Joris Hoebe is an entrepreneur in the Netherlands. He was already working on projects to help Amsterdam be more like a sponge. The projects aimed to help the city capture and use more rainwater before it goes into the sewer system and out to sea. Hoebe also enjoys making beer at home. He thought he might be able to capture rainwater and use it to make beer. Well, I thought 'I need water to make beer and we have this problem of these heavy rainfalls, so why don't we combine these two?' When Hoebe makes beer, he does not need too much water. But larger beer makers do need a lot of water. It takes about five liters of water to make one liter of beer. Because water is a significant expense for a brewery, anything the small brewery can do to limit that cost is helpful. So Hoebe thought he might be able to talk a small brewery into using rainwater to make beer.