Sustainable Beer is Better with Friends
As an industry leader in sustainable and environmentally friendly beer production for the past three decades, we’ve been inspired by the many breweries who have chosen similar paths. In celebration of sustainable brewing, we wanted to give a shout out to a few of our fellow breweries for their thoughtful and innovative solutions to brewing and delivering more sustainable beer.
Energy Use
Highland Brewing Co., Asheville NC
Electricity use is a significant factor in the overall environmental impact of the brewing process. Breweries that use renewable energy sources like solar panels to fuel production not only reduce their environmental impact but are also more energy independent. Anderson Valley Brewing Company is the World’s First Solar Powered Brewery but is by no means alone these days. A great example of another solar powered brewery with a strong sustainability drive is Highland Brewing. Located in a bucolic park setting, on sunny days Highland’s solar array can actually produce more energy than they use.
Gas Emissions
Odell Brewing Co., Fort Collins, CO
Breweries use a lot of CO2. For a long time CO2 has been the industry’s gas of choice since it’s needed anyway for carbonation. As it turns out, most of a brewery’s CO2 usage – up to 80% – can be replaced with inert gasses like nitrogen – which is a non-greenhouse gas and is the most plentiful element in Earth’s atmosphere. Anderson Valley Brewing Company has a nitrogen generator which allows the brewery to not only reduce the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere but also cut down dramatically on CO2 delivery trucking. Nitrogen generators aren’t the only tactic, though. Breweries produce a lot of CO2 through fermentation and there are a number of systems now available to capture that CO2 for on-site reuse. Odell Brewing (also a solar powered brewery) installed a CO2 recapturing system in their brewery in Fort Collins, CO that they calculate will prevent 1.4 million pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere per year.
Water Use
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico, CA
Water is the single most important ingredient in beer, and breweries need a lot of it for everything from washing down tanks and packaging lines and especially for drinking (and for things like taking care of our goats). Anderson Valley Brewing Company has the unusual benefit of being able to run a completely self-contained water system — 100% of the brewery’s water is sourced, sustainably treated, and then returned to the property. Other breweries are also running exceptional water systems and can include things like methane recapture as part of the treatment process that can be reused on site as fuel. Sierra Nevada Brewing has been doing amazing things with sustainability in general and has programs that touch on pretty much everything (also a solar powered brewery – managing a full 2.5 Megawatts of solar power production) but some of the most interesting are their water conservation and treatment programs at both the CA and NC breweries.
Packaging
Maui Brewing Co., Kihei, HI
Beer is heavy and transporting beer from the brewery to far away retailers by truck can greatly increase the carbon footprint. Packaging plays a big part – using aluminum cans instead of glass can greatly reduce the weight in transportation. Cans are lighter, more portable, and endlessly recyclable. Using cans instead of glass reduces trucking by almost 60% and using cardboard wraps instead of plastic increases the overall recyclability of the package and obviously reduces plastic use. Maui Brewing is an exceptional example of a sustainability-focused brewery and in addition to its super impressive solar power system and CO2 capture technology, also recently ditched the plastic rings for cardboard wraps for all their products.
Waste
North Coast Brewing Co., Fort Bragg, CA
Responsible and sustainable brewing practices by definition require a robust and meaningful plan to manage the waste stream generated from making beer. Thankfully the craft beer community has been actively addressing this problem since its inception. Pretty much every brewery we know has an active recycling program in place and a means of keeping the spent grains and yeast from hitting a landfill. Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s brewing waste is repurposed to feed local cattle, and most breweries find a similar way to supplement livestock feed or even make dog biscuits out of it. Some breweries take all this a step further, and a leader on this front is North Coast Brewing (also a solar powered brewery) who is a certified B-Corp that continuously achieves Platinum certifications for Zero-Waste. North Coast has a super-cool partnership with a local intergenerational family farm, Fortunate Farms, who uses its spent grains for compost to grow organic heirloom vegetables and flowers.
The Beer You Choose Matters.
For decades AVBC has been working to be the most sustainable brewery we can be and we’re not alone – the breweries we mention here are just the tip of the iceberg. Do the slightest bit of research into craft beer and sustainability and you’ll find a fountain of sustainable practices being put to work every day. Craft beer is more than just full-flavored beer – it’s beer made by artisans and craftspeople and for years these folks have been a driving force in more responsible and earth-friendly production practices and that kind of effort deserves to be recognized.
Perhaps now more than ever, the beer you choose matters. We invite you to demand more from your beer than just a delicious beverage. Cheers!
