Local Breweries Crafting Eco-Friendly Pints

By Margaret Gilmour

Cold beer and summertime. Frothy heads, Belgian Lace lingering down the side of your frosted mug. Nothing better.

Here in Chester County, we have some of the best small breweries in the world—no exaggeration.

In fact, a few years ago while visiting family in Vienna, I found a pub––1516 Brewing Company– with Victory Hop Devil on their beer list. No kidding. Right there in beer country. And I ordered my Hop Devil with pride before sipping the brewpub’s local favorite. Delicious.

Though beer making can burden the environment (with hops and barley often requiring doses of chemicals for successful growth), there are microbreweries altering their beer-making process with Mother Earth in mind.

Victory Brewing Company in Downingtown (where Hop Devil is crafted), for example, recently partnered with the Brandywine Valley Association (BVA) to help create water conservation awareness.

As a matter of fact, we can thank the BVA for their extensive efforts in cleaning up our waterways, including the east branch of the Brandywine River, where Victory gets the water to make their beer. 

After all, with water being another main ingredient in the beer recipe, would the Prima Pils still be—and I quote ForbesLife Magazine—a “much-admired, big-flavored, full-bodied lager,” with water less-pure?

Along with their interest in protecting our water, Victory also took on energy conservation when they installed a third recovery system in their new brewhouse in 2004—a building Victory restored rather than built new.

This energy-saving process retains a third of the natural gas burned to heat and boil beer in the brewhouse for heating purposes. The renovations also enabled Victory to reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 70-percent per barrel of beer produced, cutting emissions by 200 tons annually. 

And, new this summer, Victory Brewing Co. planted their own Victory garden, serving up fresh greens and herbs to thirsty customers.

Considering the 100-mile standard for buying local, just 99.0 miles south of my front door (no kidding) is Dogfish Head in Rehoboth, DE.

Dogfish Head approaches beer making as you would any fine recipe, using high-quality ingredients to craft brews masterful enough to be featured in The New Yorker magazine.

Some of their beer is made with organic ingredients, brown sugar for example, and they never process their beer with animal or fish-derived products.

But the big difference Dogfish is making to the environment also has to do with energy conservation: they use the excess heat generated by the latest batch of beer to start heating water for the next.

Then there’s the barley they send as feed to local farms rather than tossing it out after it’s been used. And the burgers on their menu come from the same cows who indulged in the crushed barley Dogfish gave the farmer.

In the restaurant, only earth-friendly cleansers are used, and biodegradable packaging is handed to anyone leaving with a to-go order.

Both Victory and Dogfish are listed in Beer Advocate’s top 50 American breweries, Victory coming in at number 5 and Dogfish number twenty-four on the list.

We don’t need a list to tell us what beer is good, though. Sipping a cold pint works just fine.

Which reminds me, just a few miles south of Chester County Twin Lakes Brewery is securing it’s own place in our community by handcrafting beer and making it available to us at great eateries like Sovana Bistro, The Kennett Inn and Brandywine Prime.

Twin Lakes Brewery decided to take energy consumption seriously too. The brewery makes beer on a 252-acre farm where solar panels generate about 30-percent of their power.

They also commissioned local potter Paul Romanick to create Twin Lakes mugs, growlers and bar tiles all for sale at the brewery, opened and ready to fill your half-gallon jugs or for tastings on Wednesdays, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m., and Saturdays, from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Future plans at Twin Lakes include incorporating more environmentally-friendly technologies, but just stopping by the farm to fill your growler with the always refreshing Greenville Pale Ale, or any of their the limited celebration specialties, is as green as it gets. 

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Remember to buy local and help reduce the amount of fossil fuel used to ship your beer, and support your local brewmaster, where a fresh, cold pint always awaits. 

Find one closest to you at BeerTown.org.