Guinness Using Excess Beer to Grow Christmas Trees, Assuming That Holiday Is Still On

If you’re like us, you’ve spent the last few months stuck at home. While you’ve been home, Zooming with friends and coworkers, many of your favorite beer brands have been scratching their heads wondering what to do with all the extra beer. You see, it’s not just you that has been stuck at home. For the most part, bars and restaurants haven’t been allowed to have customers inside. This means nobody has been sidling up to the bar and ordering a pint of local craft beer. It’s been like this for over three months.

Because of this lack of customers, many of your favorite breweries have been forced to literally dump excess beer down the drain because they can’t sell it fast enough. The folks at Guinness didn’t want to waste their magical, black stout by pouring it down the drain so they came up with a much better, more festive idea.

Aidan Crowe, the director of operations for Guinness St. James’s Gate Brewery, told the Press Association that not only did the brand decide to buy back all unsold beer from bars and pubs (this includes thousands of kegs), it decided to turn the chocolaty, malty stout into something much more environmentally sustainable.

The un-imbibed beer is being used for a number of environmental initiatives, but the one we care most about has to do with the proverbial “most wonderful time of the year.” That’s because Guinness is using its classic dry stout to grow Christmas trees.

“The vast majority of the beer goes to willow and Christmas tree plantations, it’s used as nutrients in those farms,” he told the Press Association.

So, if you happen to live in Ireland, this holiday season, you just might be lucky enough to enjoy a pint of Guinness while you decorate a Christmas tree that also once enjoyed a few pints of Guinness itself.

Photo: PAUL FAITH (Getty Images)

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