Super Eco

Photo credit: Milton Blaser, Brooklyn Brewery

Tap the bottle and twist the cap!

Hand me a brew and pass the bottle opener. It's time to toast the start of summer with a cool sip (or twelve) of sustainable suds! Raise a beer goggle glass with me to bikini season, with a little help from America's greenest crop of locavore (locally brewed), low environmental-hangover microbrews.

Here's your ice-cold round of Earth-friendly, guilt-free down home brews. Chase them with what you like. I prefer these tongue-torching roasted chili lime peanuts from my city's own Peanut Dudes, a Long Beach farmer's market staple.

But back to the good stuff: Five sustainably smooth, refreshing beers for your drinking pleasure:

1. Long Trail Traditional IPA (Long Trail Brewing Company, Bridgewater, Vermont)
A handcrafted light gold, carefully-filtered English brew from the the pioneers of ECOBrew, the microbrewery's Envornimentally-Consious Operations philosophy. Cheers! The program earned The Vermont Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence. Why? LTBC donates 8 tons of its spent mash annually to to feed local cows from Vermont's struggling dairy industry; turns recovered steam into 3.7 million BTUs of heat and energy per day; tapers down to two gallons of water for every one gallon of beer (as opposed to the industry standard of six gallons per one gallon of finished beer); and majorly plugs into Central Vermont Public Service's Cow Power, something that's very, very abundant (not so much fragrant) in the verdant pastures of the Green Mountain State.

2. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Chico, California)
The brewery's popular flagship deep amber beer is full-bodied, fragrant and deliciously spicy. Plus, it's brewed beneath one of the largest privately-owned solar panel displays in the country. SNBC recycles down to the last drop (paper, cardboard, glass, stretch wrap, plastic strapping, pallets, hop burlap, construction materials and more). They also fuel their boilers with in-house byproduct methane, and reprocess and purify their own waste water.

3. Blue Paddle Pilsner (New Belgium Brewery, Fort Collins, Colorado)
The subtle, effervescent light malty beer with a gorgeous thick, white cap is brewed in the nation's first-ever wind turbine-powered microbrewery. On top of using their own byproduct methane to power 15% of their electricity and heat, NBB also shares its acreage with Solix, a biofuel firm that develops algae-based biodiesel.

4. High Rollers Wheat Beer (Anderson Valley Brewing Company, Boonville, California)
A rare, crystal clear tart and tangy wheat/pale malt that helped earn AVBC a number six ranking among the top 10 brews at the 2009 U.S. Open Beer Championships. Serve it in a tall pilsner-style glass with a slice of lemon and feel good knowing 1) it's crafted in a solar-powered microbrewery and 2) the place from whence it flows was honored by the California Integrated Waste Management Board's Waste Reduction Awards Program. Okay, trash, or an impressive lack of it, isn't all that exciting to drink to. 'Depends on how much you've had to drink, I guess.

5. Brooklyn Lager (Brooklyn Brewery, New York City, New York)
The brewery's cornerstone Viennese-style amber-gold beer is dry-hopped and matured in a wind turbine-powered processing plant. In 2003, BB became the first company in the Big Apple to switch to 100% wind-generated electricity. Its 20 turbines stop an estimated 335,000 pounds of CO2, 1,500 pounds sulfur dioxide and 500 pounds of nitrogen oxide from contaminating our air each year. Not bad. According to Wired Magazine, BB's bubbles are " as green as they come," and not in a St. Patrick's day kind of way (even though that would be cool, too). 

So, there you have it. Five tasty, mood-altering reasons to sustainably sip the summer sizzle away. I'm cracking one open right now. You should, too. C'mon, it's Friday! Time you get your your strange green brew on.

Ps. Slap on this organic hangover patch (no, NOT on your forehead!), and call me in the morning.