The Fun Green Roundup #2

It’s drinking this week, and not water, but alcohol. Here’s some of the sites in the environmental blogosphere that have written about green beer.

Make your own
I’ve never been tempted to make beer myself, until now after I’ve read about all the stuff that goes into a pint. Green Options has done a brilliant guide to making your own beer.

Drink with others
If you want to meet similar-minded people and share a green pint, check out what Life Goggles had to say here about Green Drinks International.

Drink local
And that doesn’t mean going to the bar closest to you. Unplugged Living has an article on drinking the product of local breweries, cutting down on the miles beer etc it has to travel to reach your throat.

Water
I did say at the beginning this wouldn’t be about water, but you’ll need some after all that drinking. Life Goggles did a guide on drinking water here.

You’re not alone trying to find green beer
Just as I was writing this the other week, it coincided with Labor Day in the US so a few sites wrote about how to get drunk in a green way. Treehugger had some good tips and I particualarly liked Vanessa’s advice at Green as a Thistle with a cracking picture to go with it.

Would You Drink Green Beer?

Whilst your brain may explode from their incredibly green website (yes, even greener than this one), Green Drinks International are a group of people who work in the environmental field that meet up for a beer at informal sessions known as Green Drinks.

Currently active in 244 cities worldwide, according to their website “These events are very simple and unstructured, but many people have found employment, made friends, developed new ideas, done deals and had moments of serendipity. It’s a force for the good and we’d like to help it spread to other cities. Contact your local node to get the latest info about coming along.”

There are plenty of press articles (”Stories”) to read, and a guide to the next meeting in your area. Why not take a look at Green Drinks International?

Why Don’t We Queue in the Pub?

The Home Office Guide “Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship” talks about pubs. It says:

“It is sometimes difficult to get served when pubs are busy: people do not queue, but the bar staff will try and serve those who have been waiting longest at the bar first.”

Whilst true, it doesn’t explain why. Why don’t we queue in pubs? We queue pretty much everywhere else, and you would think a place where people have consumed a large amount of alcohol is the ideal place for a bit of order and queuing. You don’t get a scrum at the front of the Post Office or HMV, each shouting at the counter staff in order to get served first. Starbucks would be a nightmare, with the caffeine deprived hoardes fighting out for their grande double mocha-hoca-choca-machino.

There are a couple of pubs that I know of that actually have queue barriers in place, I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on. You can even buy a pub queue management system with buttons on the bar that the bar staff can clear once serve in order, a bit like Argos. Until these do catch on, here’s some advice below.

We all knew there had to be a better way!

And here it is, the beer launcher. Like most men, I hate getting out of the comfy chair to get a beer out of the fridge, so I am delighted that someone has taken the time to create this MAGNIFICENT machine!

Drinking On The Move

Having trouble carrying that litre bottle of vodka round with you? Well, there’s a new way. Check out Pocket Shot. It’s handy, but not sure it’s a good idea to take it swimming…

Buy your friends a drink online

Most of us like to have the occasional drink. Some of us would even say we drink too much. Indeed with the government’s strict definition of binge drinking being 5 units in one go, it is easy to fall into this category. With a large glass of red wine containing 2 units, and a pint of lager 3 units I’ve been binge drinking a little too much recently. But how does that affect me? This hilarously excellent diagram shows what parts of the body alcohol may have suffered as a consequence of my two beers:

Source: BBC Three Counties

It might just be me, but there aren’t that many parts of the body it doesn’t seem to affect. In fact it might have been easier to do a diagram of those parts. My favourite (if that’s possible) is the “face”. No part of it in particular, just the entire face.

So in the spirit (pun intended) of these sobering (they just keep on coming) warnings, please buy me a drink. Well not me personally (I wouldn’t say no though), but people in the UK can now buy anyone a drink online, get a code delivered to their mobile and make them happy (albeit temporarily, as alcohol is a depressant).

Choose a drink from the selection
Enter their mobile number, your message, then pay. It’s that simple.
Your voucher is sent via SMS and your friend or colleague simply shows their mobile phone at the bar.

Only available in Corney & Barrow pubs and at £3.25+ for a bottle of beer or £6.75+ for a glass of wine, it might not be the cheapest drink you’ve ever bought, but it might be the most impressive!