Yep, it’s March which means stout, Irish whiskey, corned beef and cabbage and lots and lots and lots of green. Whether you like your green on a tee shirt, a pair of flip-flops or beer there will be plenty of it as we get closer to St. Patrick’s Day.
As far as I’m concerned, though, you can keep your green beer. The part of whole thing that I look forward to is that it provides a better excuse for me to participate in two of my favorite pastimes - drinking stout and drinking Irish whiskey. That’s not to say that I don’t find plenty of chances to do both through the rest of the year it’s just that in March I feel like I’m part of something when I do.
For my stout this year I started with a six pack of Schlafly’s Irish Stout last week. I’m down to two bottles and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. I tend to prefer dry stouts (Irish) over sweet stouts and this one delivers. It has a huge body and, at 8%, a fairly hefty serving of alcohol. It also has lots of bittering hops so it bites back a little, just how I like it.
I plan to drop by my local brewpub soon and see what kind of stout they’ve whipped up.
As for my whiskey? I’m not quite the snob in that area as I am beer. Bushmills Original does quite nicely for me.
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No, this isn’t another post about making your beer green. One was enough. This one’s about environmentally friendly beer.
Yesterday Anheuser-Busch issued a press release promising that by the end of 2009 they plan to have 1 in 7 of their beers brewed entirely using renewable fuel.
In case you didn’t know, brewing beer uses a lot of energy and water. It takes a lot of energy to boil then cool beer during brewing. And it takes a lot of water and energy to clean up after and get ready for the next brew. I read somewhere that it takes around seven gallons of water per one gallon of beer produced using traditional methods. With a lot of effort the greener brewers have been able to get that down to three to one. So any progress that A-B can make in this direction is a positive thing.
But is it enough? Can they go further? Probably not in the economic climate but one would like to see something better that one-seventh of the beer brewed using green standards. And what about all of the big Budweiser trucks we see on the highway? I’m willing to wager that they are burning fossil fuels.
There are beers brewed much more conscientiously. New Belgium is a well known example. Using a combination of innovative brewing techniques, wind power and a system like BERS mentioned in the A-B press release NB managed to go off the grid completely a few years ago. Of course NB isn’t the only brewer looking for new and more responsible ways to make beer but these are all relatively young companies and brew only a fraction of a percent of the beer that A-B makes.
So, on the whole, this is indeed good news from the big brewer.
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Let me start this little green beer instructional with one comment. DON’T! What the hell’s wrong with you? Making beer green. Not only is this just a silly idea but it is also stupid!
That being said, let’s make some green beer!
Ingredients:
Beer – any kind will do but it’s more effective with lighter colored beers
Green food coloring
Clear glass – you want to see your green beer, right?
Instructions:
Add one drop of green food coloring to your glass. Pour the beer into the glass.
That’s it. You just made green beer. Now hold the beer up to the light, admire the color and ask yourself why the hell you just did this.
More thoughts about the moldy color of this holiday check out What’s With All the Damn Green?
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