Anaerobic digestion of wastewater from a distillery industry having very high COD (1,10,000-1,90,000 mg/L) and BOD (50,00060,000 mg/L) was studied in a continuously fed, up flow fixed film column reactor using different support materials such as charcoal, coconut coir and nylon fibers under varying hydraulic retention time and organic loading rates. The seed consortium was prepared by enrichment with distillery spent wash in a conventional type reactor having working capacity of 3 L and was used for charging the anaerobic column reactor. Amongst the various support materials studied the reactor having coconut coir could treat distillery spent wash at 8 d hydraulic retention time with organic loading rate of 23.25 kg COD m(-3) d(-1) leading to 64% COD reduction with biogas production of 7.2 m(3) m(-3) d(-1) having high methane yield without any pretreatment or neutralization of the distillery spent wash. This study indicates fixed film biomethanation of distillery spent wash using coconut coir as the support material appears to be a cost effective and promising technology for mitigating the problems caused by distillery effluent. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.