Green Options » brew

10 Health Benefits of Drinking Tea

Amy Bell — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:42:13 +0000

Black, green, white, and oolong teas all come from the same plant known as Camellia Sinensis.

The more processing the leaves of the plant undergo, the darker they will turn. (Green and white being steamed quickly, black and oolong being dried and fermented.)

Regardless of the processing method, brewed tea not only tastes good, but can have many health benefits as well;

Tea contains antioxidants. Antioxidants can help slow down the aging process, and help cells regenerate and repair. Many studies suggest antioxidants also assist our bodies in preventing cancer.
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Daily Tip: Green Your Beer Selection

Amy Stodghill — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:18:45 +0000

There are several ways you can start drinking green, if you don’t already (chances are you already do.) The next time you sidle up to the bar, ask for a draught beer or a local brew.

Choose draught beer. When you opt for a pint over a bottle, you’re saving on packaging. Draught beers are pulled from kegs and each keg contains around 124 pints, which are normally served in glasses. And unlike the bottled varieties, when the keg runs dry, it is sent back to the distributor to be refilled.

Ask for a local brew. Local brews are, well, brewed locally. And while some may go through a bigger distributor, most are shipped local and don’t have as far to go saving on fuel and transport emissions. Microbreweries make up beer in smaller batches, so the overall footprint is smaller than the bigger brands. And if there’s a brewpub attached, you can literally get your beer straight from the source. Many local breweries also offer small kegs or growlers of beer you can take home. To find a brewery near you, check out BrewPubZone.com.

Go organic. There are an increasing number of organic beers and spirits available. Ask your bartender if they carry any - if not, see if they can get some.

Amy says: I’ve always been a bit of a self-proclaimed beer snob and prefer draught to bottles (or cans) any day. Normally when I head to my local watering hole (usually to watch a baseball game on tv), I’ll grab a local beer. My new favorite is Brooklyn brewed Six Point Craft Ale’s Sweet Action.

More on Beer from GO:

Organic Beer, Now Without That Pesky Organic Part

Green Brews: An Ecology of Beer

Green Brews: Judging Beer at the Corvallis Brewfest

Anheuser-Busch Walks The Organic Trail With New Beer

Daily Tip: Green Beer

Reduce, Reuse, Respect the Brew: Beer-Making for Environmentalists

Fosters Brewery To Develop Fuel Cell That Runs On Beer

Green Brews: It’s All in the Bottle

Kicking the Habit: Adventures with Homebrew

Kicking the Habit: Adventures in Homebrew, Part Two

Green Brews: Green Nightclub Serves ‘Eco-lixirs’

The Green Life Guide: Drinking Green

Reduce, Reuse, Respect the Brew: Beer-Making for Environmentalists

Gavin Hudson — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:04:45 +0000

Hands up, all who enjoy a good beer from time to time! But what about the energy consumed making and transporting all of those glass bottles and (for the rest of us—who are we kidding?) aluminum cans? Mining the aluminum used for cans is an even more environmentally-dubious endeavor. Sure, everyone who’s anyone recycles. But you can do one better than recycling your beer bottles and cans: reduce the bottles you need and reuse the bottles you have by taking up the merry art of home brewing.

Making beer is not very different than making bread - except bread goggles can get you in a lot less trouble! You’ll need a little yeast and a lot of patience, as well as the proper cooking gadgets. You can find ingredients, gadgets, and recipes for your favorite beers online or at your neighborhood brew shop.

Now here’s where your environmental prowess comes into play. Instead of recycling or (don’t even think about it) tossing away your bottle after you finish your beer, save the bottle in a cupboard or under your sink. When you have about 70 (12-ounce/135-mL) bottles stashed away, you can begin the beer-making process. Once you begin making your own beer, you will never have to buy another new bottle or can again. Instead of beer bottles, you can also use wine bottles, but you’ll want to let beer in these bottles ferment a little bit longer.

Now it should also be mentioned that there are a number of fantastic and high-minded breweries out there. So, you might like to consider buying these 70 bottles (about 12 six-packs) and the beer they contain from companies like Anderson Valley Brewing Company, a large-scale solar powered brewery, or the New Belgium Brewing Company, which has wonderful sustainability and philanthropy programs, and also just introduced its Mothership Organic Wit beer. You probably have other favorite local and organic beers as well.

All in all, the gear that you will need to start brewing is not extensive: a bucket, a 20-quart (19 Liter) cooking pot, a thermometer, a large sealed container, and a few other odds and ends. The cooking pot is probably the most expensive item. Unless you improvise with material that you already have, the cost of the equipment should come to between $80 and $135. You can also generally find this equipment on Craigslist and Freecycle. If you are able to use a bucket or a thermometer that you already have, just make sure that it has been very well cleaned before you begin. I told a brewer once that I’d heard that 70% of good beer making depended on cleanliness and he responded, “Only 70%?”

The best way to brew your first batch of beer is with a kit—not one of the “beer-in-a-can” packages—but simply a collection of pre-measured ingredients for a particular type of beer. You can get one of these at your local brew shop, or at an online site like homebrewers.com. Once you get the feel of things, you can purchase beer-making ingredients from organic retailers, like breworganic.com. If you’re lucky, you may even live near an organic brew shop, co-op, or grocery store that sells bulk organic brewing ingredients. I also recommend the free “home brew class” offered at breworganics.com.

So cheers, prost, cin-cin, skål, kanpai, and salud! Here’s to drinking environmentally responsibly.

References and Resources:

If you are interested in more on this topic, you may also enjoy the following articles written by my fellow Green Options bloggers.

Green Brews: An Ecology of Beer, by Robin Schidlowski

Organic Beer, Now Without That Pesky Organic Part, by Alicia Erickson

Green Brews: Judging Beer at the Corvallis Brewfest, by Clayton Bodie Cornell

Anheuser-Busch Walks The Organic Trail With New Beer, by Michael dEstries

Tip o’ the Day: Green Beer, by Rebecca Carter

Fosters Brewery To Develop Fuel Cell That Runs On Beer, by Michael dEstries

Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iantindale/79961379/

Daily Tip: Make Solar Powered Tea

Amy Stodghill — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:51:01 +0000

In the heat of summer a tall glass of fresh, brewed iced tea can be refreshing. Keep a pitcher handy by making your own using solar power. All you need is a glass jar, water, tea and a hot sunny day.

J A Bowman from Dallas, TX says:

Make Sun Tea in any clean closed glass container. Fill container with water, add tea bags, close container and place in the sun until the tea is the desired darkness.

Yes it really is that simple.

Or instead of tea bags you can try steeping fresh, organic herbs. Here’s a few suggested combinations from Mother Earth Living:

Chamomile with hibiscus flowers
Elderflowers with peppermint or yarrow
Hibiscus flowers with rose hips
Marigold petals with mint
Mullein with sage, chamomile or marjoram
Pennyroyal with any of the other mints
Rosemary with hibiscus flowers
Sage with lemon verbena
Strawberry leaves with woodruff
Yarrow with peppermint

And a cautionary note about sun tea from LifeHacker (this is also noted elsewhere):

According to the Centers for Disease Control, using the sun’s rays to make tea can facilitate the growth of bacteria. Tea steeped in a jar on your porch won’t get any hotter than 130 Fahrenheit, about the temperature of a really hot bath and not nearly hot enough to kill nasties lurking either in the water or on the tea itself. For that, water needs to be heated to 195 for three to five minutes.

As an alternative you can steep the tea or herbs in the fridge over night; or boil the water, steep and refrigerate. (I know, that takes the ’sun’ out of ’sun tea’ but it is still a refreshing summer treat all the same).

Amy says: To change it up a little when brewing my own, I throw in a few bags of orange spice tea or other fruity, herbal flavored teas.

Mother Earth Living

Life Hacker - How To

Colorado State University - Is Sun Tea Safe?

You Grow Girl

Green Options - Eco-Effective Decisions: Ten Ways to Celebrate Electrical Energy Independence.

For suggesting today’s tip, J A Bowman will receive two months of wind power from Renewable Choice energy.

Do you ave a tip you’d like to share? Submit it to us.