Ecology Center

The Leopold Brothers of Ann Arbor Brewery and Greenhouse is a recently opened organic sustainable brewery, located on South Main Street between Packard and Madison. If you're interested in enjoying good German beer that's backed up by a "clean" version of German brewing tradition, you need to give this new establishment a try. If you're also interested in the environment and think businesses should be equally concerned, pay close attention.

The Leopold Brothers is a family-run business that has two goals: making good beer and protecting the environment. The former job falls to Todd Leopold, an experienced brewmaster, educated at Chicago's Siebel brewing school and in four German breweries (where he received hands-on education). The latter task falls to Scott, an environmental engineer, educated at Northwestern and Stanford. Together, the brothers spent a year designing the environmentally clean brewing system, aimed at reducing environmental wastes while providing a quality product - a task that many businesses, breweries or otherwise - have all but overlooked.

The Leopolds' brewery meets its goal by operating on a "pollution prevention hierarchy," meaning that the brewing process focuses on reducing pollution and waste first and foremost, then reusing spent materials second. The result is a near-waste-free facility, due in part to a computer system that regulates the brewing facility and the specially designed facility itself. Beyond the computer system and brewing machines, the brothers have replaced traditional pollutants, like cleaning chemicals, with environmentally friendly substances. For instance, the brewery uses CFC-free, chlorine-free coolants, and it uses potassium hydroxide and phosphoric acid cleaners. The latter convert brewing waste to fertilizers that will be reused in the brothers' onsite hydroponics greenhouse, which will eventually produce vegetables for local restaurants and markets. Leopolds also reduces pollution by capturing carbon dioxide and sending it to the greenhouse, and recovering steam from the brewing process (instead of releasing it into the atmosphere, as most other breweries do), which is heat energy that can be used for cleaning and feeding the kegging line.

Other pollutants, like waste water, are severely reduced. "Large breweries produce six glasses of waste water for each glass of beer. Here I'm doing one point five glasses per glass of beer," says Todd. While it's still early in the life of Leopolds, this difference is nonetheless impressive (an astounding achievement by industry standards, and an impressive comparison for an environmentalist beer-lover).

Leopolds reuses other "waste" materials as well, like the spent grains. Currently, the brewery ships spent grains - hops, malt, and barley - to local dairy farmers, who feed the organic grains to their cows. This helps the brothers in their waste-reduction goal, and it also helps the farmers whose cows reportedly produce more and sweeter milk. In the near future, these grains will be used at an Ypsilanti-area farm to produce mushrooms: the grains are an excellent organic growing medium for shitake and other specialty mushrooms. This is all great news, but what about the brewery's atmosphere? What about the beer?

Leopold Brothers fits right into Ann Arbor by making its home in a building that was built in 1927. This provides the attractive, charming setting you might expect. Even the seating is interesting. The benches that occupy the south half of the bar area are constructed of lumber acquired from a sustainable forest and of clean piping that was recovered and reused. The north side of the drinking area has smaller tables and beautiful chairs. The chairs were salvaged from a monastery, and they lend to the building's cozy atmosphere. Set in a back corner is the bar itself. If you look closely, you'll notice the bar's unique construction of previously discarded heavy wooden doors, finally put to good use.

Behind the bar are the taps and ...the beer! At last, the beer.

Leopolds uses all organic grains, shipped from Germany, to produce their beer. Organic, as most people understand, means better: better for the environment, better as ingredients, and better end products. The beer at Leopolds is certainly that.

Aside from using premium ingredients to achieve a good beer, Todd uses a cold fermentation process (which is where the CFC-free, chlorine-free coolants come in). While this takes longer, no less than 30 days and up to 50, says Todd, it makes for a much smoother beer. Even Leopolds' "Black Beer" is surprisingly smooth, despite its rich complexity, with very little hoppy bitterness. It's smoother than a barbershop shave!

So, if you want great local beer and a great atmosphere, drop in on the Leopold Brothers, give them a try, and marvel at the all-around goodness of the place. It's well worth your time, and it will help a great business idea succeed, an enterprise that's trying to show the business world that "sustainable" and "profitable" are terms that can share space in a company's mission. "Build the model, then show people it works," says Scott. And show people they will.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]