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German residents buy up all of town's beer before white supremacists arrive for 'Shield and Sword Festival.'

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If you're a white supremacist, I imagine drinking beer (or any other alcoholic beverage) is a nice way to relax and tune out the fact that you're a terrible person who's helping set human progress back at a rate the bubonic plague would be proud of. But for some self-professed white supremacists, it wasn't quite so easy on a June weekend in Germany.

According to Newsweek, the hundreds of neo-nazis who flocked to the "Shield and Sword Festival" in Ostritz found themselves uncomfortably dry when a court imposed a liquor ban at their gathering of hateful bigots who also like to listen to awful music together. The ban's aim was to prevent any violence that might erupt (you know it would...) and the police confiscated more than a thousand gallons of alcohol from those attending the weekend-long event. They even posted pictures on Twitter of the alcohol they'd removed from participants.

— (@)

But that's only half the story.

Residents of the town of Ostritz, who've had to deal with the bigots before (they threw the same festival last year on Hitler's birthday), knew that the ban wouldn't stop the festival-goers from trying to obtain more alcohol while in town. So the townspeople got together a week before the festival and devised a plan which would truly make the white supremacists focus on how terrible neo-nazi music is: They bought up the entire town's beer supply.

"We wanted to dry the Nazis out," Georg Salditt, a local activist, told reporters. "We thought, if an alcohol ban is coming, we'll empty the shelves at the Penny [supermarket]."

"For us it's important to send the message from Ostritz that there are people here who won't tolerate this, who say 'we have different values here, we're setting an example..." an unidentified local woman told ZDF Television.

At the same time the festival was going on, residents also staged two counter-protests and put on a "Peace Festival" to drive home the point that bigotry wasn't welcome. If the festival is held in the same town again next year, ticket-buyers should be aware that Ostritz isn't playing around when it says that white supremacists aren't welcome.

There's some good news, too: Aside from the fact that residents aren't afraid to send the message that they're intolerant of intolerance, attendance to the far-right music festival has drastically decreased in the past year. In 2018, 1,200 people attended, according to the BBC. This year? Approximately 500-600. Here's hoping the festival won't have a return engagement next year.

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Human beings have been known to drink beer in bizarre places. Now, a U.K. brewer wants to add another to the list. Well, two places, technically speaking.

Scottish brewery BrewDog has unveiled plans to build a new craft beer bar that straddles the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

An artists rendering of the proposed site. Photo via Brewdog.

"Beer has always been a unifying factor between cultures — and BrewDog was born from collaboration and an inclusive approach," co-founder James Watt writes in an email.

The open-air watering hole, dubbed "The Bar on the Edge," is slated to debut on a plot of land between Texas and Chihuahua, Mexico, though Watt and company have yet to release an exact location — or receive permission from local and federal officials on either side of the border.

"I'm sure there’ll be a few hoops to jump through," he explains.

While the idea may seem far-fetched, it's the latest in a line of cheeky stunts to transform President Trump's proposed border wall into something positive.

Earlier this year, a group of designers, architects, and engineers unveiled a design for the "wall" that included parks, a regional ID card to facilitate cross-border travel, and a Hyperloop with stops in both countries, among other unifying features.

Photo via Otra Nation.

The actual physical border may not be the easiest place to open a business, but cross-border commerce and cultural exchange is nothing new.

With the high cost of dental procedures in the United States, tens of thousands of Americans cross into Los Algodones, Mexico, each year to have their teeth cleaned (and pulled, and root-canal'd).

Residents of Tijuana frequently cross the other way to shop at Southern California's malls and big-box stores — and vice-versa. Several San Diego retailers have complained that President Trump's tough immigration talk has exacerbated a decline in customers.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Some parents in Nogales, Mexico, even send their children to private parochial schools across the border to learn English, with the Catholic educational system strong in both countries.

Which raises the question: Could the border bar ever become a reality?

It's unlikely under current law that "mandates that people and merchandise may only enter the United States after inspection at designated Ports of Entry," as U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson Christiana Coleman explains in an email.

Nevertheless, the company says it plans to forge ahead with the project, at least for now.

"It would make it more difficult to build a wall if there’s a BrewDog bar in the way," Watt said in a statement. "We’re planning on putting the bar there anyway until someone tells us to move it."

If BrewDog succeeds at turning beer-drinking into a form of protest, the Bar on the Edge is certain to mint plenty of new activists in no time.

Breaking news: Lots of women enjoy drinking beer.

Beer — craft beer in particular — is often thought of as a man's game, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

In fact, some experts believe women actually invented beer, though you wouldn't know it from the way it's sometimes marketed today.

GIF via matchpointHD/YouTube.

Looks like every beer ad ever, right?

It's not just the overly sexed-up commercials that are crossing lines and alienating customers. It's the names of the beers themselves.

Panty Dropper. Leg Spreader. Thong Remover.

As hard as it is to believe, those are real beer names.

Thankfully, it looks like the craft beer industry has finally had enough of sexist and offensive brew names.

Discontent with these kinds of labels has been brewing (yeah, I went there) for years, with both drinkers and brewers alike growing increasingly agitated by immaturity from a handful of breweries.

Now the Brewers Association, one of the largest industry trade bodies, has finally updated its code to crack down on offensive names and labels like these.

While it doesn't have the power to officially ban them, the association can make sure offending breweries don't use its awards, medals, or seal of approval to market beers with offensive labels. The move ought to discourage this kind of desperation to appeal to male drinkers, and it's a small gesture that represents a bigger current of change.

If all of this sounds a little like the fun-police at work, take a look at these labels. Some of them are pretty hard to stomach.

The idea that the only way to appeal to men is through sexual innuendo is offensive to women and men.

We can do better.

1. Panty Peeler, Midnight Sun Brewing

Anything else ready for summer adventures to begin?
A post shared by Midnight Sun Brewing Co. (@midnightsunbrewingco) on Mar 26, 2017 at 10:15am PDT

2. Raging Bitch, Flying Dog Brewery

Photo by Antti T. Nissinen/Flickr.

3. Naughty Girl, New Albanian Brewing

Image by New Albanian Brewing.

4. Stacked, Route 2 Brews

Image by Route 2 Brews.

5. Tramp Stamp, Clown Shoes Beer

— (@)

6. Double D, Fordham & Dominion Brewing

Need a last minute gift that never disappoints? Snag a 6 pack or two at a retailer near you. Go to www.fordhamanddominion.com and click on "find our beer" #happyholidays #fodobrewing #livinthedream #craftbeer #dover #de
A post shared by FoDoBrewing (@fodobrewing) on Dec 17, 2016 at 6:22am PST

7. Crazy Bitch, Northwest Brewing Company

— (@)

And the list goes on and on. Angry yet?

The trend of beer names that degrade or objectify women is offensive and unnecessary. Besides, any beer drinker knows the best brews don't need to rely on gross marketing gimmicks to get by.

The latest move from the Brewers Association proves drinkers are ready to hold their beer makers to a higher standard.

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This beloved brewery gets electricity from its own beer. Yup: beer energy!

After more than a decade of delicious craft-beer-making, Magic Hat Brewery had grown into a major operation.

They got so big, in fact, that they ... actually couldn't get any bigger.

By 2007, Magic Hat was making more than 3.3 million gallons of beer a year. More than 90% of that final product was water, which was a major problem for the town of South Burlington, Vermont. (And that's not even counting the water used in cleaning and other aspects of production, too.)

As it was, the brewery's water bills were costing them about $200,000 a year, and the treatment facilities in their hometown were already working at full capacity. They wanted to start making more beer. But if they did, there wouldn't be any water left for the city's 18,000 residents.

Inside the "Artifactory" at the Magic Hat Brewery in South Burlington, Vermont. All photos by Thom Dunn/Upworthy, unless otherwise specified.

The brewery owners thought about building their own water treatment plant right at their brewery. But then a better idea presented itself.

PurposeEnergy, a small start-up founded by an MIT graduate named Eric Fitch, approached Magic Hat and offered to solve their water problem.

Fitch had been working on a prototype for what he called the "tribrid bioreactor." It was a hybrid of three different digester systems that would not only clean a brewery's wastewater, but also convert the biosolid waste (which is organic material such as spent grains, hops, and trub) into electricity.

Fitch had been looking for a place to put his prototype into action. Magic Hat was looking for ways to expand without ruining the city's water supply. It was a match made in Hop Heaven.

Converting their leftover beer parts into sustainable electricity? That was just an added bonus.

Hasper Kuno of PurposeEnergy inside the company's biogas generator at the Magic Hat Brewery.

How does something called a tribrid bioreactor work, exactly?

Basically, like this:

Image courtesy of Magic Hat Brewery and PurposeEnergy, used with permission.

"We basically allow Magic Hat to keep on expanding their production and not really be a burden on the local town," explained Hasper Kuno, who oversees PurposeEnergy's facility in South Burlington.

"What we send down the drain here, it’s literally cleaner than your typical household. And also we’re producing electricity on it, so it’s a no-brainer."

The thin black sludge on the left is how digested beer waste looks coming out of the digester; the clear cup on the right is how it looks after it's gone through the system's water clarifier.

According to Kuno, PurposeEnergy's tribrid bioreactor system can convert 93% of the brewery's waste into biogas and then electricity, allowing them to produce up to 220 kilowatts of energy daily — enough to power more than 200 average-size homes. Over the last five years, they've cumulatively produced more than 2.4 gigawatts of energy — which is twice as much as it took Doc Brown to power the Flux Capacitor that sent his beloved DeLorean back in time in "Back to the Future." So that's a lot.

"As far as we know, this is the most efficient digester in the world," Kuno said.

Oh, and that leftover 7% of waste that doesn't get converted into energy? It's still rich enough in nutrients to work as a hyper-concentrated fertilizer, which PurposeEnergy gives away to local farms — that is, when they're not using it as a soil substitute to grow their own hops.

Hops growing up the side of the water treatment tank behind the Magic Hat Brewery — with no actual soil, just a plant bed of leftover biowaste. So far, the hops are only being used for homebrewing, not commercial beer.

Since 2010, several other major U.S. breweries have adopted PurposeEnergy's epically sustainable brewing system too.

The bioreactor at Delaware's Dogfish Head Brewery is twice the size of the one at Magic Hat. The 1 million gallon system was built in 2014, and it has enabled the brewery to reduce its overall water consumption by more than half.

And in March 2016, PurposeEnergy broke ground on another new facility at Kona Brewing Company in Hawaii.

Kuno believes that big breweries will eventually hop on board with this trend, too. Companies like Molson Coors already have their own water treatment facilities on-premises, but the systems at those breweries have a life span of around 50 years.

"When that time is up, then we’ll come in and get them a new digester," Kuno said.

"No parking" because this is where the burn-off from the gas-to-energy conversion happens — meaning that big copper pipe sometimes shoots out fireballs, which are much less tasty than beer.

The best part about this whole thing? This sustainability system isn't limited to just beer.

As long as there's some kind of organic waste in a system, the bioreactor can convert it into energy.

"We’ve got a couple of dairies that we’re hoping to install some systems," Kuno said. "Acid whey makes a lot of electricity, and that’s the byproduct of Greek yogurt, which is huge right now."

If a brewery could power an entire neighborhood with just its own beer, who knows what other amazing ways we can find to make our world more sustainable?

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This beer made from old food is the perfect way to drink responsibly.

Summer is the perfect time for stress-free relaxation with a beer in hand.

It's in those summer moments that nagging, worrisome questions weighing on you throughout the rest of the year suddenly become smaller and less heavy.

Questions like, "How am I going to pay rent next month?" and "What is my parent's Netflix password again?" just melt away as you sit back in your lawn chair, crack open a cold brew, and enjoy the statistically too-warm weather.

But here's a question you probably don't consider in those moments: What if that beer you're drinking could help cut down on food waste?

This summer, thanks to a brewery in England, that might seriously be an option.

Stay with me because this is actually really cool.

The beer is called "Wasted," and it's a pear-flavored ale crafted by Northern Monk Brewery in Leeds.

It's made of overripe pears and discarded croissants and brioche.

Why would anyone make a beer out of old food?

To make the beer, Northern Monk partnered with The Real Junk Food Project, a "pay as you feel" organization that runs cafes that make meals out of discarded food.

As such, "Wasted" is an aptly-named zero-waste beer.

Even the glass bottle it comes in is 100% recyclable and the used hops from the beer making process are donated to local farms where they are repurposed as fertilizer.

"Brewing beer naturally creates waste, so we wanted to find a way to change that," brewery founder Russell Bisset told Metro. "We saw this as an opportunity to challenge pre-conceived notions of what beer can be made with and highlight the kinds of products that go to waste on a daily basis."

A zero-waste beer is all well and good, but how does it taste?

According to Daniel Tapper at The Guardian, it tastes "incredible." And the Beer O'Clock Show, a beer-reviewing podcast in the U.K., calls it "well balanced" with "slight fruit flavors and an easy soft finish."

Even if you're not a fan of hoppy beers, you have to admit a zero-waste beer is an intriguing idea.

In the U.S. alone, over 6 billion pounds of food is wasted every year. We don't often think about it when we throw out an old(ish) banana or refuse to eat the weird, crusty end-slice of a bread loaf — but it all adds up.

Committing to a zero-waste lifestyle is an exhaustive and difficult process, and it certainly isn't manageable for everyone. But there are little things you can do to help reduce the insane amount of waste piling up all over the world.

One of those things involves drinking a pear-flavored beer. Which, you know, ... doesn't sound too bad.

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German residents buy up all of town's beer before white supremacists arrive for 'Shield and Sword Festival.' - Upworthy ›

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A brewery designed a genius new six-pack that solves a big environmental problem.

Chris Gove loves the ocean so much, he named his brewery after it.

Saltwater Brewery in Delray Beach, Florida. Photo via Saltwater Brewery, used with permission.

Gove, who opened Saltwater Brewing in 2013 with four childhood friends, is an avid surfer and devotee of all things aquatic, including marine life.

The problem? Selling six-packs of beer meant producing a lot of plastic waste...

These things. Photo by Staecker/Wikimedia Commons.

...which all too frequently finds its way into the sea.

That didn't sit right with Gove and his cofounders, who decided to make ocean conservation part of Saltwater Brewing's mission from the very beginning.

"The jewel of Florida is the ocean, so we all grew up seeing tar and different plastic on the beach and when we’re surfing and fishing we’ll catch plastic bags, and it’s horrible," Gove told Upworthy.

Enter the edible six-pack ring.

A mock-up of the prototype. Photo via Saltwater Brewing, used with permission.

The rings, which Saltwater codeveloped with a New York-based ad agency, are made of spent grain leftover from the brewing process, much of which would otherwise go to waste.

The company is still perfecting the design but were encouraged by the successful production and testing of 500 prototypes last month. The rings are designed to be disposed of, but should they find their way into the ocean, they can be eaten safely by marine life.

Wait a sec, you might be thinking, "I haven't heard squat about plastic six-pack rings in forever. Didn't we solve this problem in, like, the '80s?"

Only sort of. In 1988, alarmed by reports of fish, sea birds, and turtles becoming ensnared by the rings, Congress passed a law requiring all plastic ring carriers (the industry term for those six-pack thingies) to be naturally degradable. Most are now manufactured to be photodegradable (meaning they split into tiny pieces when exposed to prolonged sunlight).

It's not a perfect solution. According to one major manufacturer, their plastic carriers take — at best — between three and four weeks to break down. But it does mostly solve the problem of animals getting trapped.

The problem now is, even after the rings break apart, the pieces can still be ingested by sea life — and wreak some major havoc.

Stuff that used to be inside a fish. Photo via Saltwater Brewery, used with permission.

A 2014 study, published in the journal Science, found that 99% percent of the plastic waste that should be in the ocean based on the most accurate available estimates — including those little tiny six-pack ring pieces — is missing, most likely because marine animals have eaten it.

"Turtles and certain fish eat jellyfish, and a lot of times balloons or pieces of plastic or plastic bags in the ocean can look like jellyfish," Neil Hammerschlag, a marine ecologist at the University of Miami, told Upworthy.

According to Hammerschlag, consuming discarded plastic can lead to serious injury — or even be a death sentence — for the animals that do so. Worse yet, discarded plastic often leeches toxic chemicals like mercury and DDT from the ocean, which then filter up the food chain, causing health problems for the larger sea creatures — and, ultimately, humans — that eat them.

Saltwater's prototype rings could be far better than the alternative.

A watermark on an illustration of the saltwater prototype rings. Photo by Saltwater Brewery, used with permission.

"I think it could be very beneficial," Hammerschlag said.

He believes that the less plastic that makes its way into the stomachs of fish, sea turtles, and sharks, the better — even if the material doesn't represent an ideal diet for those creatures.

"It’s kind of like having a Sour Patch Kid," Gove said. "You’d rather have your kid eat a Sour Patch Kid than a Lego. That’s kind of how I see it."

Gove hopes that, should the project succeed, other breweries — even major ones — will eventually follow Saltwater's lead.

Once the design is perfected, the brewery plans to run off thousands more of the rings in the next stage of development.

"We really want to inspire the whole industry and all beverage, all styles of packaging too," Gove said. "This is just the beginning."

It's a move that could earn Saltwater the gratitude of thousands of happy, unexpectedly satiated sea creatures.

Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Flickr.

"The best thing is when your garbage gets thrown into a garbage can," Hammerschlag said. "But not everyone throws their garbage in the garbage can, and sometimes when it gets thrown in a garbage can, it gets blown out, or it goes straight to the ocean. So I think this could be a great thing."

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Gorongosa Coffee

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5 foods and drinks that may not be around for the next generation thanks to climate change.

Think long and hard about your favorite thing to eat.

Take in all the delicious smells. The sheer joy from every last bite, sip, chomp, or slurp.

GIF via "Key & Peele."

Now, think long and hard about having to say goodbye to your favorite food forever.

GIF via "Adventure Time."

Because some of America's favorite foods and drinks won't make it much longer.

Yes, these sweet and savory delights are all at risk of experiencing a significant shortage, some as early as 2030.

These are five of the treats at stake and what you can do to stop them from disappearing:

1. Peanut butter. A moment of silence for all that naked toast, y'all.

You eat it by the spoonful when you're alone in your apartment, drop it in smoothies, and turn an ordinary sauce into a can't-miss satay. Americans gobble it up, consuming about three and a half pounds of peanut butter per person each year. It's an affordable pantry staple, packed with protein, and freaking delicious.

Oh yeah, and it's disappearing from the Earth.

Borderline pornographic photo by Dan McKay/Flickr.

It's really hard to grow a peanut, as the plants are kind of temperamental. They need just the right combination of sun and rain to survive each year. Some of the southeastern states where peanuts grow have experienced droughts in the past few years, and peanut plants have simply shriveled up.

Farmers and agricultural researchers are working on drought-resistant varieties, but the big culprit, climate change, isn't going away.

2. Beer. Sweet, sweet beer.

It takes a few ingredients to brew a great beer, including hops. Hops are the flowers making your beer super tasty, and they're primarily grown in the Pacific Northwest. But due to rising temperatures and a dwindling water supply, hop yields have decreased significantly.

Left: Hops on the vine. Photo by The mad Penguin/Flickr. Right: A flight of beers. Photo by Lauren Topor/Flickr.

In March, more than 40 breweries large and small signed on to the Climate Declaration, a group of businesses urging policymakers to act on climate change. Many of those breweries have already done their part to help make their businesses sustainable, but they need some assistance at the top to make a lasting impact.

3. Chocolate. Good heavens. What have we done?

To make delicious chocolate chips, Nutella, and other fudgy delights, you need cocoa. A whopping 70% of the world's cocoa supply comes from West African nations like Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.

I want to go to there. Photo by Various Brennemans/Flickr.

According to a study from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, this region is predicted to experience a 2-degree (Celsius) temperature change by 2050. This may not seem like much, but more water will evaporate from the air and leaves, leaving little behind for cocoa plants. These areas will become inadequate for cocoa production as early as 2030.

4. Coffee. Nature's most aromatic alarm clock.

Ever want to feel alive again, or at the very least somewhat awake? Time to make a move on climate change, amigo.

Photo by Susanne Nilsson/Flickr.

Different varieties of coffee are so closely adapted to their specific region and climate zone that even a half-degree increase can have a noticeable impact. Warmer temperatures can expand the reach of bugs and fungi that prey on coffee plants. In fact, three of the top five coffee-growing countries in the world (India, Costa Rica, and Ethiopia) have seen a significant drop in yield.

And you may be thinking, "Fine, I'll switch to tea." Not so fast. Tea farmers are experiencing problems of their own.

5. All things pumpkin. Yes, even the lattes.

Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin bread. Pumpkin cake. If you've been to a grocery store the past six weeks, you know this list could be very long. And all of it is at risk because of the shrinking pumpkin crop.

Is this the last pumpkin pie ever? No, but don't get complacent with the amount of pumpkin in your life. Photo by David Goehring/Flickr.

Libby's, the company behind 80% of the world's processed pumpkin, suffered a major shortage this year due to an exceptionally soggy summer at its Illinois farm. In the past 100 years, Illinois has experienced a 10% increase in precipitation. And three of the four wettest years in Illinois have happened since 2010.

"We're fairly certain that's tied to climate change," Jim Angel, a state climatologist for the Illinois State Water Survey, told Scientific American.

While none of these foods are critical for our survival, their sharp declines (and price increases) may spur more people to act.

We may not notice if there are fewer snow leopards or if it's a little bit warmer this winter. But when there are just a few cans of pumpkin on the shelf or our morning coffee doubles in price, more and more of us will start to ask questions, take action, and demand change.

If you weren't already doing everything you can to fight climate change, then do it for your favorite indulgence.

Call your representatives, support sustainable industries, let your voice be heard.

Because after all chocolate, beer, and peanut butter (and the growers who make them possible) have done for us, it's time we return the favor.

GIF via cinematic tour de force "Armageddon."