While beer can be a very green product if brewed with a certain eye to organic products going in and careful handling of the outgoing waste water and spent grains, it appears that the broader green movement may not be as friendly to brewing, if the experience of Ayinger from Bavaria is any guide:

"Beer prices are a very emotional issue in Germany -- people expect it to be as inexpensive as other basic staples like eggs, bread and milk," said Erdmann, director of the family-owned Ayinger brewery in Aying, an idyllic village nestled between Bavaria's rolling hills and dark forests with the towering Alps on the far horizon. "With the current spike in barley prices, we won't be able to avoid a price increase of our beer any longer," Erdmann said, stopping to sample his freshly brewed, golden product right from the steel fermentation kettle.

In the last two years, the price of barley has doubled to $271 per ton as farmers plant more crops such as rapeseed and corn that can be turned into ethanol or biodiesel, a fuel made from vegetable oil. As a result, the price for the key ingredient in beer -- barley malt, or barley that has been allowed to germinate -- has soared by more than 40 percent, to around 385 euros or $522 per ton, from around 270 euros a ton two years ago, according to the Bavarian Brewers' Association.