My man Jason Nackard brought me a little present back from Belgium. He’s been living over there for the last 5 months and brought me back a taste of what he’s been surviving on.

Lets just say that they spell “Busch” different in Belgium, and it makes all the difference in the world.

I popped this guy open a little while ago, and set in on it. You may notice it wasn’t a full pint glass full, but you may also notice that it says “12%” on the front of the bottle. The Nack-Attack claims that you can’t even taste the alcohol, I beg to differ. Now, it doesn’t taste like 12%, but it definitely tastes like more than your run-of-the-mill american beer.

As I was sipping on it, I sat down with the New Belgium 2007 Sustainability Report and had a read. I posted it on the sidebar a few days back, but just got around to making it all the way through it. If you have a few minutes, it’s an absolutely incredible document. It’s really a manifesto of New Belgium’s sustainable practices, and their quest towards reducing their overall footprint on the environment while still brewing incredible beers.

The environmental initiatives that they are undertaking are truly amazing, and I couldn’t even do it justice to try and summarize here, so I won’t. I’ll just say that you need to take a read. Really inspiring.

However, I know that some of you won’t read it, for one reason or another, and so I will quote one snippit that, although not environmental, really showed me what an awesome company New Belgium is.

Since 1994, we’ve awarded co-workers a cruiser bike, not unlike the one on the Fat Tire
label, after one year of employment. In 1998, with the company at the ripe young age of
seven, Kim decided that we should mark 5 years of service with an all-expense paid trip
to Belgium.

So, ten years later, over 100 people (and often their significant others) have gone to “the
motherland”, where beer culture has reached its zenith. With Peter Bouckaert, our
Belgian brewmaster leading us to breweries ancient and new, another generation of us
becomes inoculated with the passion to create, appreciate, and drink incredible, original
beers.

Many of us have shared Jeff’s epiphany at Brugs Beertje, as we reaffirm our commitment
to our culture, realizing that it was where Jeff decided to create his own brewery,
to bring the wonders of Belgian styles to US drinkers. Because if that epiphany didn’t
happen, none of us would be together now. Being able to spend this time together, with
Kim and Jeff, we never fail to appreciate each other more.

And on that note, I’m headed to the PNT for a beer, and I’m sure they have something from the cats in Fort Collins on tap.

Peace out.