Who can refuse a beer from Santa?
Rachel Cernansky
Christmas parties are great, local breweries are great—what's more exciting this time of year than bringing them together? Whether or not you celebrate the holiday, you can enjoy the festive spirit that puts smiles on people's faces and warmth in people's hearts. And there's nothing like drinking beer made just feet from where you're standing.
Especially when you can talk to the people who made it about their company...which I did, at the Upslope Brewing Company's recent Christmas bash. They recently made a pumpkin beer with pumpkins from a local farm—and with spices from a local provider. They give their spent grains to local farmers, and they are involved in all sorts of community efforts: on this particular night, the beneficiary was the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, for which they were soliciting donations of canned food in exchange for a dollar off pints.
No bottles here Upslope only packages in cans—like screw-cap wine, it's a rapidly expanding practice. For them, it's also an environmentally-friendlier one that cuts costs because they self-distribute all their beer (in compressed natural gas vehicles!), and the lighter deliveries means they spend less on gas—as do the trucks that deliver the cans to them. So much so, said Henry Wood, their sales and marketing guy, that the trucks coming down from Wyoming have even complained that they get blown around more often on the drive down by the strong winds.
Going green Upslope gives discounts for growler refills, and though they haven't quantified the savings in CO2 emissions from their use of growlers, cans instead of bottles, and local ingredients where possible, they are rather water-conscious. Wood said their "water-to-beer ratio" is 3.75 gallons, compared with the industry average of between 8 and 12 gallons. That savings is essentially because of one step they have taken, to recapture the water used during the cooling process. (Before yeast is added to the grain-hop mixture—known as wort—it must be cooled down from boiling temperatures, which is done by passing it through a cold water bath.) However, instead of discarding that (already-filtered) water, which many breweries do, Upslope reuses it to make the next batch of beer.
There's a bonus savings in the amount of energy consumed—that water will need to be boiled to make wort again, but because it was just used to cool off the previous batch of boiling water, it's basically already halfway there.
Reason to celebrate Upslope is barely a year old, but their beer is showing up in more and more stores, all the while trying to give back to the community, from outdoor environmental groups to the Women's Wilderness Institute. So they certainly have reason to celebrate this season, and celebrate they (and an estimated 150-200 others) did!
