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/