Water, Growler, Beer: A Gleesome Threesome! ( #ctww )

This picture looks like Kris is watering our flowers with beer ... but no, let me explain:

Kris empties growler water
while Imp monitors the situation.

We are lucky to be within walking distance of Big Al's Brewing, so we can just stroll down there anytime with a "Growler" to get beer fresh from the spigot. A growler (a.k.a. beer jug) is a great investment since, for a only few bucks (...or less, if you keep your eyes open - they're often passed on at thrift stores or garage sales ...) you can have a container to use over and over for years getting good beer relatively cheap. PLUS you are saving resources - no bottles to recycle! - AND you get a little exercise walking to the taproom. How can you beat that?
Our one pro tip is to ALWAYS keep the growler clean. If you let it sit around after you've emptied it, nasty stuff will start growing and it's a pain to wash out. The simplest method is to fill the growler with water right after you empty it, and then go refill it within a week or two.
This leave us with the question of what to do with the water, which lead to this week's Change the World Wednesday Challenge:

"This week pay close attention to the water which gets tossed down the drain and reduce it. For example, if you put ice in your drink, toss the ice in a planter rather than toss it in the drain. Is there a small amount of coffee left in the pot? Try freezing it for use in iced coffees or to flavor cake. How about the water left in a pot after steaming vegetables? Mrs. Green taught me to save that water & use it for making rice, pasta, etc. The idea, here, is to pay attention to those small amounts of water which usually get tossed down the drain and find more Eco-efficient uses for them ... and thereby reduce waste.

This is a good challenge - consisting of a lot of little challenges to our ingenuity. It is so darn easy to pour water down the drain - after all, the drains are right there in the kitchen! But most of the stuff that down down the kitchen sink drain could just as easily go into some other use, if we are clever enough to think of how.

Refilling at Big Al's:
The Circle is Complete!

I would really like to re-pipe the kitchen, but that's a long-term project. Meanwhile, we have a growler of water each week to pour onto our garden as a simple way to be efficient. I just hope our neighbors didn't see - if they thought we were pouring beer on our plants, they'd have figured we'd flipped for sure!
The other water-saving tips in the CTWW Challenge are equally good. I make coffee cubes all the time - they're quite useful. And when I bake, it always adds something to be re-using water that had been used in food boiling - at the very least, a little incidental nutriton, but also often a fuller flavor. Perhaps during the winter, when we don't need to water outside, I'll try cooking with the growler water!