Peak Organic Brewing Local Series Beers

    The Portland on the eastern sea board is also brewing some amazing organic ales.  Peak Organic Brewing Company out of Portland, Maine was created by Jon Cadoux who began as a home brewer back in the 90's.  He set out to create delicious beers that were made with as many local ingredients as possible.  They decided on the name Peak to represent Peak Experiences, such as time spent in the outdoors or enjoying time with close friends.

    Peak Brewing first caught my attention when I saw their Local Series beer in the cooler at City Market in Burlington.  They brewed a beer specifically for Vermont using hops, malts, and barley from farmers in Vermont.  They also create a local series beer for Massachusetts, New York, and Maine.  Each of these is crafted with ingredients from local farmers to create a beer that embodies the state it comes from.  I was surprised at how delicious and hoppy the Vermont series was.  Most people don't think of New England as having a prime climate for growing hops but Peak has shown that you can create amazing beer with local ingredients from farms in the Northeast.

Peak Organic Brewing website

Hopworks Urban Brewery: A Model for Sustainability

    Although we've been highlighting local beers around our current location of Burlington, Vermont, we want to take a minute to highlight what is arguably the most sustainable brewery in the world.  Hopworks Urban Brewery, located in Portland, Oregon, is an "Eco-Brewpub" that offers world-class organic beers and locally sourced food.  Everything from the brewpub itself, to the revolutionary "bike-bars", to their food and beer is made as sustainably as possible.  Even their HUB apparel is made with organic cotton.

    The first thing you notice when you roll up to Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB) is that the amount of bikes far outnumber the amount of cars in the parking lot.  The bar offers free repairs for your bicycle and sells spare tubes in case you have a flat tire.  They also have a smaller bar called the "Bike Bar" in North Portland where the only parking available is for bicycles.  Recycled materials are used for nearly every part of these buildings and they even have two Plug-Out stationary bicycles you can ride that generate electricity back into the buildings grid when pedaled.  The buildings themselves have all the energy saving mechanisms you can think of along with compostable materials for anything that is not re-usable.  

   Hopworks has too many green practices to list in one blog post so I will include a link to their website below.  We've been talking about how unlikely it is that we will be able to brew beer in the future, but a brewery like Hopworks is a glimmer of hope showing that we may be able to sustainably create our age-old fermented beverages in an uncertain future.  They are not just practicing sustainability at the highest level, but creating an entire culture around food and beer that treads as lightly as possible on the planet.  Besides their work in sustainability, Hopworks also creates some of the best beer I've ever had, and at very reasonable prices.  HUB is a model for any brewery trying to work in an ecological manner.  If you're ever in the Pacific Northwest be sure to check this place out.  

http://hopworksbeer.com/

Climate Change Affecting Beer Production

   Although beer production ought to be the least of our worries when considering all the problems climate change is causing worldwide, it just might be the thing that brings the message home for many people.  Beer will certainly become more expensive as a warmer world makes it more difficult to grow all the ingredients necessary to create beer.  Certain species of hops are in decline, as well as barley.  Not to mention water, which will certainly become infinitely more valuable as it gets more scarce.  I'm certain that in a world of water scarcity we will not even consider manufacturing water intensive products such as beer.  Currently, there is still a huge lack of concern over climate change but when people see the way it is affecting their everyday lives, (i.e. price of beer going way up), it will likely be one more thing that brings them to face up to the harsh reality of a changing climate.
    Breweries are already seeing the costs of ingredients for beer production rise due to climate change.  Although the consumer may not be conscious of this, many brewers and scientists are well aware of it.  We shouldn't trick ourselves into thinking we will have the kind of excess resources available so that we can brew beer in the future.  We are already seeing competition for land that barley is grown on, and as food scarcity becomes a reality in the United States, we will not even consider using precious pieces of land to grow wheat or barley for our favorite beverages.  This all sounds pretty grim but it's reality, so think twice next time you're sipping on your favorite beverage.

Here's a few articles about the effects of climate change on beer production:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4610087#.T6Ff9BzwRtg

http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/oh-no-global-warming-is-affecting-beer-production.html

http://www.the9billion.com/2011/11/29/disaster-climate-change-is-already-harming-quality-beer-production/

Easy as 1, 2, 3!

Here is a small comprehensive guide on how you can actually lower the carbon footprint of your alcohol consumption. So, here's some easy (and hopefully not too obvious) ways to green your drinking.

1. Stay local as much as possible. The closer it's brewed, the less oil used to get it from the factory to you, and supporting local businesses is a huge plus. Vermont has tons of awesome breweries, many of which are right here in the Burlington area.  Some of our favorites include: Wolaver's (all organic beer),  Fiddlehead, Trout River, Otter Creek, The Alchemist, Rock Art, Long Trail, Harpoon, and Magic Hat. There are also many more in northern New England, such as Peak Organics, Saranac, Shipyard, and Maine Beer Company.  Don't forget about the emerging viticulture movement happening in Vermont right now either, as we've mentioned in a previous post.

2. Organic is better. Whether you're drinking wine, beer, or hard alcohol, you should choose organic products for the same reasons you choose organic food.  For some reason, this has been seemingly overlooked by the many supporters of the organic food movement.

3. Refillable containers such as growlers or kegs!  They're refillable and cheap, and available at many places.  Pearl St. Beverage has them, as do all the local breweries around Burlington.  Recycling bottles and cans is great, but it's much better to create no waste at all.  Growlers for personal consumption and kegs for parties. You save money, and you create less waste.

Green Mountain Organic Distillers

     The organic spirits movement seems to be getting off to a slower start than the organic wine and beer movements.  I've never seen somebody pull out a bottle of liquor made from organic materials, but the Green Mountain Distillers out of Stowe, Vermont have been creating quality organic liquors since 2002.  They're committed to organic agriculture and creating quality hand-crafted products.  They've been certified organic by Vermont Organics as well as the USDA National Organic Program.  Currently they distill gin, vodka in many flavors, as well as a delicious maple liqueur made from local Vermont syrup.

    Creating hard alcohol for American distilleries uses a whole lot of grain.  With all the subsidies, GMOs, and petroleum based fertilizers that go into producing most grains in the United States, we feel it is essential to choose organic grains and grain products such as those that Green Mountain Distillers produces. 

Green Mountain Distillers website: http://greenmountaindistillers.com/

Sustainable Wineries

     Most people don't think of Vermont as a place where wine making would flourish.  The long, harsh winters make it difficult for many varieties of grapes to grow, but many in the Northeast are finding that viticulture is possible and have created some delicious wines very recently.

    The first vineyards grown in Vermont were in 1997, so wine making in the Green Mountain State is still a fairly recent endeavor.  The grape varieties we have in Vermont are typically Minnesota hybrids and other Northern varieties that are hardy enough to make it through the tough winters.  Although Vermont might not be the next Sonoma, (we hope the climate doesn't change that fast), it is making the most out of its place on the earth and creating delicious wines, including the northern specialty, ice wines.  Ice wines are desert wines that are very strong, and also very expensive.  They are particularly well suited for Vermont because the grapes are harvested while they are still frozen, hence the term "ice wine", and then made into wine.  

    A local winery we'd like to highlight here is the Shelburne Vineyard, located just south of Burlington.  This winery has four vineyards located nearby where they grow all of their grapes.  Many of the wines are organic and they all contain local ingredients from northwestern Vermont.  We feel that  if you're a wine drinker, choosing to drink locally crafted wines is very important because most wines are being shipped out from the West Coast or from Europe.  Supporting our local wineries is good for Vermont's economy and will allow this industry to further blossom as the climate in Vermont becomes even more hospitable to new varieties of grapes.  

A link to Shelburne Vineyard's website: http://shelburnevineyard.com/

Long Trail's ECO Brew

 











      Long Trail Brewery makes some of the best brews in Vermont and has been doing so since 1989.  It makes sense that a brewery named after a legendary Vermont hiking trail would manufacture their beer in an environmentally conscious fashion.  You may have noticed the "Eco-Brew" logo, as well as the Vermont governor's certificate of environmental excellence on Long Trail's packaging.  This is the only Vermont brewery, that I know of, that has been given this award.  I was curious as to how Long Trail was reducing it's impact, and also wanted to make sure it wasn't just green washing, so I visited their ECO-Brew website.

    The first thing that impressed me was that Long Trail has a separate website entirely dedicated to ECO Brew.  They also have a microbiologist as their sustainability coordinator who was previously the sustainability coordinator at Castleton State College.  ECO is an acronym for Environmentally Conscious Operations.  They've been brewing in this fashion for the past 20 years, so they're not just trying to cash in on the recent wave of green consumerism.  There are many ways Long Trail is reducing their impacts, which include the way they brew, the businesses they partner with, and the message they send to their customers.  

    Long Trail offers their spent mash to local dairy farmers to feed their cows.  The cows absolutely love it, the dairy farmers get a much cheaper source of feed, and Long Trail using its waste to support struggling Vermont dairy farmers.  They've installed a heat recovery system (brewing takes a lot of heat), which has reduced their heating needs by 1,100 gallons of propane per month!  What I find most impressive is that Long Trail only uses 2 gallons of water for every gallon of beer produced, compared to the industry standard of 6 gallons of water per gallon of beer.  As water becomes more scarce, practices like these will become increasingly important.  They're also using Cow Power, which turns methane from cow waste into electricity.  As of April 2008, Long Trail was the largest company supporting Cow Power.  I'm very impressed by how much Long Trail is helping out local industries, such as dairy farms, while doing an excellent job of reducing their impacts on our environment.  And of course, continuing to produce delicious brews!

For more information on ECO brew visit the website at: http://www.ecobrew.net/

And for more info on Vermont's Cow Power check out http://www.cvps.com/cowpower/