Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/tag/beer/page/3/)
Beer requires a water-intensive process and is an exploding industry in the region. Many brewers market their process as environmentally friendly.
Last week we asked you to nominate the best beer made from the waters of the Great Lakes watershed. And what a great job you did. The Echo staff is inspired to turn that list into a shopping list. One disappointment: The nominees didn’t reflect the binational nature of the watershed. They don’t make beer in Canada?
Success means reducing waste and dumping fees while creating a new revenue stream.
The research is also spurred by consumers who value alternatives to petroleum-based building blocks of other products.
Outside Magazine recently released a list of the top 10 canned beers of 2012. The magazine claims these as the best of 100 brands sampled. Apparently they were sampled at once and by very few judges. How else to explain the impaired judgment resulting in a selection containing only two beers brewed in Great Lakes states: Sly Fox Pikeland Pils from Pottstown, Pa., and Sixpoint Resin Ale in Brooklyn, N.Y.
And those two aren’t even in the Great Lakes watershed. Sorry Outside.
Imagine ordering a beer at a bar, looking at the coaster your glass was just put on and seeing your artwork – photographic or otherwise. That’s what Great Lakes Forever’s seventh annual photo contest proposes to do with winning photos and artwork. Submit an image or artwork related to the Great Lakes region, showing its unique landscape and the communities living on its shores and you could also win other prizes. The original art category is a new approach this year. While photographers, professional and amateur, have entered their images in the past, this year’s contest is also soliciting drawings, paintings, graphic illustrations or other Great Lakes inspired art.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources recently inducted its first brewery into the statewide Green Tier program for sustainable businesses.
Many Great Lakes craft breweries advocate sustainability through smart water use.
Echo reporter Andrew Norman broke a big story this spring: People like beer, and the Great Lakes are full of its primary ingredient. That story has sources from some of the region’s small breweries hailing the region’s versatile water, which lends itself to a diverse set of beer styles. But beer giant Budweiser also has love for the lakes, and is once again partnering with the Biodiversity Project’s Great Lakes Forever program to sponsor their sixth annual photo contest. The contest has professional and amateur categories, and the top prize is a kayak and a Garmin navigation system. Plus, the best photo will be immortalized on history’s most timeless canvas, the beer coaster — thousands of which will be distributed to bars across the region.
Remember how we told you that the Great Lakes brews great beers? Echo writers knew we weren’t alone in our fascination with the region’s ales, lagers, malts and stouts. But we weren’t so savvy to propose and film a TV show about them, which is what producer Matt Renner and host Amy Sherman have done. The “Great American Brew Trail” will showcase Great Lakes breweries – about 80 percent of them in Michigan – when it premiers on PBS stations this fall. Beers in other regions will follow.
A unique blend of climate, water and tradition make the Great Lakes region the best in the country for beer brewers and drinkers, enthusiasts say.
Together, the Great Lakes states produced more than 1.7 billion gallons of beer in 2009 – almost 27 percent of the country’s total production.