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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."
St. Paddy's was yesterday.
St Patty?
Maybe someone is still struggling after a few too many beers?
I'm not sure I would call this a time honoured tradition either - I'd never even heard of green beer until I went to the US. I'd never seen it either in Ireland or any of the Irish (and I mean real Irish pubs in Kilburn owned by Irish landlords full of first generation Irish people or Irish people working temporarily in London) pubs in the UK I've been to on St Patricks day.
Each of us should be taking local actions to do our part for the planet. For example, I've been using my own anaerobic process to turn beer into methane gas for many years now.
Fat Tire is pretty good. It's not recommended if you ever plan to go back to Bud. Some people don't like a sweet beer, but then some people don't like chocolate either. Ignore those mutants and grab a nice mug if you're in the southern Midwest sometime.
"use a cogeneration process that involves anaerobic bacteria turning wastewater"
... nothing new here:-)
in (state side) domestic beer.
move on
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
If you are in Boston at this time of year DO NOT respond when people introduce themselves as "Irish-American" with "Nice to meet you, I'm a Saxon-Norman-Viking-Dutch-Englishman". Breaking them out of their fantasy world may result in you spending the night in the gutter looking for your teeth instead of getting personally aquainted with a drunk BU chick who can't tell the difference between a Home Counties and Irish Counties accent.
Beep beep.
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?
Seriously, if you tried giving anyone beer than had been dyed green in Ireland, you'd be introduced to that other tradtitional Irish custom of having your head smashed against the bar.
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.
I see this as the beginning of a trend of colored seasonal beers. Green beer for St. Patrick's Day....perhaps an orange beer for Halloween! Or a yearround Red, White, and Blue multipurpose patriotic beer! Ah, the marvels of modern science.
Why all of sudden, starting this year, is everyone saying St. Patty? It has, and never will be, St. Patty. It's St. Paddy. Patty is short for Patricia. Paddy is short for Patrick. I don't know what idiot started saying St. Patty but it's irking me something chronic.
BIYC Records
I'm not trolling or hating, I'm actually curious what people like about Fat Tire. I've found it ok but nothing to write home. Just for background...I'm no beer idiot I lived in Seattle, had multiple growlers, bought tons of local brew, worked on a local beer taste, and now that I've moved away to less beer-friendly place I brew my own beer in order to have some of the less common and interesting beers I could buy in Washington.
So what is it people like so much about Fat Tire? Is it that it's an ok beer that you can pick up at most stores? Is it that New Belgium isn't evil? Is it that most people don't have easy access to actual Belgian beers and New Belgium's stuff is lower in price and more widely available?
So what's the deal?
apart from the ridiculous St.Patty's goof, what the fsck is a "Brewskie"??? and I thought the Australians were getting silly with their corruptions of perfectly good words...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I assumed something like Wasabi Ale.....
#Miyamori Wasabi Beer at
Most people associate beer with cheap piss, generally only drinking it as a social lubricant and really ignoring the true flavours of the beer. That's true for just about any mass-produced beer (VB, Fosters, Bud, Miller, Heineken).
Go out and trying a real beer for once, and not just Guinness on St Pats (arguably not that great a beer). Some of the world's greatest beers are quite accessible and will blow your socks off with their complexity and flavour.
Similar to wine coinnoseurs, there are also those who are (mostly self-professed) experts in beer, preferring something good like a trappist beer with their meal to wine, and deservingly so. A properly brewed beer's a lot more interesting to have with a meal than wine, and there's infinitely more variety.
Heineken is not a good beer. Really. In Holland it's considered mediocre. If you see a beer everywhere, then it's mosty likely crap. Stella's pissy too. Budvar, Pilsener Urquell, Hertog Jan...they're ok for lagers.
A coding session's a heck of a lot more enjoyable when combined with a decent brew. But be careful, too good a beer will distract! Some of my best output's come after having a good Belgian.
Seriously. Go down to your nearest large speciality bottle shop/liquor store and find a few bottles of the higher rated beers that you can find. Drink them, out of the proper glassware and at the right temperature then you'll never go back to a macro again. It could get more expensive, but damn it's worth it. A hint - drink light-coloured beers in warmer weather and darker ones in cool weather.
And then you can have good beer all the time.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
Anyone who doesn't drink Guiness on St Guiness' day has only thems elves to blame.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You must be Bulgarian.
What the hell? Guinness for fecks sake. And make sure it is poured properly as well.
Exactly where is this a tradition?
If this were really happening, what would you think?
and just wanted to be a lumberjack lee[ing from tree to tree, who sleeps all night and works all day and likes to put on women's clothing and hang around in bars...
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
I was in Seattle a while ago, and was advised by all the locals to try the beers from the micro-breweries (after trying Bud-Light i was weary of beers from the other side of the Atlantic).
After trying a few brands (some OK, some not so OK), i tried Fat Tire, and it was the best beer i've had in a long time.
(Coming from Yourshire in England, I'm usually a bit weary when it comes to sampling beers not brewed within 50 miles of where I was born...)
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
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.
this stuff leaves green beer standing - pity its only 15% though - and only in the German colours.
, 402259,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/wunderbar/0,1518
(article in german but the picture is cool (if you took the geeks out))
This must be good stuff. I'm already seeing double e's everywhere...
It is quite easy to say that you only use type X of a commodity - whether it's wind power for your electricity, non-(country of choice) oil for your gasoline, or lottery money for your state's education budget. It doesn't change the fact that everyone ELSE out there doesn't care what your source is - in the aggregate, the total amount of stuff is essentially not affected by you.
Short version: just because Bklyn Brewery uses "only wind power" doesn't mean they've affected total fossil fuel consumption a whit, because any deficit between (total wind power produced) and (total power needed) will be made up by fossil or nuclear, whether the BB chooses to pay extra or not. IOW, Con Ed has chosen to use wind for a certain amount of generating capacity. Since it's very cheap energy when it's flowing, they'd be foolish not to use it anyway to lower the amount of fossil or nuclear they need to use. All this amounts to is having consumers subsidize Con Ed's bottom line. Fine if you want to do it, but don't think it's doing the world some great favor. (The wastewater item is completely different. That is a meaningful Green idea, because it uses locally made, locally available resources to extract something valuable and reduce pollution at the same time.)
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?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
As a beer "connoisseur", I can honestly attest that Heinken is horrible here in the states but in the Netherlands it's actually quite good. I mean, not as good as most of the other beers in the Netherlands but a lot better than it is here. Unlike American Budweiser (as opposed to Czech Budweiser, which isn't bad). I live in Missouri, about an hour from the Budweiser brewery and Budweiser is still terrible.
Same thing with Guinness, it's not nearly as good here as it is in Ireland. My guess is it ferments a bit on the ship over here.
All the Austrialians I've talked to about it have told me that Fosters is "Austrialian for pisswater" and the country has some fantastic beers. I haven't yet been able to try them, but I don't doubt it.
My current favorite U.S. beer is 1554 from the New Belgium Brewing Company out of Ft. Collins. It's the closest thing I've been able to find to good beer outside of Belgium. But then, I like a nice dark beer.
Why is it that you only find crap American beers in Europe? Maybe for the same reasons we get Fosters here? I can't imagine, I've been in every country in the EU and you rarely see more than Miller Genuine Draft and Budweiser over there. Two of the middle-worst beers in the states. Maybe we could one-up the Aussies on bad beer by exporting Pappy's Blue Ribbon, Stag, Keystone or Milwakee's Best? In fact I say it's our duty as Americans. If every country is competing to export the dog nastiest beer. I say America has a technological advantage is this field.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Um, I thought that yeast took in sugar and produced alcohol + carbon dioxide. So they aren't buring fossil fuels, but their still producing green house gasses anyway. Not to mention that most people talk a lot of shit after a few too many beers and every one knows that methane is a more potent green house gas. By hte way, I've had a "few" beers and right now, I dont really give a green house gas.
get a kick out of St. Paddy's day when people refer to it as St. Patty's day.
And I personally don't like it at all. It's bland. Not very hoppy, not very malty. Reminds me of Newcastle - just not much personality in it.
Give me a Bell's any day of the week. Or hell, even a Sierra Nevada. But Fat Tire. . meh. Overhyped and overpriced.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
called Berlinerweisse (not much to do with Ireland, I'm afraid).
:-)
In truth, the beer isn't green but it traditionally has a syrup added to it made from woodruff which gives it a greenish tinge. It is an awesome beer if you can ever get (or make) some. It's actually a sour beer though, so not necessarily a beer for all.
I have 5 gallons of the stuff sitting in my kitchen waiting to be bottled
I was born in England, got a southern English accent, but using the above suggested definitions, well in the first case (one ancestor five generations back) maybe you could call me "Spanish-English" (apparently one of my great great grandfathers married a Spanish girl). Or in the second case, two of my grandparents were born and bred Scots, my mum spent a lot of her time growing up there during the war, my mum's side is definitely Scots, I've still got a great aunt there etc, so maybe I am Scots-English.. .though if I opened my mouth in most of the bars in Scotland and announced I was Scottish I'd get it kicked in pretty fast with my accent or at least laughed at.
How does this all work in the USA? Is it a feature of "new world" countries with people keen to find their roots past a couple of generations back? Why aren't people just happy to say they are American if both their parents were born there? (not flamebait, genuine curiousity about people's motivations...)
I brew from grain; it's all about that fine-tuning of recipes to make something I enjoy and can share with friends. It's a weekly get-together for a group of us.
But why stop there? I also make wine, although only from kits. You can get very interesting wines in kits that can be VERY expensive (e.g. Amarone, Viognier) from the vinyards. At $3 - $4 per bottle.
I most enjoy aged vinegar. Commercial vinegar is another travesty, being made from cheap, flavorless ingredients like cane and beet sugar. Try making a Trappist ale and then adding acetobacter for a magnificent malt vinegar. I also have a balsamic vinegar aging (2004 harvest Malvasia grape wine, a little of this that and the other red wines, three oaks, sugar maple, cherry, apple and pecan woods). That will take five years before it begins to taste like the real thing. It's a lot of work to destem, crush and press the grapes, but worth it for something that would sell for $100 US per 200 ml bottle.
Patty is a fecking hamburger patty or a girl's name in Amerika. Patrick is abbreviated as Paddy you flipping ejeet. There now I've used all my cute Bord Failte sayings to level at you mister! :p
You forgot the old hangout of the Town Pump. For us old ones, we had Washington, Fort Ram, and of course, College Daze (saw the beach boys back then; just missed the Rolling Stones at hughs). Who is Elliot's?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
First off the malting barley is probably not organic. Even if it is organic, it is farmed with tractors driven by petrol. I have yet to see a commercial farm tractor or combine for that matter driven by a non-oil fuel source. However - it is possible in spite of the bad energy economics cited by Dr. David Pimethal which is still being quoted.
Having been harvested, the grain is hauled by petrol fueled trucks to elevators and then hauled by petrol fueled rail to the maltsters.
The malting plant is probably not green - however it again probably could do better.
Now - as others have pointed out - energy is fungible. In order to be off petrol they would have to work only when the wind blows. Or they would have to harness the exothermic reaction called brewing.
The reason the brewing process gives off CO2 is because a hydrocarbon - eg sugar - is being partially oxidized by the yeast.
Essentually we are going from a polymer based on (CH2O)n into an alcohol which is CH3CH2OH or C(n)H(2n+1)OH where n=2 for ethanol (C2H6O which is really C2H5OH just written differently).
To be more specific we have a series of reactions by alpha and beta amylase which are created during the malting process which is exothermic. During mashing which is also exothermic the starches are broken down into simpler sugars, principally maltose which is a disaccharide made from two glucose molecuals.
So very specifically we have C12H22O11 + H2O -> 2 C6H12O6 followed by
C6H12O6 -> 2 C2H6O + 2CO2 + heat.
The point I am making is that with all these exothermic reactions they are still consuming a great deal of energy so they are not nearly as green as they might like to be seen as.
Next - of the wastewater.
Well - most of this would contain either nothing of much value or yeast which is very high in protein being a fungus and all... fungus are more closely related to animals than to plants. They are an excellent form of nutrition.
Rather than flushing the yeast down the sewer or putting it into holding tanks where it can be degraded by another micro-organism producing methane - it makes more sense to collect it and ship it off for food.
Of course the spent brewer's grains are typically shipped off for cattle fodder since they are high in proteins. Another use for them is as a nitrogen suppliment in synthetic substrates for mushroom production.
--------------
The thing about organics is that plants are basically a polymer of simple sugars. These are built into complex sugars then into starches, cellulose, pentosans and lignin. Fungus digest these. There are many fungus which can do this and some examples are Pleurotis spp, Lentinula spp, Flamulina spp, and I'll not go on. From these three genus we have the common Oyster mushrooms, Shiitaki and Enoki.
Other fungus which are cellulose digesters include Trichoderma spp. T. reesei is used to produce stone washed blue jeans for instance because it is easy to culture and partially digests the cotton. So they are really fungus washed blue jeans not stone washed and here we have another example of people lying to us!!!
There are some who are attempting with some success to use T. reesei to digest wood and produce alcohols. I suspect T. Reesei is being used because it is available and not because it is particularly good at this job.
The economics of this process are actually quite simple.
We start with a polymer made of (CH2O)n
We transform it via enzymes excreted by fungi into C(n)H(2n+1)OH
If we note that the alkane series is C(n)H(2n+2) where for n=8 we get octane then what we see is that our alcohols are simply a slightly oxydized alkane.
The reaction from sugar to ethanol for instance is:
(CH2O)6 -> 2(C2H5OH) + 2CO2
From a molecular weight standpoint we have:
(12+2+16)*6 -> 2*(24+5+16+1) + 2*(12+32)
30*6 -> 2*46 + 2*44
180 -> 92 + 88
Now agricultural products have some moisture even if they are "dry"
Every erg these companies use that is not derived from fossil fuels reduces fossil fuel demand. Yes, wind energy comes on the cheap after the plant is constructed. But when capital costs are included, the power costs more than that produced with fossil fuels. These utilities had a choice and, with their customer's assistance, they made a green decision. When Con Ed, Xcel Energy (top wind producer in the nation), and your utility have demand for more green power, they'll have incentive to produce it. If you want more green power production, you're going to have to pay for it, either directly or indirectly.
FWIW, your water example is essentially correct and it applies exactly to the power side of this topic. Alternative energy sources like wind & solar are beneficial because they use locally captured, locally available resources to extract something valuable and reduce pollution at the same time.
The makers of Fat Tire, for example, use a cogeneration process that involves anaerobic bacteria turning wastewater into...
Dude, don't freak me out like that! I was really worried where that was going. Thank god they just use the shit for power.
Ewww! Since when, I ask you, does anyone want to drink a beer that involves a gray-water treatment regimen? Sounds like they partnered with the Department of Waste Management for this sparkling solution...
-c
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
St. Patrick's day is really as American as Thanksgiving or the Superbowl; it's just a little better known internationally. Heck, we even have it in Ireland. But not the green Budweiser. (OTOH, regular yellow Budweiser is ubiquitous in Ireland, 365 days a year :( .)
just don't. :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I actually got to work on the New Belgium Brewery project (the makers of Fat Tire) and did an analysis of their Cogen unit. It's fantastic the way that they take the biproduct from their fermentation process (methane) and put it to good use creating electricity and generating heat (the brewing process requires a good amount of heat, especially to clean the equipment, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it). They mostly use their Cogen unit to reduce the coincident demand. The coincident demand is a charge the power company hits you with if your peak power consumption during the day comes at the same time as the power company's peak. The idea is to move your peak somewhere else during those times by generating your own electricity and putting less of a strain on the power company. So, while there are "green" benefits to this process, there is also a substantial monetary benefit since the coincident demand charges can often cost more than even regular demand charges.
Barley Malt - Hops - Yeast - Water
If it contains these things and only these things it's beer. If it contains anything else its _not_ beer. Under the heading of anything else we would find the corn and rice sugar used in great amounts by most of big American beer brands. I'm not saying I'd turn down a cold Coors on a hot day, but I'd much sooner have a Fat Tire or a nice Red Hook ESB. I guess I like a beer with more...well...beer in it.
Anyone who doesn't drink Guiness on St Guiness' day has only thems elves to blame.
I hate to be a grammar nazi, but it's has only their elves to blame. Not that elves like to be referred to as posessions, of course; but that's not the point.
They're taking their dog to get its two shots before it's too late. You're taking your dog there too, right?
American beer is like making love in a canoe.
It's fucking near water!
Note that Portland is known as the microbrewery capital of the world. It has more breweries per capita than any other city in the world. There are quite a few places where you can go in, grab a meal, and take a look at the tanks of beer being brewed. I'm not of drinking age yet, but I'll be trying some of those craft brews when I am...
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
What did you think they were talking about?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Why should the Americans not have a Saint Patty's Day. Perhaps they might tell us the date and then we could all celebrate . Who said that there were no lady saints ? Who's up for a pink beer ? We should go all the way with this idea. Anyone got a method for perfuming the farts ?
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
mild's were an English beer made for steel workers, low in alcohol and made for drinking lots and lots.
Though over the hot Texas summer I've become quite fond of the other end of the spectrum: strong IPA's. Dogfish head 90 minute IPA. Stone Ruination IPA. I'm making myself thirsty.
-- Erich
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