SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — A downtown Sioux Falls brewery is helping raise environmental awareness with a unique beer.

Remedy Brewing Company is once again making a splash with its Big Sioux Brew.

“We pull surface water out of the Big Sioux, clean it a million times to make sure it’s actually very safe but then we brew a beer with it,” Remedy Brewing Company co-owner Matt Hastad said.

Remedy partners with Friends of the Big Sioux River on the project. This year, the pair pumped and purified 2,000 gallons of river water before turning it into beer.

“What we’re trying to do is raise awareness of the water quality that we have and how important that is to brewing, and if we don’t take care of our water sources someday our beer prices are going to skyrocket because we have to go through all of this extra effort to clean the water to make beer,” Hastad said.

“Water is essential to everyday life, from beer to public health to your drinking water, and by using this it gives us a way to get in front of folks that we might not normally get in front of,” Friends of the Big Sioux River Managing Director Travis Entenman said.

Travis Entenman is with Friends of the Big Sioux River. The organization completed its annual river cleanup on Saturday, with 600 people collecting two tons of trash, highlighting the significance of this collaboration.

“Let’s us showcase our river, what it takes to really clean the water so we can use it and it really showcase the economic impact of what a business could go through if they had to do this process every single time,” Entenman said.

This year, Big Sioux Brew will reach a wider audience, served both on-tap and in the can.

“First time we canned and distributed and a big reason for that is because the sheer volume of water that we need to pull,” Hastad said.

“We got a bigger RO system this year, so we were able to process that water much quicker than we did in previous years,” Entenman said.

Landing a taste of the Big Sioux in a store near you.

“I just want to put in people’s minds to think about taking care of our earth, taking care of our water sources, and making sure that people in the future can get cheap beer. That’s what it’s all about (laugh),” Hastad said.

Big Sioux Brew is available at select businesses across eastern South Dakota, stretching from Watertown to Yankton, with a focus on Sioux Falls.