Another aspect of environmentally-aware brewing is in the ingredients we use. When possible, I like to use organically grown malt, grain and hops. I'm fortunate, because I live in Chicago, I pickup 55 lb. bags of organic malt at Mid Country. Hops I get at Seven Bridges Coop.
Cheers for this thread!
Don't want to rain on your parade, but organic grain isn't all that environmentally friendly. I really do believe in most organic produce, but I also feel the organic label is just blindly accepted as better when that isn't true in all cases. In my experience grains are one of the exceptions where organic is actually worse.
My father and I farm barley and wheat in central Montana. I feel I have some unique insight as I have seen our land farmed many different ways over the years. My grandfather was organic by default (everyone was organic in those days). My father has followed more conventional farming changes. As a conventional farmer I understand if you are wary of my information, but nonetheless I will try to accurately describe the pros/cons of the different farming practices I have witnessed.
I do see the benefit of organic when it comes to fruits, vegetables, and even hops. These plants often get directly sprayed with insecticides and fungicides. But when it comes to grains, they are typically only sprayed with herbicides (to control weeds) in the plants infancy long before the seed is formed and not at all if the farmer had good weed control before planting. As for insecticides and fungicides, I can't remember the last time we sprayed them on grain fields. While I don’t deny the possible negatives of chemical residues I feel they are far less then the negatives caused by organic weed control practices.
To control weeds organic grain farmers go back to the old days of plowing a field. While the non-organic no-till farming method we use requires herbicides (mostly Roundup), we have far more organic matter in or soil versus organic plowed fields. Continually plowing a field repeatedly exposed the organic matter to the air where it quickly oxidizes into carbon dioxide (which contributes to global warming). Less organic matter in the soil means less water retention (plus erosion), less nutrient release, and more crusting of the soil. Crusted soil (a common problem in organic grain farming) creates a poor seed bed and plant roots get less water and oxygen. Logically this makes sense, as no where in nature is the ground continually plowed. No-till farming is much better for soil condition.
Plowed fields also drastically increase land erosion often into river and streams. The recent drought was almost as bad as the dust bowl of the 1930's. The reason topsoil didn't blow away and the country didn't starve this time was because of newer no-till farming practices that organic farmers can't use. Even 70 years later we are still working to rebuild top soil and knock down dirt drifts that resulted from my great grandfathers organic farming practices.
In addition to erosion, plowing a field burns far more fossil fuels than the alternative. Since we started using more modern non-organic farming practices our diesel consumption has dropped by over half.
The other difference is the use of fertilizers. We do use tones of fertilizer similar to the stuff most people buy for their lawns. I believe organic producers of fruits and vegetables use fertilizers like compost and manure. While this works on the relatively small areas needed to produce fruits and vegetables it is not practical for the 100’s of millions of grain acres (that would be a lot of methane producing cow sht). The organic farmers in our area just don’t fertilize.
From what I can gather organic farmers of fruits and vegetable produce similar yields (sometimes even better) to conventional farming methods. This is far from true with grain farming. Talking to organic grain farmers in our area and knowing what my grandfather produced, organic grain land produces less than half the yield of conventional methods. This decreases the food supply and increases prices. Now this is great for the farmer, but bad for the consumer especially the poor who struggle to afford food.
Another negative of less productive organic land is that more land has to be broken up from its "natural" state to grow the same amount of food. When you fly over our heartland and see endless fields, the vast majority of those are grains. Imagine needing to double all that area? Lower yielding organic grains cause vast tracts of land to be broken up from its natural state to make the same amount of food. Personally I feel the negatives of “non-organic fertilizer” usage often mentioned by organic supports are worth keeping 100’s of million of acres (that we don’t have) from being broken up.
I hope it doesn't seem like I am attacking organic supporters, as I am an organic guy in many cases. I just think there is a lot of disinformation out there especially when it comes to organic grains, which do have some very serious environmental side effects.
Rant over and sorry for the thread Hijack.
.The water temp is never above 60° even during the summer out of the tap. All my gray water goes into a dry well and the storm drains on my road are also dry wells so every gallon goes back into the ground. So really there is no need to conserve water in my area. Other than to save a few bucks 
