Editor's note: Green Brews is a new biweekly series in which Green Options writer Clayton Bodie Cornell explores a passion unrelated to biofuels: organic beers and green nightlife. Enjoy!

Have you ever felt guilty after a night at the bar? Not the guilt associated with spending all your hard-earned cash on overpriced drinks, or wasting a day of your life nursing a hangover — that happens. What I'm asking is whether or not your green conscience extends into the realm of alcohol…

I won't be surprised if you answer 'no' — I did too (generally speaking). But a completely new trend could be on the horizon: the 'eco-nightlcub':

…Mark Klemen['s]…new venture, Butterfly Social Club,…makes eco-consciousness and healthful living as easy as ordering a drink. Located next door to Klemen's diverse, socially conscious nightlife mainstay Funky Buddha Lounge [in Chicago], Butterfly offers an array of alcohol, juices and tonics that are either certified organic or grown and produced in an eco-friendly environment."

Consistent with the general trend in organic food and drink, Klemen claims organic alcohols taste better and are healthier. This is an attractive concept; whenever I consume something to excess I like to make it as healthy as possible. But he's probably right. Just like a top-shelf liquor, organic products tend to be more refined and contain fewer byproducts and pesticide residues. Anyone that's had a 'cheap-wine hangover' knows what I'm talking about.

Ingesting fewer pesticide residues is never a bad idea, though I'm sure someone out there is thinking 'healthy alcohol' is a pretty stupid concept. In terms of personal well-being, this may be true (drinking too much by any other name is still, well, you know…), but don't forget the term 'organic' involves a whole set of farming practices that are healthier for farmers and their land. It's not just about your brain cells.

Besides organic spirits, the Butterfly Social Club has a lot more eco-savviness to offer. The whole club is designed around green concepts:

Everything about Butterfly exudes an organic quality–even the artistic facade looks like a living thing, a hobbit hole growing out of the urban landscape. Inside, natural builder Miguel Elliott used a mixture of sand, clay and straw to hand sculpt curving walls and trees that double as seating nooks. Klemen calls the space comforting and cave-like, adding that the mud mixture helps keep temperatures cool.

Klemen says he's trying to offer customers "an opportunity to have a better tasting and better feeling experience."

Atmosphere, they say, is everything. At least that's what we tell ourselves when we pay $8 for a martini. But like the best of green innovation, Butterfly takes takes something most of us do anyway, makes it eco-friendly, and increases the quality and enjoyment of the experience:

What about drinkers loyal to not-exactly-beneficial brands? "I'm not asking anybody to give anything up," he says. "I'm asking somebody to get something better."

Klemen also says he's not asking you to save the world–just to spend your hard-earned cash on something more environmentally friendly. If there's some aspect of what he's doing at Butterfly that "makes people a little more aware," he says, it's a step in the right direction."

Hell, I'd drink there.

If you're off to the bar this weekend, Klemen offered some eco-conscious drinking tips to keep in mind:

Ditch: vodka and Red Bull
Do: Rain vodka, made from organic Midwestern grains, and Steaz certified organic energy drink; or Chopin vodka, from organic Polish potatoes, and Butterfly's housemade energy drink, made with spring water, and rainforest-sustaining roots, herbs and teas

Ditch: draft cider
Do: certified organic, unpasteurized Etienne Dupont Cidre Bouche Brut de Normandie (Klemen says he carries this cider to support the family that's been producing it for hundreds of years)

Ditch: Captain and Coke
Do: Navan cognac, which features natural black vanilla from Madagascar, and Steaz organic root beer

Ditch: Bud
Do: Wild Hop Lager and Stone Mill, Anheuser-Busch's beers made with certified organic barley malt; for a more enzymatic, organic option, try Wiesen Edel-Weisse, which ferments in the bottle up until you crack it open

Ditch: supermarket chardonnay
Do: organic and biodynamic wine from Frey vineyards (Klemen says the grapes are grown in "awesome soil")

Originally reported by Karen Budell:
Eco-lixirs: Can cocktails have a conscience? Butterfly Social Club thinks so. (May 9th, 2007).