"Save the Ales" festival brings global warming together with microbeer - Weekly Specialty Beer Report - Brief Article

Modern Brewery Age, Nov 19, 2001

U-Wire--The Second Annual Save the Ales beer tasting at the University of Illinois last week at allowed both beer brewers and environmental activists to raise awareness about global warming and the possible effects on beer.

"In order to get this campus interested, we had to tie in beer," said Michelle Lupei, University of Illinois senior in LAS and executive director of Students for Environmental Concerns.

Lupei got the idea for Save the Ales when she attended a U.N. conference on climate change. During a brainstorming session on how global warming will affect people, someone mentioned beer. "That made me start thinking," Lupei said. "At U of I, what's going to get people to care about global warming?"

Lupei told the group that the majority of the hops supply in the United States is grown in the Pacific Northwest, which could experience drier summers because of global warming. This would damage the hop supply, Lupei asserted.

Also involved with the event was the Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots, a home-brewing club from Champaign, Ill. The club was responsible for the beer discussion, while the student environmentalists took over for the ecology discussion.

Beth Sanzenbacher, coordinator of Save the Ales, said the beer tasting was a way for people in central Illinois to realize how global warming can affect them. "They don't see the water rising," Sanzenbacher said.