Make it Count!

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Join New Planet Beer in two events supporting our environment in Boulder: an Earth Day 5K and a microbrewery festival. This Sunday, New Planet Beer is a sponsor of the Center for Resource Conservation’s 10th Annual Earth Day 5K Run/Walk. Proceeds from our 3R Raspberry Ale (the 3 R’s stand for Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) for 2011 were given to the Center for Resource Conservation for their work engaging and educating Coloradan’s on conserving our natural resources like water, energy and waste.

The Earth Day 5K is also walking it’s talk. It is promoting a “cup free” race and offering participants a “virtual swag bag”. Please join us and help make CRC this race as green as possible.

 When: Sunday, April 22nd ~10 a.m. Race starts

Where: University of Colorado Research Park 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder

What: Support CRC’s mission to empower our community to conserve natural resources

Use your time from the 10th Annual Earth Day 5k to qualify for the first 29 waves of the 2012 Dick’s Sporting Goods BolderBOULDER!

 

Then join the fun for the 20th annual Microbreweries for the Environment on Friday, April 27th at 8 PM at the Boulder Theater. We’re excited to be returning to the Microbreweries for the Environment benefit: “Think Globally, Drink Locally: 20 Breweries, $2 Pints, 3 bands, 6 causes, 1 Planet”. This marks the 20th anniversary of the event which has raised over $130,000 for local environmental causes. Don’t miss the opportunity to sample some of Colorado’s best beers (especially ours!) for $2/pint or just $12 for a sampler glass. The benefit is a zero-waste and carbon-neutral event and everyone is encouraged to walk, bike, or bus to the event. Doors open and beer tasting starts at 8:00pm, and music will run to 1:00am.

Register here >

 

Socially Conscious About Our Planet

As New Planet began to grow in its early stages, company founders Pedro and Seneca Gonzalez searched for ways to make great tasting gluten-free beer, but to also make an impact on our planet. The company is named New Planet for a reason. With the objective in being socially conscious and environmentally responsible, we partnered with Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (WLRV) to make our goal a reality.

This year New Planet partnered with WLRV for the second time to tackle restoring social trails around Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, CO. Heavy pressure from the rugged infrastructure of the red rocks had led to over 400 ft of gullies and nearly 2,000 ft of disturbed foothills to repair. It was a sunny day when the volunteers split into a few groups to manage different areas of restoration. Land overhaul, decreasing erosion via trail repair and producing revegetation were all tasks at hand.

In restoring these lands, WLRV was able to contribute to the aesthetics of a Denver Mountain Park formerly known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, all while making the areas surrounding Red Rocks safer for those who decide to explore outside of the entertainment facility itself. After two days work, the social trails were in full repair and could be utilized by music fans, hikers, and adventurers alike.

“The vibes were great; everyone was excited to make sure the lands were repaired to full quality,” said New Planet employee and representative Ryan Gaterman, “WRLV definitely has great intentions and that is why New Planet chose to sponsor such a great event.”

At the end of the first day’s work, WRLV celebrated a hard day’s work by taking a breather and enjoying some cold New Planet Beer at the historic Civilian Conservation Corps bunkhouse. By the time everyone arrived back at the campsite, dinner was served, and a drum circle had developed around the fire.

“It was great at the end of the day to see folks who had spent all day hauling trees, seeds, and rocks up steep slopes together, sit back, share smiles and compare sore muscles,” said Jarret Roberts, the WLRV Community Programs Director.

For more information on Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, check out http://www.wlrv.org/.  New Planet Beer would also like to thank Linard Cimmermanis for the great pictures. Want to know more about what we are doing? Join New Planet’s endeavors by checking us out on Facebook, Twitter, or sign up for our newsletter. Saving planet earth never tasted so good!

 

Bike to Work with New Planet

The New Planet Beer team is going to bike to work on Bike to Work Day. Are you? On Wednesday, June 22, 2011, The Denver Regional Council presents BIKE TO WORK DAY and we challenge you to keep your cars parked and bike to work too!

Everyday millions of tons of carbon are emitted into the atmosphere, which is causing an increased amount of thermal radiation to be absorbed.  Our carbon dependent lifestyles are affecting animal habitats, human health, and the climate of the earth.  Biking is a great way for everyone to battle these externalities.  Not only is biking a great workout that increases health, burns fat, and releases endorphins, which in turn makes people healthier and thus happier, but it also helps protect the world that we love so dearly.  So keep your cars keys in the house and join New Planet Beer on biking to work on Wednesday, June 22nd, it will benefit you and give the earth and well-deserved break.

Check out The Denver Regional Council’s video for Bike to Work Day.  It’s pretty funny. http://www.youtube.com/embed/zupy-boJ0kk

 

Make the Earth a Better Place

Earth Day is the perfect opportunity to remind our fans how New Planet Beer makes the environment a priority in their business practices. It’s also a good time to reflect on what you are doing for the environment and what small adjustments we can all make in our daily lives that can help make the Earth a better place.

New Planet Beer’s Earth Day Celebrations

  1. The company name ‘New Planet’ came about as an inspiration to help reinvigorate the planet.
  2. Each beer that New Planet Beer brews has a different environmental giveback that supports sustainable living.
  3. Tread Lightly Ale dedicates a percentage of proceeds for restoring the natural environment.
  4. 3R Raspberry Ale dedicates a percentage of proceeds for purchasing BottleHood  Glassware who take used New Planet Beer bottles and recreates them into usable items that get donated to local non-profit organizations.
  5. Off Grid Pale Ale dedicates a percentage of proceeds for organizations that support alternative  energy.
  6. New Planet Beer employees volunteer each year with the Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, a non-profit organization that provides an opportunity for people to come together, learn about their natural environment, and take direct action to restore and care for the land..
  7. New Planet Beer constantly looks for ways to use recycled materials which includes the boxes used to ship New Planet Beer, cups used for sampling, office supplies, and we always look for ways to reduce the materials we do need to use.
  8. New Planet Beer is participating in the Microbreweries for the Environment 2011 on Earth Day, which will benefit the environmental efforts of four local non-profit organizations: CU Environmental Center, Flatirons Neighborhood Farm, The GrowHaus, and Sprout City Farms.
  9. New Planet Beer partners with Fort Collins Brewery in the production of their beers. The brewery utilizes the most current thinking in sustainable, green technologies, including a water waste system which is not connected to a public sewer.
  10. The New Planet brewing process follows these environmental practices with Fort Collins Brewery:

  • We reuse the water on the bottling line for watering lawns.
  • We ship excess grain, hops, yeast, beer and rinse water to a cattle ranch because these ingredients are a great protein supplement to a cows normal diet.
  • We reduce our use of power during peak load hours by coordinating with the Fort Collins Power Authority.
  • We use fans to bring in night air to cool our storage rather than keep it cold with air conditioners.
  • We use infra-red heating tubes to heat areas employees work in but not the entire plant providing localized heating.
  • We brew on demand so we don’t store and keep beer refrigerated for long periods of time.

New Planet Beer is dedicated to making great tasting gluten-free beer and doing good things for the environment. New Planet Beer can’t do it alone, but if we all do our part, the collective will make a difference.

What are you doing to help make Earth a better place?

 

 

Brewing with Millet Could Be Good For the Environment

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You may have seen some of the recent articles on the discussion between Colorado agriculture officials and brewers and the use of millet in their brews. Millet is a cereal grain and “Colorado is the country’s top millet producer, accounting for about 60 percent of U.S. production last year,” reported by By CATHERINE TSAI Associated Press.

Our own New Planet Beer Co-Founder and CEO, Pedro Gonzalez was interviewed on New Planet Beer’s thoughts on using the gluten-free grain – millet. Read the article below, which was posted on Forbes.com and Denverpost.com.

DENVER—Colorado agriculture officials are turning to brewers to see if they can help boost the state’s sales of millet, a cereal grain that so far is a sliver of the nation’s food industry. Colorado is the country’s top millet producer, accounting for about 60 percent of U.S. production last year.

It’s a $50 million crop for the U.S., while wheat is worth several billion dollars each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Still, it represents an area where rural Colorado businesses can grow, said Timothy Larsen, senior international marketing specialist for the state agriculture department.

“What agriculture has to do is find a bunch of niche opportunities to expand,” Larsen said.

Millet is often used as birdseed, but Colorado agriculture officials have been promoting its gluten-free qualities and working with Colorado State University to develop recipes for it.

They’ve also asked Colorado Malting Co. in Alamosa to ship malted samples to Colorado-based brewers to experiment in making millet beers.

“We hope to create a new sector,” Larsen said.

Colorado Malting Co. is preparing about 6,000 pounds of millet from the Fort Morgan area—2,000 pounds each of three varieties—for commercial brewers this spring. The company recently finished malting golden German millet.

“I was impressed with the nutty flavors we got out of it,” said Colorado Malting Co. co-owner Jason Cody.

However, brewers may have to add enzymes to the millet, and the millet also is taking longer to dry than barley, Cody said.

Pedro Gonzalez, co-founder of gluten-free beer company New Planet Beer, said he’s eager to see if the brewers his company works with can find a recipe that appeals to customers the way some millet-based imports do. New Planet’s existing beers primarily use sorghum, corn and brown rice.

“The palate is used to the malted barley. It’s a very unique taste,” Gonzalez said. “The gluten, the proteins in beer, make it thick and full of body and tasty. So when you choose not to have barley or wheat in your beer, then you lose those qualities.”

New Planet Beers use ingredients such as raspberry puree and molasses to add flavor. If New Planet Beer can use Colorado-grown millet, it could help the company meet its mission of being environmentally responsible by using ingredients that don’t have to be shipped far, Gonzalez said.

Scott Kimball in Buena Vista, Eddyline Restaurant and Brewing Co. head brewer, is among those signed up to experiment with malted millet. He isn’t guaranteeing his customers a millet beer until he can see how it tastes.

Pagosa Brewing Co. in Pagosa Springs also plans to play with millet. “It’s an opportunity where if we have a gluten-free beer that actually tastes good, let’s try it,” said head brewer Tony Simmons, who has home brewed with millet before. “I’m a big fan,” he said.

The state agriculture department is using a $42,000 USDA grant to help Colorado’s millet industry market itself, domestically and overseas.

Millet grows on about 200,000 acres in Colorado and can be rotated with wheat, which grows on about 2 million acres, Larsen said.

“If the market demand is there, we can certainly produce more,” he said.

Turn New Planet Beer Into Glass Goods

New Planet Beer is pleased to announce our selection of BottleHood as the “Doing Good Things for the Planet” 3R Raspberry Ale 2011 partner. BottleHood is an innovative producer of repurposed glassware based in San Diego, CA with an office in Boulder, Colorado. BottleHood collects wine, liquor and beer (yes actual New Planet Beer bottles from local restaurants like Salt and Happa Sushi) and repurposes them into juice glasses, tumblers, vases, light fixtures and jewelry.

“We selected BottleHood because of their direct environment and community impact. The company keeps glass out of local landfills, creates a significant number of local jobs and gives neighborhood retailers the opportunity to sell locally produced products.” said Seneca Murley, New Planet Beer co-founder.

The only twist in our selection of BottleHood is that they are a for-profit company, and our grantmaking to date has been aimed at non-profit organizations. New Planet Beer has commissioned BottleHood to take 3R Raspberry bottles and repurposed them into glass tumblers with our logo on it. We are then going to donate the tumblers to Colorado based non-profit organizations for their silent auction fundraisers. Included on our list for donations are Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (who is our Tread Lightly Ale 2010 and 2011 partner), the Colorado Recycling Association, High Country Conservation, EcoCycle and others.

The 3 “R’s” in 3R Raspberry Ale stand for Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Our partnership with BottleHood provides an opportunity for an additional meaning: reclaim, repurpose and reuse.

BottleHood’s products can be found online at www.bottlehood.com. BottleHood is offering New Planet Beer Fans a 5% discount (enter NewPlanet into the coupon line on their website).

To help New Planet Beer fans toast in the New Year, BottleHood has donated two brown beer glass tumblers to give away to our readers. To win please leave a comment describing how you reduce, reuse or recycle below or on Facebook.

The Carbon Footprint of Bottles and Cans: Post 3 of 3

New Planet Beer has been weighing the pros and cons of bottles vs. cans in recent blog posts. One aspect of the argument that we have not discussed is the carbon footprint resulting from production of bottles and cans. It’s a complicated debate that hinges on looking at the complete lifecycle of a product, called the Cradle-to-Cradle approach. Some of the debate points are:

  1. Raw material extraction and processing – what is the raw material being used (sand for glass bottles or bauxite ore for aluminum cans), where is it being extracted, and what is the energy effort required for extract?
  2. Production process – how much energy is required to convert raw material to product? What is the energy grid that the production process is occurring on (nuclear power, hydroelectric, coal)? What type of emissions is released in production process?
  3. Transport of finished goods – How much does it cost to move product to brewery and then to sale?
  4. End-of-life management – How much is the product recycled? How much is the recycled product used in the process of new product (how much recycled glass used in glass, etc.)?

As you can see this blog post can’t begin to cover in depth these issues. It can get very overwhelming when studying carbon footprint analyses as it’s hard to know where one individual or even a small company can affect change.

What we’ve learned is that one of the most important things we can do is to recycle. The more we recycle bottles or cans, the fewer raw materials are needed for production. That is why we named our 2nd style of beer 3R Raspberry Ale.  The 3 R’s stand for Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle and a portion of the beer’s proceeds goes to recycling education. The first part of the New Year we’ll be announcing New Planet Beer’s exciting new partnership with an organization that truly lives the 3 R’s.

Keep Recycling!

Bottles vs Cans: Post 1 of 3

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If you are reading this blog, you have likely sampled a New Planet Beer from a brown bottle. And you may have observed some of your glutenoid friends drinking from cans and wondered when you can enjoy the same?  While New Planet Beer is committed to bottles for the near future, we are open to putting our beers in cans.

Walking through the liquor store it is quickly apparent that there is a new trend in the beer industry, cans. No longer are they traditional cans, constrained by the combination of silver, blue, white and red. Today’s can is a canvas, a piece of art, that makes the experience of drinking beer that much more special. But there must be more to it, after all, bottles have been used for centuries.

Below are four reasons that bottles are preferred over cans. We’ll discuss the benefits of cans in a later post.

  1. History – The story goes that a monk stored his beer in a wine bottle and it kept well. Beer has been in brown bottles ever since and eventually evolved to different bottle shapes to accentuate certain qualities of their beer.
  2. Skunked – If light strikes beer it can change its taste and smell. Ultra-violet light chemically changes iso-humulones (isomerized hop oils, which are responsible for the bitterness hops add to beer) into mercaptans, the exact same ingredient in a skunk’s spray!
  3. Taste – Many people feel beer tastes better from the bottle. Aluminum can leave an aftertaste in beer (however, cans now have added a liner to prevent fluctuations in taste, made from BPA, which has its own downsides.)
  4. Temperature control – Glass does a better job keeping the beer cold. Aluminum convects quicker than glass, warming the beer, however, cozies solve this problem.

What are your thoughts? Do you prefer bottles or cans? Leave a comment below and tell us why.

A Day on the Trails with Wildlands Restoration Volunteers

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I am still sore and tired. It’s been several days since the New Planet Beer team restored about 700 feet of open space trail in the Bettasso Preserve in western Boulder County. The one day event was orchestrated by the Wildlands Restoration Volunteers with the help of Boulder County Open Space. The New Planet Beer team was one of four teams restoring social trails which had been overused and eroded by mountain bikers. Our goal was to reclaim and to set it back into wild lands. A new more sustainable mountain bike trail was built last summer with the help of the Bikers Alliance to replace the restored trails. Everybody wins on these partnerships including the animals that got displaced from the adjacent lands burned by the Four Mile Creek fire. Bringing restoration helps the ecosystem blossom and participating in this effort was very rewarding.

The team hiked in about 30 minutes to the beginning restoration point and we worked back towards the trailhead. Restoring trails is a four-step process: 1) tilling the land 2) seeding 3) mulching and branching, and 4) creating water retention and diversion. We had a team of six folks with two tilling, one seeding, two mulching and branching, and one developing water rock dams. Every so often we had to team up to tackle a bigger project like placing erosion protection carpets in steep areas. But overall each person picked the tasks they enjoyed most. We were joined by Boulder County Open Space rangers who worked side-by-side with us. We took a couple of breaks throughout the day but for the most part we were restoring. Hiking out was very rewarding and celebrating at dinner with all the volunteers was very rewarding. Everyone enjoyed cold New Planet Beers. I am looking forward to next year’s project. Stay tuned as we select a project near you.

Pedro Gonzalez, New Planet Beer CEO

Volunteer with New Planet Beer

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Join the New Planet Beer team on October 2nd for a full day of work restoring a trail in the foothills of Boulder County. Afterward celebrate with free food and New Planet’s Gluten-free Beer.

Part of New Planet Beer’s mission is to “do good things for the planet”. Each of our beer labels has a name that invokes an action we can take to help our planet. The 2010 recipient of Tread Lightly Ale’s proceeds is Wildlands Restoration Volunteers (WRV). New Planet Beer, as a Corporate Sponsor, has specified the funds go to support the restoration of the popular Betasso Preserve west of Boulder.

The New Planet Beer team will be joining 80 other WRV volunteers to revegetate a mile of unsustainable social trails on Boulder County Parks and Open Space’s recently purchased Benjamin property. This 391 acre parcel is adjacent to the extremely popular Betasso Preserve Open Space, and jointly they protect 1175 acres of important wildlife habitat in the lower montane life zone.

In 2009, WRV volunteers revegetated over a mile of social trails on the property. Working in partnership again this year with the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance, another mile of the most eroded, unsustainable, and hazardous of the social trails will be revegetated. In conjunction with restoration efforts, the construction of a new multi-use trail will move users away from the sensitive wildlife areas within the preserve. The new trail combined with existing trails will provide hikers, mountain bikers, trail runners and equestrians with opportunities to access approx. 8.7 miles of secluded, varied and rugged forest terrain within a 20 minute drive of Boulder while leaving much of the preserve untouched.

You can expect a full day restoring habitat, reducing soil erosion, and sharing in the stewardship community while having fun in the mountains just west of Boulder. As a member of our team, we’ll give you a New Planet Beer t-shirt. This area is close to but not affected by the 4 Mile Canyon Wildfire area.

To sign up select the link below and select the New Planet “group”.  The New Planet Beer group is limited to 10 people so register now!

Sign Up >

Wildlands Restoration Volunteers engages volunteers in very high-quality ecological restoration projects in areas of great ecological significance. In its ten-year history, Wildlands Restoration Volunteers has completed 200 restoration projects including road closures, wetland revegetation and invasive species control while involving more than 30,000 volunteer hours. Not only does Wildlands Restoration Volunteers do spectacularly effective ecological restoration. It also designs and conducts projects so that the volunteers fall in love with restoration and have a life-changing experience.