A maddeningly sparse article in Denmark’s Copenhagen Post today reports that a thesis done by a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen seems to suggest that “[o]rganic beer production emits substantially more greenhouse gases than ordinary beer.” The study’s author, Jakob Majcher, compared CO2 emissions between conventional brewing and organic brewing and found that organic beer production produced 12% more. As far as I knew, the only difference between organic and non-organic beer was the ingredients used. I don’t know of any real differences in the “process” of brewing organic beer, so I’m somewhat stumped as to what might account for his findings. There’s almost no details about how he he did his study, just his declaration of the results, which is more than a little frustrating.
There is what looks to be a slightly more thorough, or at least longer, article at Information DK. Unfortunately, it’s in Danish and none of the popular web translators offer Danish. The only one I could find, InterTran, provides a translation that is almost unreadable. Hopefully, this will get picked up by English-language news outlets and we can figure out what’s really going on.
Forward to knut. He may be able to read Danish given he is a Norwegian speaker.