If you live in the Washington, D.C. area, you'll be able to see Wendy Rieger—anchor of the 5pm news broadcast on the NBC affiliate, WRC-TV Channel 4—reporting, this evening, on brewers going 'green'.
She won't be describing the silly US practice of dying beers green on Saint Patrick's Day. Rather, she'll be delineating some of the environmentally-concerned actions taken by the brewing industry.
'Green' isn't merely 'organic'. Sustainability, re-use and cycling, energy-efficiency, low-pollution, and locally-sourced are issues of equivalent importance. In the aired promotional tease, Mike McCarthy—executive brewer of Capitol City Brewing Company—can be heard saying, "I think every brewer can do his part."
'Green' isn't necessarily expansive or expensive.
Bill Madden, brewer at Vintage 50 in Leesburg, Virginia, recently posted this comment to DC-Beer (a listserve for beer lovers in this area)
At Vintage 50 the spent grains from brewing are picked up by a local farmer that feeds it to his cows. The cows eat it and, of course, produce manure, which is aged and then brought back by the farmer for our garden behind the restaurant. Our chef, Aaron McCloud, is planning a garden of tomatoes, squash, herbs, etc., and I plan on growing Cinderella pumpkins for brewing Punkinator this Fall. The vegetable scraps from the kitchen are composted next to the garden and will be tilled into the soil when they break down.
Elegantly simple and potentially delicious.
Love the blog, i think that here alot of the new micro breweries are already going or gone green
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