The tailgate party is almost as American a pastime as football or baseball itself. It’s also a day when everyone wants to stand out. Painted faces, wild costumes, creative gaming and pickup football games are kings. Now, imagine if you will, among all those olfactory and tasty memories, what a stand-out experience a solar-powered tailgate party would be!

When you think about it, it makes sense. You have an entire day spent outside cooking, eating, drinking and talking – all things best done under the sun. And it’s surprisingly easy to do! You can incorporate solar power into any aspect of a tailgate party, from brews to brats to burgers. Sound a little strange? Here’s how you do it.

Solar Brews

Ingredient number one for a successful tailgate party is beer. How else could we accept such a voice-shattering, body-beleaguering plunge into weekend fanaticism? If you were truly die-hard, you could spend the weeks leading up to the big game honing your solar home brewing skills. But if you’re in the majority – a beer purchaser, not producer – there are a number of solar-powered brewskies available.

Among your choices for solar-powered beer are microbrew staples like Sierra Nevada, New Belgium and Anderson Valley breweries. Even American beer giant Anheuser-Busch uses a small amount of solar power. If you don’t drink or aren’t into these brewers, have no fear, your time will come. The solar-powered beer movement is growing. 2009 saw the world’s first solar-powered beer festival come to life in Colorado, where over 30 brewers showed up to peddle their green, intoxicating wares. Even Michelob (Anheuser-Busch) was there.

Snacks

Second to beer on any tailgate list is munchies: edibles, junk food, decadent and delicious snacks. Chief among mainstream, sustainable snacks are SunChips from Frito-Lay. SunChips’ Modesto plant uses a 400-acre solar thermal farm to heat the boiler water that cooks the wheat and heats the oil to make SunChips. Even better (and growing fast) are Kettle Chips, made in Salem, Oregon. Kettle Foods is home to one of the largest solar arrays in Oregon, cranking out enough solar power to make 250,000 bags of Kettle brand chips each year. They also recycle used cooking oil into biodiesel and donate time, money and 100,000 pounds of potatoes and chips to their local community every year.

Solar Cooking

If buying solar snacks is not enough for you, make your own. Steaks, burgers, brats, nachos – just about anything can be cooked in the sun. Sure it’ll take longer, but it’s a tailgate party – you’ve got all day! Nachos can cook in no more than a half hour since all you’re doing is melting cheese. Refried beans shouldn’t take much longer. Meat will take quite a bit longer, but simply get it in the sun in the morning and be ready for an afternoon lunch.

How do you build a solar cooker? It can be as simple as a reflective surface (say, a foil-lined cardboard box), a black kettle or pot and a clear plastic bag or pane of glass to hold the heat in. There are many easy ways to build a solar cooker. Look here and here for some examples. Or you could just buy a solar cooker for the occasion. The Tulsi Hybrid Solar Cooker is about as fancy as it gets at this point. It even has electrical backup built in for those cloudy fall days or impatient burger-eaters. Although, you might need to bring a battery to power the backup grill if necessary.

This is a bit more difficult, but you may be able to find solar-powered meat as well. For instance, in Oregon, there’s a family farm that uses solar panels to power heat lamps in the chicken coop, where eggs are laid by free-range, grain-fed chickens. A little solar-powered poultry, anyone? Furthermore, look out for beef from grass-fed cattle. If grazing is controlled properly, grass-fed cows and ranchers are participating in a centuries-old, sustainable and solar-powered feeding system. High Sierra Beef is just one example.

Entertainment

As much as we tailgate to drink, eat and socialize, we can’t forget about the real reason everyone got up at six a.m. to trudge out to a field or parking lot and drown their hot chocolate in butterscotch brandy: the game!

Sure, about half of the tailgaters will head into the stadium at game time, but there’s a healthy chunk of solar-powered eaters and drinkers hanging in the parking lot listening to or watching the game.

And yes, solar power can provide the entertainment as well. First off, there are portable solar kits that are strong enough to power a small television or even a laptop that can stream the game over the internet. If the game is blacked out on television, then there are solar radios available to tune into – blackouts just don’t fit in at a solar tailgate party!

Night Game?

When the sun sets on your tailgate party, that’s when solar power can really come in handy. All it takes is a few solar garden lights or solar lanterns in the back of the truck or on the roof of the car. Simply turn them on at night, and you have light with which to walk, play cards, continue eating or peep inside the beer cooler. Strings of solar lights can be used to line a screen tent or pop-up shelter.

Seasons of Solar

Once you’ve thrown one solar-powered tailgate party, you’re set to throw many more seasons-worth. For years, you will have the coolest party on the block, with all the gadgets, all the fun and none of the wires. You’ll most certainly make tons of new friends and perhaps even inspire a solar-powered party next door.

OK, Everybody! I’ll yell, “Go Team,” and you yell, “Go Solar.” On three: one…two…three…Go Team!

Photo Credits:  TrojanWire, SavvyCafe, Turner, & ANA Blog

And speaking of Renaissance men, how about former Princeton University molecular biologist-turned-solar brew master, Joseph Blair. His penchant for mad science combined with the dual American loves of craft beers and DIY has led Joe Blair to create the world’s first solar-powered home brew.

Blair is the owner of Princeton Homebrew in Trenton, New Jersey. He and his almost net-zero energy solar home brews were recently profiled in Philly Beer Scene Magazine. In that piece, Joe revealed to the world his revolutionary brewing technique: all homemade, all pure genius. It should be noted that Mr. Blair’s DIY solar endeavors begin with a radiant floor heating system powered by a slew of hoses zigzagging across the flat, black tar roof of his shop.

Brewing Solar-Powered Beer

Home brewing is nothing to shrug at. Even “grid-tied” brewing is relatively simple but difficult to get just right. Successful solar brewing using nothing but the sun is a whole other level of accomplishment. That process begins with some creative tool-making.

Tools of the Trade

Brewing beer is like cooking. That’s why brewers concoct “batches” of beer. To cook, you need heat, and to solar-cook, you need to concentrate sunlight to get that heat. Joe’s Macgyver-like solution to that challenge involves wood framing, casters and big-screen televisions. Those of you knowledgeable about concentrated solar power (CSP) will understand the concept behind Fresnel lenses. These lenses have thousands of tiny circular indentations in them. All indentations are strategically cut to concentrate light passing through the lens to either a single focal point (spot lens) or a single line of focal points (linear lens). It turns out those old, rear-projection televisions utilized Fresnel lenses.

With wood, lenses and casters, Joe Blair built rolling vertical stands with rotating frames containing a large Fresnel lens mounted on them. He can move and rotate these lenses around to properly capture and concentrate sunlight.

As you’ll see, mobility is vital to solar home brewing. Blair’s second invention is a wheelchair manipulated to act as a cooking surface on wheels. The seat has been ripped out and replaced with a solid slab, upon which sits a metal pot. In this pot, the grains and hops are “toasted” by Fresnel-focused sunlight, which can heat up to a whopping 800 degrees!

The third piece of the puzzle is a glass-front refrigerator; the kind you’ll see full of Rockstar energy drinks in your local mini-mart. This refrigerator has been painted black on all sides not including the glass front. The glass acts as a glazing, allowing sunlight to pass through it but not allowing heat to escape. The refrigerator is ideal because of the built-in insulation normally designed to keep cold in but in this case traps heat. Inside the refrigerator, which is on a hand cart so that it can be tilted at an angle, are two mirrors strategically placed to reflect light hitting the back of the unit to the center, where sits a black tank containing water to be solar-boiled for steeping the grains and boiling the hops.

Arithmetic

You can’t make solar home brew without a little math work. It is essential that the Fresnel lenses be accurately aligned with the sun to generate enough heat to toast the grains and hop, as well as boil the water that will eventually become beer. In Blair’s case, he uses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Solar Calculator, which enables anyone to locate exactly the sun’s position in the sky, including azimuth and elevation, for any point on the map.

Using these numbers, solar brewers like Joe Blair can figure exactly which direction and at what angle to position their Fresnel lenses.

To Heat, to Boil, to Brew

With all the preliminary work done, the brewing process is ready to begin. The job requires two Fresnel-mounted carts. The first is positioned to collect the sunlight and the wheelchair with metal pot on its slab is wheeled under the light. In the pot is a strainer that contains barley grains. Once under the magnified sunlight, the barley begins to smoke; in essence, it’s being solar-roasted. After the toasting is complete, the barley is quickly ground up and transferred to a cheese cloth.

Next, the hops are put in the strainer and toasted for a while. While all this toasting has been going on, the black kettle inside the black refrigerator has been bringing roughly six gallons of water to a boil. The barley grains, which have been ground and cheese-clothed, are set in the tank to steep. Once the hops are toasted and the water is boiling, the hops are added to the water and the mixture is allowed to boil for about an hour.

Finally, the tank is removed from the fridge and carried over to a nearby truck. Here is the final stretch of home-brewed innovation. The tank is set high on the truck and attached to a syphon. The recently boiled brew inside must be cooled rather quickly. So Blair designed a heat exchanger out of some copper tubing and a garden hose. The tubing was fed carefully through the hose. In this way, the “wort” is syphoned down from the tank through the tubing and into a fermentation tank, while cool water passes over it through the hose. The water absorbs the heat and the beer is quickly cooled as it drains.

The result is a very sweet home brew that has yet to ferment. And that is where the solar portion of the process ends. All that is left is for the wort to sit for about a week as yeast added to the tank will eat into that sugar and ignite the wonderful fermentation process that every day puts smiles on faces in brewpubs across the world.

Some craft breweries, like green-standout Sierra Nevada, use some solar power to brew their beer, but none are so inventive, innovative and solar-powerful as Joseph Blair of Princeton Homebrew. Thankfully, he was kind enough to share his methods with Philly Beer Scene and the world. Clean-energy junkies and home brewers alike should be inspired. I know I am.

Read about the original day of solar-powered brewing and watch a video of the festivities at BeerSceneMag.com.

Photo Credit: Philly Beer Scene