- Despite a rainy and snowy winter out west, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the reservoirs that provide water for 40 million Americans, are at record low levels due to the ongoing mega drought.

- [Jason] It's a commodity most of us take for granted, but maybe we shouldn't.

- There is a water shortage that is very evident.

- [Jason] The issue hasn't yet reached the Carolinas, but it has out west, where droughts have become more and more common.

- Arizona is set to lose over 20% of its Colorado River Water allotment this year alone.

- And so utilities out there are really looking for innovative ways to use and reuse water.

- [Jason] Charlotte Water director Angela Charles has been working with the city for over 35 years.

You might think someone with that kind of experience would be set in their ways of doing things, not Angela, she's looking ahead.

- We are all thinking as employees of Charlotte Water, what if?

- [Jason] What Angela spearheaded is an idea, something that's been done out west.

- The whole goal from the beginning was to plant the seed in the minds of people in our community about how to use and reuse wastewater.

- [Jason] What Charlotte Water is doing is using recycled wastewater in the production of a local beer.

If a strange expression just came over your face at the idea of it, you're not alone.

- You get the face of misunderstanding.

- Public perception and the court of public opinion is a real thing that we have to be aware of and have to navigate.

- It takes a certain type of brewery and company to get over that yuck.

- [Jason] So how is something like this even possible?

Well, it's through an advanced cleaning process the water goes through.

- Charlotte Water reached out to folks that they knew in our company and said, "Hey, we've got this really cool project, we wanna transform wastewater into beer, and we'd really love your help in providing us the technology and the manpower to do that."

- [Jason] The first company Charlotte Water teamed up with was Xylem, a global technology company that specializes in providing expertise to utilities and industrial customers, primarily in the water industry.

- Whether that's moving water, treating water, analyzing water, we have a presence in over 150 countries and a good presence here in the Carolinas.

So we were really, really excited for this project.

- [Jason] Typically, wastewater goes through a multi-step process of decontamination and cleaning before being released back into our streams and rivers.

- So it's high quality water at that point.

- [Jason] But in order for it to be used in beer production, it had to go through several additional steps.

- So we provide really three levels of filtration, two carbon filtration steps, and then a really powerful filter we call reverse osmosis treatment.

So the three filtration steps and then two additional disinfection steps, one is ozone, which is a very, very powerful disinfectant, so we're zapping and killing any viruses or bacteria that might be in the water, and then we provide an ultraviolet light, UV, disinfection step as well.

- [Jason] What Xylem helps Charlotte water produce is what they've branded as QC water.

So clean they say it's actually cleaner than tap water.

- QC water exceeds drinking water standards.

- Charlotte Water tested the water for 150 different contaminants, actually more than that, so we went through a full battery of drinking water tests and it came out with flying colors.

- When we toured the wastewater treatment plant and we really saw what was going on and the microbes that they put in to clean the water and all the processes that it goes through, I think we really started to understand water that we work with on a daily basis.

- We got the final report back and the water actually was a lot cleaner than the actual city water that we drink from our taps.

For Renew Brew, all the water came in those two IBC totes right behind you, 275 gallons a piece.

- [Jason] The other major partner in the project, Town Brewing, which is located in an old service garage on Charlotte's West side.

- Because we are a smaller brewery, we want to be able to cater to that craft beer drinker that's always looking for what's new, what's next?

- Everything you taste in beer is a combination of malt flavor and primarily the flavor compounds that you get from the yeast.

- [Jason] Town was approached by the Charlotte Beer Collective to produce what would become known as Renew Brew.

- The first thing, we really wanted to hear more nuts and bolts because we didn't know, even as producers, exactly what all recycled water entailed, right?

And so that's something that we had to find out to make that our product would be safe, that we could package that and what all that water, how it was gonna be treated and how it would get to us.

- [Jason] Filtering with QC Water began in January, with the first beer produced in February.

- After we boil the wort, we run it through this heat exchanger, and from the heat exchanger we cool it down to fermentation temperatures and then we send it out into one of our fermentation vessels.

It's just a good old classic American pale ale.

- I'm a big beer fan, so I love it, they did a great job.

- And I'm not a beer drinker, but it's a great pale ale, it is really good.

- [Jason] And to further prove that it's not what you may have thought, at February's Queen City Brewers Festival, Renew Brew won Best in Show during a blind taste testing competition.

- That's amazing.

- Fantastic, it's very humbling for us to realize that we're such a small part of what needs to be such a larger effort right now going on with water in America.

But it's so cool to have something in proof of concept to not only have this beer, but immediately have this beer win an award and then to have this beer be talked about by so many people about how interested they are, not how turned off they are by the product.

- And then to just think of the possibilities, we are just starting here.

Think about the possibilities and what we can do with that in the future, it is mind boggling.