Castlemaine Perkins Operations Manager Ian Roberts made the announcement yesterday to build a $16 million on-site water recycling plant at Fourex headquarters at Milton.

He was adamant it would not affect the taste of Fourex beer.

"Our on-site recycling plant is expected to deliver a 40 per cent reduction on current mains water usage without affecting the taste and quality of our beer," Mr Roberts said.

"The on-site recycled water won’t be going into the beer but will instead be used to clean packaging lines, lubricate the conveyor chain and flush the toilets."

He said it wasn’t the first step taken at the Milton beer plant to save water.

Mr Roberts, said the Fourex brewery had already reduced its water use by 64 per cent since 1990.

"That’s a saving of 17,000 ML [megalitres], or enough water to quench the thirst of the population of Redcliffe for six years," he said.

"We’ve been playing an active role in cutting our water consumption long before the drought began to bite."

When the recycling plant is finished, it will take Fourex just 2.2 litres of water to make a litre of beer.

Currently, it takes four litres of water to produce one litre of Fourex beer, though apparently it takes CUB less water - just 2.3 litres of water - for a litre of its beer.

The water figures could end up producing a new version of the beer wars for this summer.

Deputy Premier and Minister for Infrastructure Paul Lucas put the water saving into some perspective.

"The water recycling plant will be built by Castlemaine Perkins at the historic Milton Road brewery to free up to 1.1 million litres of precious drinking water for every day of beer production," he said.

"To put that in context, over a five-day beer production cycle that’s the equivalent of more than two Olympic sized swimming pools or 14.6 million stubbies."

Work on the recycling plant starts in December and is planned to be finished by late 2008. The State Government will contribute $5.3 million towards the plant.

Tony Moore