The Center for Sustainable Brewing is dedicated to the art and craft of fermenting bioregional, ecologically integrated and delicious beverages. Taking our cue from the many thousand year old history of fermented drinks worldwide, we seek to explore the boundaries of brewing as the local and varied practice it originated as. We think the homebrewing revolution is great, but we're still largely beholden to a handful of ingredients often shipped in from around the world and grown or gathered in largely irresponsible ways. We support the organic brewing movement, but think that too is tied to still far too tied to narrow notions of what beer is and intercontinental, even global, transport. What we seek is beer (and wine and cider and mead and myriad other manifestations of brew) that is intimately tied to a sense of place, and works magic in conjunction with our regional ecologies to inebriate us. Sure, barley, water, hops and yeast can make a fine drink. But dozens, even hundreds of other plants have been used through time, and can be used today. Many have potent properties, some medicinal, others euphoric, and yet others psychotropic. We've lost much of the traditional wisdom our ancient forbears had, and the direct relationship with the unseen forces that transform sugary spiced water into intoxicating elixirs.
We'd like to change that. We encourage exploration and experimentation, and with it, cross-pollination of ideas, recipes and techniques for brewing with what grows nearby, what we can gather or cultivate ourselves and in our communities. However intricate and technical the process of brewing is commonly thought of in this culture, its roots are ancient, and we need not take great pains or make great financial investment to begin to reclaim these traditions. We're here to encourage wide-scale brewing, especially among the uninitiated. We want you to know that you don't need to know what an IBU is, or what a hydrometer measures, or what role potassium metabisulfite plays in order to make delicious brews. You can go there, of course, but our ancestors made due without any of that, and so can you!
We make no claims of purity, and still willingly use ingredients at times not organic or wildcrafted or regional. But a connection to place is central to native cultures worldwide, and is our intention too. Sustainable brewing is one avenue we are exploring, joyfully and reverently, as a means of re-connecting with our web of relations. Join us!
Contact Us susbrau@gmail.com