Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- Time for a TurnaroundWell, my friends, things are finally looking up, and good timing, too, since I’m sure you’re all sick of me bitching. Recent bike build, including wheels… fun! In what feels like a fairly short time, I’ve come from sitting around … Continue reading → […]
- This Raised My PulseHey, baby… wanna ride? I may be injured, but I’m not dead yet. I can still have racy thoughts. Here’s more info. In other news, UBI was an awesome success! I had a blast. I highly recommend it. Overhaul day…. … Continue reading → […]
- Time for a Turnaround
- Edgy Veggie
Cool old-timey beer production video reminds us how far we’ve come
If I had the time, I’d make a remix of this wonderful video with some footage of solar arrays and other neat energy innovations in brewing on the front end — and leave the rest intact until the very final “thanks to coal” bit.
We’ve definitely come a long way from loads purely coal fueled breweries to trends toward wind and solar powered sustainable, green breweries. Brooklyn Brewery was early in the trend in 2003 when they converted to 100% wind powered energy.
Of course as we’ve posted here before, New Belgium Brewery’s 870-panel solar array is nothing to sneeze at, with Odell Brewing Company not far behind getting 39 percent of energy needs covered by their solar array.
And there are other cool energy-saving marvels, too — different varieties of heat recapturing are used at New Belgium, famously at Sierra Nevada in California, and Canada’s Steam Whistle Brewing might have one of the more unique green strategies–using a deep lake water cooling refrigeration system.
As long as you’re asking, you’ll also get people reminding you that consuming locally-brewed beer (as with consuming locally-produced anything) uses less energy, so the craft brew boom of the last decade and a half, along with changes in packaging and shipping (how heavy did those crates of bottles look in the video?) have cut down on the total energy needed.
Not only are sustainable breweries good for the environment, but they also help brewers cuts costs, which is probably a big part of why greener brewing is on the rise.
–Dave Burdick and Lindsay Gulisano
