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Green Beer Fest supports Colorado Ocean Coalition 

Green Beer Festival. 2-10 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 29, Historic Boulder Bandshell Amphitheater, 1212 Canyon Blvd., Boulder.

Like the name implies, the third annual Green Beer Fest focuses on environmental awareness, particularly water quality, while providing live entertainment and beer tasting.

“Water is a finite source. It may be difficult to engage people and talk about water quality,” says Wade Norris, the event organizer. “But it’s very easy for people to relate to the price of their beer becoming more expensive because of mismanagement of water or lack of forward thinking on conservation.”

Beer will be served from 3-9 p.m. with free beer for the first hour. After that it’s $20 for a bottomless beer mug. The event is sponsored by Liquor Mart and will feature beer from Arch Slope, Avery, Oskar Blues and others. The music line-up includes performances by Foxfeather and the Tortuga Beats, as well as a variety of blues, hip-hop and funk artists.

And it’s all for a great cause. Completely volunteer run, the Green Beer Fest will benefit the Colorado Ocean Coalition (COCO), a Boulder-based nonprofit working to connect inland communities to ocean conservation efforts.

“Bringing the idea of beer, water and our mission to protect our watersheds from the source to the sea really tied together [into a] collaborative mission,” says Vicki Nichols Goldstein, founder and director at COCO.

The Green Beer Fest will benefit COCO’s Ocean Ambassador Program. With an application deadline of Sept. 1, the program accepts 20 individuals for 50 hours of teaching and solution-based training about ocean and watershed issues in Colorado and across the nation.