We strongly believe in serving the greenest food and beer possible! You heard us right. Our impact on our environment is a strong consideration when we designed our business and concept. Let us explain...

Carbon is an important element in our system; after all, all life is carbon based. It is important to realize the role and balance of Carbon in our planets ecosystem. Carbon is present in many forms; as a gas (Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Methane and other ‘fossil fuels’, industrial gases like refrigerants, and many other forms), as a liquid (nearly all liquid fuels are carbon based), and as a solid (wood, coal, and most commonly as the major mineral Calcium Carbonate or Limestone. Okay, why does this matter?

Whether you are a believer in man-made or natural global warming, Carbon is critical. Carbon dioxide when released into our atmosphere has the effect of insulating our earth by trapping heat. As Carbon concentrations rise it is naturally trapped by either 1)being consumed by plants that are then trapped and eventually turned into fossil fuels, or, 2) absorbed by our oceans and precipatated as a Carbonate mineral on the ocean floor. This is known as the carbon cycle.

This is where our role becomes important. We have advertised many of the advantages of being wood-fired throughout our pages for its beneficial role in creating superior flavor but another advantage is that it does not adversely affect the carbon cycle. If we were to use natural gas (methane) to fire our pizza oven and grill with we would be releasing Carbon into our atmsophere that was previously trapped in our earth safely for millions of years and thus would have increased the concentration of Carbon dioxide at a rate faster than it can be removed. By burning Pecan wood, the Carbon released is, at its most, only a few years old; we have released carbon that was Carbon Dioxide that was used by the Pecan trees to grow. In other words we have not released ‘old’ carbon into our modern atmosphere. Furthermore, the owners, have a ten acre Pecan farm in the Rio Grande River valley; those trees continuosly convert Carbon Dioxide into new tree material thus reabsorbing the carbon that is emitted by the burning of the wood in the pizza oven and grill. Yes, our Pizzas and Steaks are Green!

Okay, so how can we claim our beers are green? Simple! When you are driving along and you see your favorite megabrewery truck driving that famous beer brewed in Milwaukee, or St. Louis, or Europe think how much fuel is burned transporting that beer. Also let’s think back to our favorite carbon cycle from above and think about where the carbon fueling all those trucks is coming from? It is not likely that the carbon spewing from its exhaust stacks is derived from young trees is it? Nope, that carbon is from fossil fuels representing carbon that was safely taken from our atmosphere tens of millions of years ago and is now being released again disproportionately increasing Our Earth’s Carbon Dioxide concentration. Now it will be reabsorbed all by itself but this will take hundreds of years at the minimum adversely affecting our way of life on this planet in the meantime. Well how does this make our beer better? To begin with, Beer is approximately 95% water; those trucks full of beer are mostly moving water. Water, weighing about 8 pounds per gallon is not light and requires a lot of energy to transport. We do not ship our beer. We have some of the best water in the country that comes into our brewery, is turned into beer, and then gets consumed without needing any shipping. Now, in all honesty, we are responsible for the Carbon Dioxide emissions involved in the transport of our grains and hops but seeing how those represent only about 5% by weight the final outcome of the beer we feel proud saying that our beer is the greenest beer you can buy!

Lastly, we strongly believe in the above principal that transportation can ruin the ‘greenness’ of any product. Think that organic salad is green? Think again! If the greens were shipped from Conneticut, the tomatoes, from California, the vinegar from Italy, the olive oil from Spain how green can it be? Yes it is organic but it’s not green anymore! This is why buying local is important to us. Although not always possible, we try to buy as locally as possible. We will strive to buy as much locally as possible whether that be locally grown greens, Hops from Montrose, CO, Barley from Alamosa, or Colorado Beef we will try our darndest to minimize the miles traveled of our ingredients reducing their carbon footprint along the way. We can’t be perfect but we are committed to doing our best at keeping your lunch or dinner as green as we can served with the greenest beer you can buy!
Cheers,
Mic and Molley Heynekamp