Eric Fitch of PurposeEnergy Inc. holds a Magic Hat glass in
front of the digester building he developed at the brewery in
South Burlington. The digester extracts energy from the spent
hops, barley and yeast left over from the brewing process. /
TOBY TALBOT, The Associated Press SOUTH BURLINGTON — Before he
started “saving the earth, one beer at a time,” all inventor
Eric Fitch knew about home brewing was that it could make quite
a mess. Once, he accidentally backed up the plumbing in his
apartment building by dumping into his garbage disposal the
spent grain left over from his India pale ale home brew. The
oatmeal-looking gunk choked the pipes in his Cambridge, Mass.,
building, flooding the basement. These days, he’s doing
something more constructive, fulfilling the dream of beer lovers
everywhere by recycling the stuff: The MIT-trained mechanical
engineer has invented a patented device that turns brewery waste
into natural gas that’s used to fuel the brewing process. The
anaerobic methane digester, installed