Page 13: Lazy Magnolia brewery bottling rain water

HANCOCK COUNTY, MS (WLOX) -Mississippi’s first craft brewery, Lazy Magnolia in Hancock County, is branching out, getting in on a national trend.

Rainwater is being turned into bottled drinking water, and Lazy Magnolia is taking the lead in this part of the country.The bottling plant is running at Lazy Magnolia brewery in Hancock County.

Mississippi’s first craft brewery started making beer 15 years ago. Today, Lazy Magnolia turns out almost 40 different flavors or brews and sells product in 18 states and four foreign countries. The South Mississippi company is always evolving. They are now bottling rainwater. That’s right, rainwater.

“Rainwater was distilled by God and falls right on our roof, so why not drink it?" said brewmaster Leslie Henderson.

The Lazy Magnolia crew is working with a company out of Texas, Richard’s Rainwater, to bottle water from nature.

Gutters collect the rain, and it streams with the help of gravity into a filtration tank.

“First, there’s a particular filtration, then reverse osmosis, which gives you the purest water possible. We also hit that water with a UV light and ozone, so there can’t be anything left in it when we’re done,” Henderson said.

Then it winds up in a larger storage tank. That purified liquid is then bottled, labeled, packaged and sold.

While Lazy Magnolia has put coastal Mississippi on the map with its craft beers, it is now on the cutting edge of a national trend, turning rain into bottled drinking water.

“Lazy Magnolia has a lot more to give to the world. This was another way we could flex our technical muscle and show the world what we can do. We’re going to do even more great things for people,” Henderson said.

Some breweries around the country are making beer using rainwater. That might be the next step for Lazy Magnolia.

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