Sunday, November 7, 2010

An organic ale with an amazing story


My brother alerted me to this special batch of ale from Sierra Nevada. This organic, fresh hop Estate Ale is made entirely from hops and barley grown at their property in Chico, CA. All the crops were hand-grown and hand-harvested. Think of all the labor that went into this beer!

Closing the loop on the process, the spent grain, brewer's yeast, hops and trub are fed to dairy cows and beef cattle at CSU Chico. Then the beef is served at their taproom & restaurant at the brewery, along with locally raised veggies.

Check out my brother's review here. And for the full inside scoop on how the beer was made, go to this post at thefullpint.com.

And in looking at their website for info about the ale, I found out Sierra Nevada has done substantial work to be environmentally responsible: solar, fuel cells, recycling, energy efficiency, water conservation and more. Here's just one example:
We have been able to reduce our water usage to almost half of the historical value typically used by breweries in this country.

Sierra Nevada made the commitment several years ago to treat all of our production wastewater to remove this burden from the local municipality. We installed a European-designed, two-step anaerobic and aerobic treatment plant that reprocesses and purifies all of the water produced from our brewing operations.

The methane generated from the anaerobic digestion of the wastewater is captured and used to fuel our boilers. This uses 100% of an energy byproduct as fuel for another process instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. Additionally, water used for truck washing is collected and purified through our own facility.

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