Every year, the Workers’ Assembly of Black Star Co-op monitors our Ends policies for the Board. Ends policies are written by the Board and approved by the Membership, and they define what outcomes we want from the operations of the business. You can find a copy of our entire policy set here, and you’ll find our Ends policies at the very beginning of the document.

This past month the Workers’ Assembly provided us with our first ever reporting on our new Ends Policy on environmental sustainability, section A.3 of our policy set. The effort was led by our awesome  Board-Staff Liaison Karinne Thornblom, and I must say that the Board was very pleased with Black Star’s efforts to make us the greenest brewpub in town! In fact, the Board was so happy that we want to tell the world, so here are some highlights of the report, organized by Ends Policy objective:

To reduce fossil fuel consumption by purchasing local, organic products and alternative energy:

• Among other things, we currently purchase produce from two consumer supported agriculture (CSA) farms and a business that specializes in distributing locally-grown farm products, and we purchase products from a new co-op in town: Red Rabbit Cooperative Bakery!
• We are also a subscriber to Austin Energy’s Green Choice Program, which derives its energy from clean, renewable sources

To minimize the amount of our materials going to landfills and get on a path of being zero-waste by 2015:

• We contract with a local composting company to receive our compostable materials and also recycle our used fryer oil and cardboard waste
• We collect food scraps from people’s plates and ensure that they go into the compost
• A local rancher collects our spent grains from the brewery, and the grain is used for feed
• We recycle everything we can–probably not a big surprise!
• We provide workers with reusable beverage cups with lids to eliminate the need to use disposable to-go cups while fulfilling health code requirements

To ensure that we’re using water and electricity efficiently:

• We implement a sub-metering plan in the Co-op so that we can identify what processes are using the most water, electricity, or natural gas, and work to improve those processes
• We’re working on our LEED certification, and we intend to exceed energy code and water usage goals by at least 15%
• We use multi-zoned air conditioning; zoned, controllable LED lighting; dedicated ventilation for the brewery; Energy Star-rated equipment; low-flow urinals, toilets, and restroom faucets; a low-flow kitchen sink sprayer and an energy-efficient dishwasher in the kitchen

To encourage the use of alternative transportation to the brewpub:

• We educate all new hires in the various alternative transportation methods
• We participated in the Austin Bicycle Pub Crawl last October
• We hosted an event for “Austin Dirt Derby” in January, and had two bicycle simulators set up so that people could race one another
• We promoted the use of the MetroRail in March by offering a $1 discount on house beer if the customer had a MetroRail ticket
• We were selected as a venue to host this year’s “Austin Bike Poster Show” in May, which is designed to inspire people to bike more

We also hosted events for the Balcones Chapter of the US Green Building Council of Central Texas, and for this past April’s Earth Day, we donated 5% of all sales to benefit six local environmental organizations: Friends of Barton Springs pool, Sierra Club, Clean Water Fund, TreeFolks, Texas Land Conservancy, and Hill Country Conservancy. This was probably the longest blog post I’ve ever written, but when there’s so much good work to report on, I think that’s just fine. What other things would you, our Member-Owners, like the Co-op to accomplish? The Board is listening!

As part of our commercial beer focus on German-style beers, this week we have authentic German glassware for an authentic German beer. Spaten Munich Dunkel is a smooth amber-colored lager; crisp, yet more malty and less bitter than a Pilsener. And we’re pouring it into your choice of an elegant 0.5L lager glass or 1L dimpled mug!

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Vector is back! One of our most popular beers is making a return. Considered Vulcan’s bigger, darker brother, Vector is a 8.8% abv, insanely hoppy, roasty ale.

To celebrate their 20th anniversary, New Belgium “roll[ed] a bunch of New Belgium together and put it in a bottle.” They took Fat Tire and doubled the malt and hops, then added crisp Asian Pears and a Saison yeast.

This delicious Belgian style ale weighs in at 10% ABV and is the perfect thing for our oppressive Summer heat.

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Each month members of our Board of Directors gather in our brewpub to share a pint with YOU, our member-owners. This tradition goes back several years (before we even had a brewpub!)

All member-owners enjoy $3 Rational pints on Tuesdays. That’ll have you covered through 9PM, and then our new Inverse Happy Hour kicks in until 11PM, so feel free to stick around after the Pub Hours are over for $3 seasoned chips and beer nuts.

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Buy a pint of Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier and keep the German-style .5L Hefeweizen glass.

It’s a special Christmas in July release of Saint Arnold’s Christmas Ale!

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If you’re interested in running for the Black Star Board of Directors this fall, you will need to attend at least one Candidate Information Session and one Board Meeting this summer.

The next Info Session is Tuesday, July 12th, at 7pm in the brewpub. It should last about one hour.

The next Board Meeting is Sunday, July 17th, at noon, also at the brewpub.

If you can’t attend either of those, you still have time to meet these requirements for running for the board. We have another Info Session scheduled for Saturday, August 6th, at 4pm, and our August board meeting is Sunday, August 21st, at noon at the brewpub.

Prospective candidates can download the candidate application and get all the info on running for the Board on our website. Applications are due on August 16th. Elections will be from September 15 to our Members’ Assembly meeting on October 16th.

Please consider serving your Co-op by running for the board. We are democratically elected by our fellow member-owners, and your participation counts!

Come meet the brewers and try Circle’s EPIC Hop Bock.

You know the format – buy the beer, keep the glass!

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