Green as in breweries, not as in beer

Today’s post was inspired by Blog Action Day.

During one of the terms I served as a newspaper sportswriter, I would sometimes gather with other newspaper types after work (late at night, in fact, early in the morning) at a bar that was literally around the corner from the Pabst Brewery in Peoria Heights, Ill. (It closed in 1982).

The beer was fresh and we referred to it as green — probably because of the acetaldehyde, but at the time we just called it green.

Otherwise nobody talked about green beer unless it was St. Patrick’s Day.

Now that “green is the new black” (somebody has surely trademarked that phrase by now) when you say “green beer” most people will think organic or environmentally friendly. We consume a fair amount of organic products in our house, not necessarily because we think they they are “better” for us but because they are better for the environment. You learn quickly this is a complicated topic. Not one you came here to read about.

So I’ll keep it short.

– Visit Green Maven and do a search for brewery or beer or both.

– Read Fermenting Revolution. This is not a perfect book (check out Randy Mosher’s review in All About Beer magazine) but Chris O’Brien does provide plenty of detail about all the things breweries are doing right. O’Brien also maintains the Beer Activist Blog.

– Support a brewery like Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland (Oregon). But make it one close to home — that would defeat the purpose. Hopworks fires its brewing kettle with biodiesel fuel. In fact, Hopwerks is taking enough other environmentally friendly steps to merit an in-depth feature (perhaps by newcomer Beer Northwest).

A conversation with founder Christian Ettinger will quickly lapse into a discussion of things like “food miles” that have little to do with abv or IBU. “This is a good faith program,” he said. “You are always erring on the side of ecology.”

Further reading: Blog Action Day.