Green Geek Beer

DigiDave writes "A time honored tradition on St Patty's Day is to drink green beer. But some breweries go out of their way to make sure that the brewskies we drink are always green, by using environmentally friendly brewing methods. The makers of Fat Tire, for example, use a cogeneration process that involves anaerobic bacteria turning wastewater into methane gas for power."

Paddy's Day

[Hrungnir]

Patty is a girls name

Its spelled St. Paddy's Day if you're gonna abbreviate it.

Patty is short for Patricia.
Paddy is short for Patrick because the gaelic name is Padraig.

Why does everyone insist on calling St. Patrick a woman?

Re:Fat Tire

[Realistic_Dragon]

American beer is *gaasp* improving to the point that some of it is even drinkable, certainly the local stuff in New England.

While the mass produced crap deserves it's repuation as being better after urination than before, so does European mass produced beer in the large part. Things like Concorde Pale Ale are not quite up to snuff compared to Fursty Ferret (partly due to the instance on selling it chilled, which impairs the flavour), but it's a hell of a lot better than the canned sewerage output they sell as John Smiths.

Most breweries do..

[Zenethian]

Anheuser-Busch does the same thing with it's BERS program. Takes all its wastewater and manages microbiological reactions in it to produce mostly clean water and CO2 (for bottling) and Methane to power the boilers. In fact they produce almost all of their own power in several breweries. This isn't anything new.

Re:Fat Tire

[kklein]

SOUTHERN MIDWEST???

I beg your pardon, sir, but the noble brew of which you speak is lovingly manufactured in Fort Collins, Colorado, roughly 30 minutes south of the Wyoming border.

http://www.newbelgium.com/ [newbelgium.com]

If you're ever in the area, I heartily recommend their free brewery tour. You learn a lot about beer, and at the end you are given a little glass of each of their brews in a fun and chatty atmosphere. It's a great free day date in Fort Collins. Afterwards, you can head back the road into Old Town for great food and a plethora of great bars, all within picturesque walking distance.

I recommend The Crown Pub (on College) and the Rio Grande (on Mountain) for food/drinks, and Elliot's martini bar (on Linden) for drinks. Finish your drunken evening off at Walrus ice cream (on Mountain, next to the Rio), enjoying their homemade deliciousness.

Oh, and personally, I prefer New Belgium's Sunshine Wheat to Fat Tire, mostly because hoppy beers like Fat Tire give me terrible acid reflux, although they are tasty.

Come on, everyone! Let's enjoy Fort Collins!

This message NOT paid for by the Fort Collins tourism board or chamber of commerce. My Japanese-language historical walking tours of Old Town have also ended, due to the fact that I don't live there anymore.

Re:Paddy's Day

[crache]

If were getting specific, his name wasn't even patrick. Born Maewyn Succat, and not even in Ireland! His name was later romanized as Patricius, after he became christian.

Guiness

[Anne Thwacks]

Anyone who doesn't drink Guiness on St Guiness' day has only thems elves to blame.

Good beer isn't cheap

[toxic666]

And cheap beer isn't good. Ahh, brewing, water and energy -- enough to spark an old geologist's interest; I homebrew from grain and got up early to knock out an ESB.

Brooklyn and New Belgium are both good breweries in that they use REAL grains (mostly malted barley) instead of the cheap and tasteless adjuncts (rice, corn) that make up 50% of cheap American swill. That alone is worthy of support.

But seeing them spend more money to be environmentally friendly is truly impressive. It takes a lot of enery to brew -- the grain must soak in 150F water (the mash), then be rinsed with 170F water to wash out the maltose (the lauter) and finally that resultant wort boiled for 60 - 120 minutes. That ain't cheap. Geting rid of the spent grains through farms is not unusual for small breweries -- but it is cheaper than landfill disposal costs. The wastewater treatment is not cheap either, because brewing produces a lot of it -- rich in yeast and sanitizing chemicals. However, most brewers just drop it into the sewer system.

It's not only admirable, but impressive that these breweries can keep costs in line while going the extra mile in energy and water treatment.

Re:Drink the right beer!

[riflemann]

Actually, you might be surprised that there's a growing trend for small dedicated breweries in America. I don't drink American beers, but given the population in the states, surely someone is tryign to brew good beer. You'd have to look harder than your local cheap liquor store to find them though.

Anyway, it doesnt have to be widely available in the states to be good. The number one beer in the world, Westvleteren [wikipedia.org], is only sold in small quantities at the gates of a small monastery in a remote corner of Belgium. That's far from America, but it still gets the title of number one.

So yeah, American beers dominate the list, but any beer in the world can make it to the list if it's good.

Re:St Patty's day

[Anonymous Coward]

It's St. PADDY's Day, FFS.

Unless you want to be proper, then use St. Patrick's Day instead.

Beer geeks speak out

[merc]

I get a kick out of St. Patty's day when laymen refer to green beer in the most literal sense.

In a lager brewing process the post-fermented wort is sometimes referred to as "green beer", which is the beer before a secondary fermentation process commences (conditioning, lagering, etc.)

As a side note it would be interesting to know how many tech-geeks extend their geektitude into the realm of brewing or zymurgy?

Re:Brewskies? wtf???

[geekboy642]

Brewskie is a term (infrequently) used by American college students. It is seen primarily in the pot-smoking, permanently drunk sub-genus of this group, and was popularized by our greatest idiot, Pauly Shore.

It means, roughly, "Me idiot. Want beer."