Sustainable Beers for Philly Beer Week

How are you celebrating Philly Beer Week?

I started my celebration of hops last evening at the Extreme Homebrew Challenge – where none other than my awesome brother’s Factotum, (aged over American Oak chips infused with Maker’s Mark) won the People’s Choice award!

Whether you drink beer, wine or liquor, you can green your imbibing habit.  Lucky for us Philadelphians, there’s tons of opportunities to drink green, local, delicious beer in Philly this week. Here’s a few sustainable beer movers & shakers:

• Yards Brewing Company has some amazing green practices. Their new brewery is the 1st 100% wind-powered brewery in Pennsylvania; they send all cardboard & glass to be recycled through Pedal Co-Op, and let local farm animals like bison feed off spent grains, and have minimized wastewater/re-use hot water.  Read all their facts (including that bar tops are reclaimed bowling alley lanes!) on the Yards Tour Page.
• Earth Bread +  Brewery features house-brewed (on-site) beers and have implemented many sustainable practices, including recycling tables (from local Victory Brewing company), using Xlerator hand dryers and Gerber Ultra flush toilets.
• Straub Beer reuses bottles for their brewing process and is an ‘all natural’ alternative -no sugars, no salts & no preservatives.
• Grid Philly wrote up about Beer week’s The Chef, The Brewer, and The Farmer dinners, trifectas of the regions best edible creations.
• Local bars like McGillin’s Olde Ale House incorporated LED lighting last year to hop on the green movement.
• Going outside the Philly region, Cali-based Sierra Nevada is a huge eco-leader with one of the largest privately owned solar installations in the country, hydrogen fuel cells that are capable of generating 1.2 Megawatts of DC electricity off of natural gas, and energy from recovered biogas.  Woo-hoo!
• New Belgium Brewing also has green practices – including their wind-powered website!  The CO-based brewery is very environmentally-conscious, giving “lovingly care for the planet that sustains us.”

Anyone know of other sustainable practices beer gods preach?

Posted by Julie

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Julie Hancher is Editor-in-Chief of Green Philly, sharing her expertise of all things sustainable in the city of brotherly love. She enjoys long walks in the park with local beer and greening her travels, cooking & cat, Sir Floofus Drake. View all posts by Julie Hancher