Orange is the new sustainable beer
Redlands, Calif., a city about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, features boulevards lined with palm trees and lots of orange groves. And for Hangar 24, Redlands' growing craft brewery that sold 37,000 barrels last year (31 gallons equals one barrel), the oranges are its reason for being.
Opened in 2008, the majority of the brewery's sales come from Orange Wheat, a refreshing, slightly cloudy beer with real (not artificial) orange flavor from the local crop of Valencias and navels.
"All our raw materials are as close to home as possible," says founder Ben Cook, who keeps the finished product near home, too, selling only to customers in California, Arizona and Nevada, which helps save on distribution costs and energy expense. The brewery uses 1,000 pounds of oranges — peel, seeds and all — in every batch.
That comes in handy for the brewery's Local Fields series that includes Gourdgeous, a pumpkin beer; Essence, which uses local grapefruits; Polycot, an apricot beer and a Double IPA whose hoppy bitterness is cut with local honey.
The dedication to locally sourced ingredients is Hangar 24's main claim to environmentally friendly brewing, and it's a model other breweries are following as the industry grows. But it's not the only way to make "green" beer.
According to the Brewers Association, the number of brewpubs and craft breweries doubled to 3,200 in just the six years ending in 2014, and with that growth even more attention is being paid to sustainable brewing.
It's standard to donate spent grain to local farmers for use as cattle feed, but other enlightened brewers stretch themselves by treating wastewater before it enters public sewers (The Alchemist, in Waterbury, Vt.), capturing heat from boiling water and extracting carbon dioxide from the fermentation process (Victory Brewing Company, in Downingtown, Pa.) and collecting rainwater and powering their facilities with solar arrays (Sierra Nevada, in Chico, Calif.).
"We're environmentalists, and we want to see the potential extracted from everything," says John Kimmich, of The Alchemist, whose Heady Topper IPA is among the best-reviewed beers according to BeerAdvocate.com. "If you're a new brewery, (sustainability) better be on the radar."
Attention to green brewing doesn't result in a measurable sales boost or get used in marketing campaigns very often, but it seems to be a part the ethos of even some large brewers. Sierra Nevada, which has grown over 35 years from start-up to seventh largest in the U.S., is still chasing perfect sustainability with over 10,000 solar panels at its original brewery in California and the capacity to capture up to 475,000 gallons of rainwater per year for use in its new Mills River, N.C., brewery.
"We try to be good stewards of our resources because we think it's the right thing to do as a manufacturer of a product that uses energy and water. It's not really a marketing thing for us," says founder Ken Grossman.
