Often us craft beer drinkers buy local brews. Many times this is because we want to support our own beer scene, as illustrated by this article by the Beer Advocate. Other times its because we want to drink the freshest draught available. Although I agree with these reasons without question, there is more benefit to buying local than just sustaining your local breweries.
Environmentally speaking, local craft beers are the best thing you can drink. The reasons for this are actually rather simple. Craft brewers tend to buy local ingredients to use in the making of their beers. They also sell more beer locally than they export to other areas. The combination of these two key points means that the carbon footprint of a locally bought craft beer is smaller than that of a craft beer shipped in from another area.
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The beer world has always discussed the validity of cans vs bottles. I must admit that I am guilty of being a bottle snob; albeit, the more I think about it I have almost no reason to be. Earlier today I read an article by Fast Company about craft brewers and how many are adding cans to their product lines. Most of them are doing this for the sake of lowering cost and improving environmental sustainability. This should come as no surprise given those are two of the biggest concerns for companies these days, further proven by the Huffingon Post article about the 8 ‘greenest’ breweries in the US.
Although I care about the environment, that aspect of the can topic has been covered by the other websites. What the other articles didn’t do was discuss the flavor aspects of bottles vs cans in any depth, which in turn reminded me of the great wine world debate of Corks vs Screw tops. Much like with cans, screw tops offer better flavor protection then their more traditional rivals, but due to perception are considered a sign of cheap inferior wine.
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