beer

Locavore brew: Tapping into beer’s agricultural roots

What happens when small batch brewers discover the farm-to-table movement and run with it?

Brie Mazurek Food

Meatpacking plant turns into net-zero-energy vertical farm

Soon, a former meatpacking plant in Chicago will replace carcasses and rendering vats with bakers and brewers and fish farmers and mushroom growers. The Plant (ho ho, a double meaning!) is gathering together a bunch of food-makers to create a self-sustaining system in the 93,500-square-foot abandoned space. As Fast Company reports, a former meatpacking plant […]

Sarah Laskow Buildings

This suds for you: Taste-testing organic beer

It's a hard job, but somebody has to do it: In a blind taste test, Grist staffers drink and rate a selection of imported and domestic organic beers.

Ted Alvarez Food

Anheuser-Busch turns beer leftovers into usable products

Now you can feel good after knocking back a few brewskis — and not just because you’re tipsy. Beermaker Anheuser-Busch has found a way to turn its waste grain into an array of products, from clothes to cosmetics to biogas. The beer behemoth has partnered with a company called Blue Marble Bio, which plans to […]

Sarah Parsons Culture

Chill your beer without using any electricity

A one that is not cold is scarcely a one at all, but keeping beer frosty on a hot day normally sucks up energy. Not anymore. This ancient innovation uses clay pots, sand, and water to keep stuff cool even on a hot day.

Jess Zimmerman Culture

Great places, great food (and beer): part two

You can’t have a great place without great beer.In part one of my musings on food and “great places,” I painted a bleak picture of the U.S. food landscape: one in which a handful of companies churn out mountains of low-quality food, competing not to see who can put out the best product, but rather […]

Tom Philpott Culture

How to explain climate change to Joe Sixpack

(click to embiggen) Look, not everyone's motivated by the threat of extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and threatened habitats. But nobody likes warm beer. Use this chart to put climate change in perspective for the beer guzzler in your life. (Note: Will not work in Britain.)

Jess Zimmerman Science

Irish scientists help Guinness go green

Photo: Simon HuckoJust in time for St. Patrick’s Day, scientists at the University of Limerick have developed a biodegradable alternative to that plastic widget that keeps Guinness foamy. It turns out that coating the inside of the can with biodegradable, natural cellulose would do an even better job of putting nitrogen into the beer (which […]