Green BEER

Happy St. Patty's Day!

[see full story @ wired.com]

"Brooklyn Brewery, located on Brewer's Row in Brooklyn, New York, is one of a handful of breweries around the country that uses sustainable energy when producing its beer.

Its choice of method is wind power, which provides 100 percent of the brewery's energy needs, making the 1,658,000 gallons of beer it produces green year-round. Brooklyn Brewery's energy bills are 10 percent to 13 percent higher than they would be otherwise, but its operators say leaning on alternative energy just makes sense....Brooklyn Brewery isn't equipped with wind turbines on the warehouse roof, however. Instead, the brewery pays a premium rate to Con Edison so that the 285,000 kilowatt-hours it uses off the grid every year is replaced by energy produced at a wind farm located in Madison County, in upstate New York....

Brookly Brewery also pays farmers in New Jersey to swing by and pick up the "spent grain" -- the remaining husks that are left over after brewing. The farmers then feed the nutritious grains to their livestock, making good use of Brooklyn Brewery's waste.

But Brooklyn Brewery isn't alone in its conservation efforts. New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, has developed a unique method that uses its waste to power its factory...." read more HERE