Green Spot

Not just certain aisles in the store are organic, you can find wholesome, pesticide-free, and eco-friendly goods in the beer section too. In fact there are quite a few breweries that create beer with a little carbon footprint (using local ingredients) and environmentally-friendly methods (sanitizing brew kettles and equipment with harmless cleaners) such as:

• Peak Brewing from Portland, Maine (Not too far from the well-known Allagash)
• Bison Brewing from Berkeley, California
• Eel River Brewing from Fortuna, California (surrounded by tons of popular California breweries such as Sierra Nevada)
• St. Peter’s Brewery from Suffolk in Great Britain

Each brewery uses local water and grains for malts, hops grown in fields of little yield due to lack of chemicals, and are craft breweries, or microbreweries. That means they typically case much less than about 400,000 gallons (Whereas a brewery such as Coors or Budweiser or Heineken brews millions upon millions of gallons).

Organic beer is still found in a variety of beer styles such as the currently popular and hoppy India Pale Ale, thick and malty Stout, and bitter-english Brown Ale as well as the fresh and balanced Golden Ales and other seasonal specialties. Some beers are even gluten-free for folks that cannot have wheat-product in their diet.

As an eco-friendly person and avid fan of beer, it is good to know that the green lifestyle is affecting all ranges of life, even in my pint glass.

So much beer, so little time, and some of it - Organic!