Tag Archive for: Beer

Patagonia is Making a Sustainable Kernza Beer

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Author: Anna Brones | Published: November 17, 2016

The first thing that you’ll probably notice about the new beer Long Root Ale is the can; it’s features the iconic label of apparel company Patagonia. That placement immediately begs the question: what is a company known for its clothes, puffy jackets and raingear doing making beer?

At a first glance, one might think that it has to do with the brand’s outdoor ethos; dirtbag climbers sure are a fan of the six pack, and a beer on the river is better than any cosmopolitan happy hour. But in fact, the reasons for Long Root Ale run much deeper. This beer isn’t just for beer enthusiasts; it’s a beer that’s made for making the planet better.

That may sound like a bold statement — and perhaps it is — but in the last few years, Patagonia has been taking the ethic that it has put into clothing and investing it in food. With its food brand, Patagonia Provisions, there is a serious push into making smart investments that help to better the food system.

One of those investments is The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, an organization devoted to breeding perennial grain and seed crops as a part of a larger approach to regenerative organic agriculture. One of those grains is Kernza. The Land Institute has been experimenting with Thinopyrum intermedium, a grass species related to wheat, since 1983.

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Take the Long Root Home

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Author: Michael C. Upton | Published: November 16, 2016

The folks at Hopworks Urban Brewery were kind enough to send out samples of their newest project beer, Long Root Ale. HUB is based out of Portland, Ore., so why is it showing up in a Lancaster County column? Agriculture.

When I heard about Long Root I immediately reflected on our area’s rich tradition of farming. Corn, tobacco, and soy make for great cash crops here. Some of that corn may make it into popular beers (Corona, Miller Lite, PBR). Traditionally brewed with some kind of grain — wheat, rye, and most often malted barley — beer is an agricultural pillar.

Adhering to their motto of “using beer as a force for good,” HUB teamed up with Patagonia Provisions (from the parent clothing company who popularized fleece in the ‘80s) to create a beer to revolutionize brewing while significantly benefiting the environment. As its grain component Long Root uses Kernza (a registered trademark of The Land Institute), which is a perennial grain grown using regenerative agriculture practices. I had to look it up. Regenerative agriculture is defined as a practice of organic farming, which helps build soil health or regenerates unhealthy soil. The crop is a perennial, so it doesn’t need to be sowed each year. While the aboveground component of Kernza stands four feet high, the roots tower ten or more feet below the surface.

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Solving Climate Change With Beer From Patagonia’s Food Startup

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Authors: Bradford Wieners | Published on: October 3, 2016

Yvon Chouinard, the short, bluff, fatalistic founder of Patagonia, the company renowned for its pricey parkas, fuzzy fleeces, and exhortations to buy fewer of them, sits in a cafeteria-style Chinese restaurant in Jackson, Wyo. He scratches a clam from its shell, forks it into his mouth, chews, checks the time. “Oh, we’re fine,” he says, and Birgit Cameron, seated on his right, does her best to look reassured. A fairly recent addition to the Patagonia family, Cameron seems as eager to make a good impression this evening as Chouinard is indifferent to how he’s perceived. The two are expected in 10 minutes at the Center for the Arts in Jackson, where they’ll appear on stage together and introduce Unbroken Ground, a 26-minute film produced by Patagonia that highlights the suppliers of Patagonia Provisions, the three-year-old sister food company that Cameron heads. Depending on your level of cynicism, Unbroken Ground may strike you as a well-turned documentary about the ecologically enlightened suppliers behind the foods she sells, or perhaps as a slick marketing piece. Naturally, it’s both.

“It’s hard to get people fired up about how cotton is grown in Turkey,” Chouinard says, “but we’ve got to, because the way 99 percent of cotton is grown, it’s a disaster. And it’s the same with where most of our food comes from. So we use film because a lot of these little guys we’re working with don’t have the resources to make a movie. We do.”

At 77, Chouinard long ago stepped back from Patagonia’s day-to-day operations, but he and his wife, Malinda (also present, but not to be quoted), remain the owners and stewards of the brand. They mostly split their time between here, where their home faces the Teton Range, and Ventura, Calif., where Patagonia’s headquarters and their children and grandkids are. Both published books in the last two months: Yvon, an updated edition of his memoir-cum-management treatise, Let My People Go Surfing; Malinda, with co-author Jennifer Ridgeway,Family Business: Innovative On-Site Child Care Since 1983, a monograph promoting kindergartens at corporate offices.

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