Ale Street News Online

Greenwashing is sweeping over the country like so much green-dyed lager on Paddy’s Day, and everyone wants to feel good about the environment. Brewers from Alaska to Florida brewing truly "green" beer with organic ingredients.

In the Northeast, Portland, ME is home to Peak Organic Brewing, and Vermont boasts organic pioneer Wolavers, and the new Magic Hat spin-off, Orlio beers. Cascadia, from Northern California to British Columbia is a hotbed of organic beer. In Oregon, five newly opened breweries are using organic base malt, including Hopworks Urban Brewery, which joins Roots Organic Brewing Co. and Laurelwood (which also produces conventional beers) as certified organic breweries in Portland. June 27-29, the North American Organic Brewers Festival in Portland, OR, showcased 75 organic beers from around the world to 15,000 attendees.

So why organic?

Until the 20th century, there was no such thing as non-organic beer, but with the emergence of industrial agriculture, chemical pesticides and fertilizers became the norm. Touted as the farmer’s friend, and widely embraced, these chemicals’ negative environmental and human health effects have slowly come to light.

"Organic beer supports a system that doesn’t rely on toxic chemicals that lead to soil degradation and agricultural runoff," says Peak Organic Brewing founder Jon Cadoux, noting that these environmental problems also hurt local economies.

"Organic brewers contribute to a culture that looks at earth as source of nourishment for plants," says Daniel Del Grande, owner of Berkeley’s organic Bison Brewing. "Conventional agriculture looks at soil as a substrate to hold plants up and dump fertilizer on them."

Fertilizers string out barley like a junkie on heroin, producing slender high protein kernels, poorly suited for brewing. In the late 1970s German brewmaster Hans Mueller at Pinkus-Mueller was concerned with the declining quality of conventional malt. Brewing with organic malt in 1980, he found it produced a better yield in the brewhouse, and over the next decade the brewery transitioned all of its beers to 100 percent organic ingredients.

On this side of the pond too, brewers are beginning to note better yield from organic malt. When Doug Hindman, brewer at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Brewing switched to organic base-malt in 2006, he found the better extraction allowed him to reduce the amount of base-malt used.

Maltster Brad Loucks, of Great Western Malting in Vancouver, WA says that though getting a weed-free crop is difficult, organic barley has better plumps, lower protein, and possibly better color than conventional barley.

Hops have been a major challenge for organic brewers as pests such as powdery and downy mildews make them very difficult to grow in the Pacific Northwest. With few domestic organic hops available, brewers turn to New Zealand and Germany, though many do not see this as a sustainable option, due to the carbon impact of shipping. Most organic brewers choose to use conventional hops.

Conventional growers spray potent chemical fungicides such as Aliette and Flint (which kill fish) on their hops several times a year. For a crop grown in prime endangered salmon habitat, this is a huge concern.

Goschie Farms in Silverton, OR, which has been growing hops for more than a century, was certified by Salmon Safe, and has planted a 4-acre test plot of organic hops. In Moxie, WA Roy Farms grows 20 acres of its hops organically and tries to incorporate organic practices into its conventional yards.

"Everyone involved has seen the viscous cycle if you are dependent on synthetic inputs," says Michael Roy, of the fourth-generation hop farm.

Organic brewer-farmers Brian MacIsaac and Rebecca Kneen of Crannóg Ales in British Columbia, have grown hops since 2000, and convinced local organic farmers to plant hops, restarting the BC hop-growing industry, dormant since 1997. Eight new commercial hop farms were planted in BC this spring.

Other regions are trying to grow hops too. New Belgium Brewing Co. is funding a research project at Colorado State to grow organic hops, and Sierra Nevada has a 2-acre organic hopyard at the brewery.

In Maine, Peak, which uses organic hops in all of its beers, is working with local farmers to grow Tettnanger hops and hopes to have a good supply in a few years time. Founder Cadoux says he would like to use all organic native New England ingredients, and is hoping to use local barley. In honor of the Chef’s Collaborative, which encourages chefs to use local ingredients, Peak brews a seasonal maple oat ale with Vermont maple syrup and Maine oatmeal.

Wolavers, in Vermont, brewed two beers with organic hops grown in Oregon by Pat Leavy, who is working with organic production methods on his hop farm. The All-American Ales, were brewed with domestically grown organic barley and whole hop flowers.

Going hopless is an alternative embraced by organic beers such as Heather Ale and Gruit Kölsch from Roots Organic Brewing Co. in Portland, OR, and Bog Water, a seasonal from Beau’s All Natural in Ontario. Bog Water uses wild-crafted sweet gale, one of the herbs traditionally used in beer before hops.