World's first beer made with CO2 from thin air debuts in US market

A California craft brewery, Almanac Beer Co., in partnership with Aircapture, has launched Flow – Clean Air Edition, the world’s first beer carbonated using carbon dioxide captured directly from ambient air. Aircapture’s modular direct air capture (DAC) system, installed onsite at Almanac’s Alameda brewery, extracts CO₂ from the atmosphere and refines it to beverage-grade quality before feeding it into the brewing process. This innovation addresses the vulnerabilities exposed by the 2022 nationwide CO₂ shortage in the U.S., which disrupted food and beverage production due to reliance on fossil-fuel-linked industrial CO₂ sources. Aircapture’s approach reframes CO₂ as a localized, reusable resource rather than a volatile industrial byproduct, producing ultra-pure liquid CO₂ onsite and reducing exposure to supply chain disruptions and price volatility. The system integrates seamlessly with existing brewery infrastructure, enabling quick deployment without production interruptions. Almanac’s CEO Damian Fagan highlighted how this creates a more circular and localized production process. The project