dutch Cultural Fair Table Did you know that you could drink rainwater? rainwater, circular economy, climate adaptation, citizen awareness, beer Dymphie Burger (EGEA Amsterdam)
You might have seen it, next to the stroopwafels and some aged cheese on the Dutch table, if you were on time at least, because this beer is popular during Cultural Fair: A small brown glass bottle with a blue and white label, called Code Blond. It tastes quite nice, like a milder version of an IPA or a strong and bitter blonde beer; a bit peculiar, too, because it is stronger than a normal beer. “Made by an EGEAn, with rainwater from Amsterdam, collected at the campus of the university.” You might remember this beer on the next day, but suddenly you are not sure anymore. Can you even drink rainwater? And what kind of crazy students’ project got so out of hand that a commercial beer was the result? See here, the story of the rainwater beer. It all started during a project at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, where a team of four interns from the MediaLAB Amsterdam (renamed to Digital Society School), a design research institute, worked together with Amsterdam Rainproof on a project to raise more awareness for the effects of extreme rainfall in Amsterdam. Extreme rainfall is occurring often in the Netherlands and can damage public and private property seriously. On the 28th of July 2014, for example, there was on average 130 mm per hour in a few hours’ precipitation in the Netherlands, nearly twice as much as the national average for July (Böcker, 2014; Eden, et al. 2018). Then, there is the second problem: Amsterdam is situated at around sea level, which means that some areas are for example two meters above sea level and others are four meters below. The rainwater flows, due to increased amount of paved areas, to the lowest parts, and sometimes has to flow from four meters below sea level to the canal at sea level, which is against gravity. Therefore, a good sewage system is necessary. The sewage system in Amsterdam is currently able to handle rainfall intensities of 20 mm per hour (Kluck, et
al. 2015). So, when 95 mm are precipitated below sea level and only 20 mm can go into the sewage, 75 mm somehow have to go upwards to get into the nearest canal. This doesn’t happen: the 75 mm will stay on the streets or run into someone’s basement. Making private property resilient against such rainfall events is not only a task for the government, but also one for the citizens. Therefore, awareness has to be raised and bottom-up initiatives are needed. At the beginning of our project, we had several brainstorming rounds to think of possible products or services to raise awareness. One time, we were talking about my bachelor’s thesis, which was about the economic impact of droughts. Having too much water was actually a luxury in our eyes. Yet, we use so much water in the Netherlands. Our supervisor said that he was feeling guilty about using a lot of drinking water for his home-brewed beer. Then, we joked about using the excess of rainwater for brewing beer, because what else could you do with rainwater? After all the brainstorming, we came up with a “waterproof run”, a game, a green movement and a beer made from rainwater. Since Amsterdam Rainproof was a part of
Figure 1: Collecting rainwater on campus Source: Burger, 2016a
European Geographer 16 | 11/2020
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