This video was sent to me by the folks at Holy Taco, which appears to be a humor site for the college crowd. It’s a little goofy and some of the humor, sorry Alan — humour, misses the mark, though I certainly did laugh at parts of it. But what made it worthwhile, for me at least, is that they actually let them film inside one of the tanks, empty except for the beechwood chips. Having toured my fair share of Budweiser plants, they really gave these guys “inside access.” Though the segment where the host and the tour guide help “give birth” to the beer seems a little too over the top for my tastes, that or it may be I’m just getting old.

Holy Taco Goes To Budweiser

Several months ago, there was an obscure posting in the Brewers Forum from Charlie Papazian. He was passing on a request he’d received for a brewer to speak about sustainable brewing issue at a conference taking place in San Francisco. Since I’ve written about organic beer and green breweries several times now, it piqued my interest. The conference was EcoCity World Summit, and it took place April 21-26 at various location in the Bay Area. I wrote to them to get press credentials on the off chance that a brewer did participate, and also because I was curious to see what else might come up related to the recent agricultural shortages with barley and hops. It turned out that Greg Koch, from Stone Brewing, had agreed to be on one of the panels, on Saturday April 26. His panel was titled “The Future of Food For Cities.”

After a gala opening at the Herbst Theatre and two days of academic seminars at Berkeley’s Extension Center at Third and Mission, the remaining three days of the conference all took place at the Nob Hill Masonic Center on California Street. A number of the panel discussions focused on the future of various infrastructures, and had titles that all began “The Future of …,” with future glimpses of transportation in cities, energy to power cities, consumption, population, equity, architecture and urban design.

Below this interesting mural were a couple dozen tables with local organizations, media and other related ecological agendas with fliers, magazines and books. There was quite a lot of interesting stuff to see and read.

The first speaker on “The Future of Food For Cities” was particularly interesting. Eric Holt-Giménez, Director of Food First, which is also known as the Institute for Food and Development Policy, gave a lot of information about the myths surrounding the current food shortage. The most important of these is that he doesn’t believe it’s a shortage at all. He pointed out that the many food riots taking place around the world are not even riots, but rebellions. They aren’t being staged by starving populations, but by the poor angry about how quickly food prices have risen, about a growing entitlement gap and lack of democracy. Worldwide, average food prices have gone up a staggering 83% over the last three years, and 45% in just the last nine months. We all know about barley and hops, but wheat is up 130% and rice 66%.

At the same time, the big food companies are reporting record profits: ADM 25%, Monsanto 45%, General Foods 61% and Cargill 86%. But Holt-Giménez claims there is no shortage whatsoever, that reserve stocks are fine. To account for the higher prices he goes to say that across the board the rising prices are and will continue to blamed on the following:

1. Climate change: droughts, floods, etc.
2. Consumption: greater demand
3. Yields: 2005-06 were down, but not 2007
4. Energy: higher oil prices
5. Agrofuels: half of corn being used toward, demand rising

I’m not quite sure what to make of that. As he was ticking them off, I noticed they were pretty much the exact reasons that we’ve been told barley prices are rising and are some of the reasons for hops, too. With hops, having fewer acres planted — especially of aroma hops — is undoubtedly the primary cause and yields are still down as a result. But it’s hard not to wonder if some of the rising costs are due to some chicanery on the part of what Holt-Giménez refers to as the Industrial Agri-foods Complex.

He gave a lengthy explanation of the root causes, but the ones that seemed the most problematic to me were these. The so-called Green Revolution of the 1960-80s concentrated ownership of the world’s land into just a few very large corporations. As a consequence, we’ve lost 75% of food diversity to the point where cotton, maize, wheat, rice and soy account for 91% of all crops grown. That makes for a vulnerable food system where a problem with just one crop could have a ripple effect across the entire economy. Some of the other things he cited included the removal of transit barriers, dismantling marketing boards, free-trade agreements and food subsidies to the tune of $1 billion per day.

What Holt-Giménez sees happening is a collapse of the food and fuel systems into one, except that the biofuel solution is no solution at all. He calls it the “Grand Mythology,” that we “can’t consume our way out of over-consumption.” There a couple of essays at Food First that go into a bit more detail about this, if you’re interested. I’d suggest The New Green Revolution and World Food Prices, The Great Agrofuel Swindle, and Pouring Fuel on the Food.

Greg Koch went last, telling a receptive audience a story familiar to all of us, but which was largely new to a good portion of the crowd. Koch talked about how “the U.S. is now the most exciting place for beer in the world, bar none.” He told the story of beer’s history, from the golden age to its recent renaissance.

He discussed the malt and hops shortages of late and the statistic about the average American living within 10 miles of a brewery. Koch also brought up his own brewery’s efforts to be green, then delving into a broader examination of what many others were doing as well, painting an honest picture of just how green the craft beer community is.

After each panelist spoke, the three of them, took lively questions from the audience. From left, Greg Koch, Carol Whiteside, President of the Great Valley Center in Modesto (and Modesto’s former mayor), and Eric Holt-Giménez, from Food First.

It was certainly an interesting experience and I was glad to see craft beer playing a role in thinking about the future of humanity and we should go about securing it.
 

Leave it Sierra Nevada Brewing to figure out a way to release their fresh hop beer, Harvest Ale, not once, but three times throughout the year. The regular harvest ale, which they’ve been making since 1996 — and which was released in bottles for the first time last fall — will continue to come out seasonally right after the harvest in Yakima, using Cascade and Centennial hops. But in May they’ll release another Harvest Ale, known as Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale made with freshly picked hops from New Zealand. Then, at some point during harvest season, they’ll also do a separate bottling of Harvest Ale, using hops grown in the hopyard adjacent to the brewery. This version will be called Chico Estate Harvest Ale and will only be available in very limited quantities, determined by the yield from their own hops.

From the Press Release: Sierra Nevada, the pioneer of fresh hop ales in America, has expanded its Harvest Ale Series with the release of another ground-breaking product introduction, Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale. This marks the first time in known history that a fresh hop ale has been available in America in the spring since hops are harvested in the fall in the northern hemisphere. The inaugural ale will debut in early May. To make this project happen, Sierra Nevada traveled to New Zealand to harvest fresh hops, and then transported them from the southern hemisphere to Chico where they were immediately used in brewing. Like their award-winning Celebration Ale, the fresh hops in this beer are dried right after being picked then shipped immediately to Chico for brewing, so that they retain their peak aromatics and flavors. Freshly harvested hops are richer in hop oils so they impart more hop aroma and hop spiciness into beer. “We love fresh hop ales, but until now fresh hops were only available here once a year – during the fall hop harvest,” said brewery owner and founder Ken Grossman. “So we journeyed to the southern hemisphere to catch their hop harvest, which occurs during our spring.” The result is the North-by South fusion of fresh-picked New Zealand Pacific hops with the finest North American malts. Southern Hemisphere Harvest will feature fresh Pacific Hallertau, New Zealand Motueka and New Zealand Southern Cross hops, all from New Zealand. The introduction of Southern Hemisphere Harvest gives Sierra Nevada three fresh-hop ales in their Harvest Series. In addition to Southern Hemisphere Harvest, Sierra Nevada produces Chico Estate Harvest in late summer and its original Harvest Ale in early fall.

Chico Estate Harvest is one of the very few estate harvest ales produced anywhere in the world today. All the hops in the beer are grown organically on the premises at the Chico brewery. The brewers pick the hops themselves and then take them directly to the brew kettle, without being dried, just after picking so they retain nearly all of their natural oils and resins. It is made with Cascade, Centennial and Chinook hops. Until now, this beer has only been available in draft. Starting this year, Sierra Nevada will bottle it on a very limited basis (Chico only this year) with plans to expand its availability as they expand their Chico hop field in the coming years. The cornerstone of their Harvest Series is the beer that started the modern-day fresh hop ale phenomenon in America, the original Harvest Ale. Created in 1996, Harvest Ale features Cascade and Centennial hops from the Yakima Valley in Eastern Washington. These hops are harvested and shipped as “wet,” i.e., un-dried hops—the same day they are picked—to their brewery in Chico where the brewers eagerly wait to get them into the brew kettle while their oils and resins are still at their peak. Representing the journey following the hop harvest around the globe, the Harvest Series includes hops sourced from new regions and brewed using new methods in an effort to maximize the oily, resinous qualities of the hops from each harvest as they transported them to the brewery in Chico, California.

 
It will be fun to compare the two that come out around the same time. It’s too bad we won’t really be able to compare all three, but the Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale will not be fresh at the same time as the other two, but ces’t la vie. That’s the point of fresh hop beers; here today, gone tomorrow.
 

Lagunitas Brewing of Petaluma, California, is a big exponent of local ingredients, though usually food. But now they’re trying to make a portion of the beer locally, too. Lagunitas has planted a 1/3 acre test plot in nearby Marshall, California, right on Tomales Bay. I’m not sure about the weather at that location — with fog and wind — but I certainly admire the effort. They’re planted two hop varieties, Emperor and Pathetique (really Nugget and Cascade, but Tony Magee renamed them since they’re not being grown in the Pacific Northwest — and apparently he’s a big fan of Beethoven). If all goes well, they plan on developing five acres at the same location. Obviously, this won’t meet all of their hop needs, but I think it’s great that brewers are looking to grow their own hops and take a greater ownership of what goes into their beer. Now if we can just pull out all those grapes and get hops growing again in Hopland.

The Lagunitas Hopfields.

 
UPDATE 4.18: The Marin I.J., my local paper, also did a nice story on the new Lagunitas hopfield, in which they quote yours truly.
 

We already know that the price of barley has doubled over the least year, but according to a scientist from New Zealand, global warming may keep that situation from getting any better and will continue to hamper efforts to increase the supply of barley to be used in making beer.

From the AP story:

Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said climate change likely will cause a decline in the production of malting barley in parts of New Zealand and Australia. Malting barley is a key ingredient of beer.

Speaking at the Institute of Brewing and Distilling ’s 30th Asia Pacific Section Convention, Salinger predicted “the price of beer is likely to rise in coming decades because climate change will hamper the production of a key grain needed for the brew — especially in Australia.”

Though Salinger was talking about only his native New Zealand and Australia, it’s not hard to extrapolate that the same climate changes will have similar effects in other parts of the world, too. He finished his talk on this cheery note. “[C]limate change could cause a drop in beer production within 30 years, especially in parts of Australia, as dry areas become drier and water shortages worsen.”

According to a news radio station in Seattle, Washington, KOMO Radio, farmers in the Yakima area have responded to the rising price of hops and are pulling out other crops to plant hop rhizomes this year. From the report:

Growers are feverishly reconditioning yards and adding new land at an unheard-of pace. Growers are receiving multiple-year contracts with prices front-loaded to help them shoulder the estimated $6,000-per-acre cost to plant yards and also upgrade equipment.

I presume the acres mentioned in this report are in addition to the 6,000 of high alphas that was announced in January at the hop growers convention.

Ralph Olson, general manager of grower-owned HopUnion of Yakima, a buyer who deals primarily with smaller craft brewers, thinks the figure may be closer to 8,000 acres by the time all is said and done. That would be a jump of nearly 25 percent in acreage in one year.

That would suggest an additional 2,000 acres, of which hopefully at least some will be aroma hops. There’s been a lot of speculation but no one’s been sure what would happen this year. Now that spring is upon us and it’s time to start planting, it’s looking like more hops are being planted than previously expected. If that trend continues in other places where hops are traditionally grown then that’s very good news indeed.

This month’s online version of The Scientist magazine has an interesting historical piece entitled Beer, and the Biochemists Behind It. Despite beginning with the now discredited Franklin beer quote, the article is a nice overview of brewing science historically and talks about Charlie Bamforth’s advocacy on behalf of beer, too. I love the assertion that because of beer’s 8,000-year heritage, it may be “quite possibly the world’s oldest biotechnology.” I’d like to see brewers start saying, when asked what they do for a living, respond casually, “oh, I’m in biotech.”

My friend and colleague, Greg Kitsock, had an article last week in the Washington Post that got me thinking. It was titled Another Layer of Enjoyment and tackled the issue of blending beer, especially with Guinness, as in beer cocktails. It was written to coincide, one presumes, with the then impending St. Patrick’s Day holiday. The two most common of these are a Black & Tan — which Guinness has long promoted as Guinness and Bass Ale (the two shared distribution for many years) — and a Half & Half, which is Guinness and Harp Lager, also a Guinness product. Obviously generic stout and a pale ale or lager may be substituted, but as Guinness has promoted the combinations for such a long time, they are well and truly most closely associated with those brands. I once got into a huge row with the copy editor that Beverages & more used to employ when she changed my text for our March newsletter and switched Black & Tan to Guinness and Harp, and vice versa, without consulting me, so the paper went out to thousands of Club Bev members (the company’s loyalty card) with the wrong information and my name on the item as the author. She was one of those insufferable people who felt they already knew everything and couldn’t conceive of ever being wrong. Surprisingly enough, many continue to spread confusion, with plenty of websites — even bartending websites — with conflicting definitions, including a few that contradict themselves. So perhaps the dilemma is not as well-settled as I believed.

Even Wikipedia, which states that the term Black & Tan, in its meaning as a mixed beer drink, was first recorded in 1899. It’s not listed in my OED, so I can’t confirm that. But after beginning by claiming the two drinks are as I think they should be, they later in the article state that “[t]he two most common types of Black and Tan in the United States use Guinness Draught (not Extra Stout) and either Bass, or Harp Lager,” [my emphasis] which at best is contradictory. When you consider that Harp Lager was first launched in 1960, it’s seems hard to imagine that after 61 years of Black & Tan meaning one thing that it should suddenly make no difference what kind of beer is used, but then I presume the Wikipedia folks who wrote that entry were not on to the finer points of what makes a lager and an ale different. Perhaps they simply assumed a light colored beer is a light colored beer.

I know these drinks are just marketing gimmicks, and possibly not even worthy of discussion, but that ’s the anal-retentive in me. Is there some confusion about what goes in a martini or a gin and tonic? I just think there should be some consensus, that’s all. Am I asking too much? Anyway, there are actually plenty more of these type of mixed beer drinks, many of which are black and something, like black and red or black and orange. Wikipedia has a huge list and a website, No Sheep, has a few more as well. Personally, my favorite thing to add to Guinness is just a few drops Crème de Cassis, which gives it just a touch of berry sweetness. But I’ve never had a name for it — I suppose I could call it a black & currant or a black & black.

Lucky number thirteen, the beginning of year two of the Sessions. This time around our host, Chris O’Brien, the Beer Activist, chose a topic near and dear to his heart, organic beer. It’s one I’m fairly familiar with as well. I wrote a feature story on green breweries for All About Beer magazine in January of this year that covered both organic beer and the green ways in which breweries operate. As I’ve been traveling a lot the last few weeks, my session post is a bit of a rehash, let’s call it recycled. That’s more green.

To me, one of the main issues about organic beer is its perception and what exactly makes a beer organic. Unsurprisingly, it’s the ingredients used to make whatever product is going to be called or labeled “organic.” Several years ago, the standards for organic products varied from state to state, but in 2002 the federal government instituted the National Organic Program (NOP) that standardized the requirements for organic labeling nationwide. This made it easier for companies to sell across state lines without having to worry about individual and possibly conflicting standards between states. Some states did complain, of course, because it undermined their own efforts at defining what it means to be an organic product. The standards in Oregon prior to the NOP, for example, were more rigid than the national standard adopted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But this intervention did make it easier for regional and national breweries to more easily meet the requirements for a larger market.

The USDA does not do the certification process directly, but rather they have “deputized” independent certifying agents, which in some cases do include the former state certifying agencies. Currently, there are about sixty such agencies. Among these are the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) and the Oregon Tilth. In addition to the actual certifying, they also investigate noncompliance complaints and check records, monitor label usage, etc. There are now essentially four levels of organic labeling: “100% organic,” “organic,“ “made with organic materials,” and “some organic ingredients.” The differences in these four are listed in the table below:

While this is undoubtedly a good step, the fact that there are four of these and they sound so similar it seems to me this is still confusing for consumers, especially the casual consumer who is not likely to be familiar with the precise differences. The “made with organic ingredients” designation, for example — which only requires 70% of its ingredients to actually be organic — seems to convey a false impression of how organic the product really is, at least in my opinion. A company could use 30% of complete crap and still make a consumer believe their purchase is organically sound. This undermines the very idea of organic products. It seems to me products should either be organic or not. This slippery slope of degrees is bound to cause nothing but confusion and perhaps even ill will. The FDA has approved some sixty plus chemicals for use in the manufacture of beer. Are they all bad? Certainly not, and even craft brewers use some of them on occasion. But health and beer is all about perception. A brewery could theoreticaly use many of them and so long as it’s less than 30% of the total ingredients say their concoction is “made with organic ingredients.”

All beer is in effect natural, especially those that use only the four basic ingredients. This begs the question of how much better is organic beer vs. a typical craft beer? I’d say in the end it has to do with how it makes the customer feel on an emotional level. I think that’s true of almost all organic products. People buy them because it makes them feel good, like they’re doing something good, both for themselves, the environment and perhaps even society as a whole. They feel like they’re helping out small farmers. This is why the labeling is so important. And not just the organic designation but also the truthiness of the entire package. A customer should be able to feel good about what they’re buying, but if details are left out — no matter how legal it is to do so — then this damages the emotional response that is so central to buying organic.

This is the very reason big companies hide behind dba’s and buy up health food companies. Colgate recently bought Tom’s of Maine. Will that make Tom’s a bad product now? Probably not, unless Colgate takes over production and relaxes standards. But some people will likely still think twice about buying Tom’s knowing it’s just another product line in Colgate’s massive portfolio. It’s all a matter of what perception will be created in the mind of the consumer based on that new information and what the change of ownership means to them. Some may not care at all, of course. But what happens if this information is not disclosed on Tom’s packaging? At that point it goes beyond simple ignorance and becomes a calculated lie-by-omission.

There will almost certainly continue to be a market for organic and healthier products that maintain a small niche within the wider market. What will allow it to grow is directly proportional to the confidence that the market has for the products within the niche market. That’s the exact reason the labeling standards are so important. But doing the minimum required for purely business reasons in order to sell a product is just not enough. Common sense standards will also have to be adhered to as well in order to gain customer confidence. This will vary from company to company but makes sense in relation to the product. For example, an organic farmer who refrains from using pesticides but hires slave labor would not be adhering to a common sense standard, in my opinion.

By and large, I think the majority of organic beers available today do adhere to a good set of standards, both the mandated ones and the common sense ones. But as larger companies begin to compete for these niche markets, the line becomes blurred. Some will leave the smaller companies they’ve purchased alone and some will swallow them whole. New ones created within larger companies will suffer the same problems. And then who knows what will happen to common sense standards.

There’s a great series of charts on Michigan State’s website showing how many organic products of all stripes are currently owned by large corporations hedging their bets and trying to appear socially conscious.

Excerpted from my All About Beer article: The problem with the USDA’s definition is that every beer is 5% alcohol and roughly 95% water plus a fractional amount of flavor compounds (including vitamins, minerals and trace elements), dietary fiber, carbohydrates, hop oils and resins, and proteins. When brewing beer, for every 10 pounds of malt, only a few ounces of hops are used, almost regardless of style. This means that a beer could use organic barley and no organic hops and still technically fit the USDA’s organic definition, as long as the USDA has been satisfied that the particular type of hops used in the beer is “not commercially available in organic form.”

Until very recently, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ingredients that organic companies were claiming weren’t available organically and, therefore, a non-organic substitute could be used. But there’s a difference between allowable and acceptable, and consumers supporting organic products precisely because they were better for the environment began complaining that the distinction was being blurred. By allowing goods to be called “organic” that contained non-organic ingredients it was creating confusion as to exactly what was being offered for sale. This consumer backlash forced the USDA to change their policy and limit the number of items that could be substituted and still be called organic. After a public debate, the number of ingredients that could be substituted was fixed at 38, with hops still on the list.

So when it comes to organic beer, hops have become the crux of the debate. There was a time when the only available organic malts were pale and crystal malts, but today almost any common malt is available organically. Organic hops, on the other hand, remain more elusive. Hops are a fragile crop, susceptible to many pests, fungi and mildew problems. Today virtually all hops are grown in just three states: Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Pesticides and fertilizers have greatly enhanced yields, and hop growers have developed varieties with better yields and that are disease resistant. Many of these varieties have become an integral part of beer’s wide array of styles. Certain hop varieties have become associated with specific styles, making it all but impossible to use a substitute and get the desired results. You may be able to make a pilsner without Saaz hops or an American pale ale without Cascades, but they won’t taste quite right.

Of the roughly fifty common hop varieties, only about one-fifth have shown the potential to be viable organic crops. Stephen Carpenter, great-great-grandson of the Yakima Valley’s first hop grower, tried unsuccessfully to grow the very popular Cascade hops organically. For many years, organic hops were available primarily from New Zealand, with as much as 80% of all organic hops grown by a single farmer, the Oldham family, on 25 acres.

Last year, Anheuser-Busch entered the organic market with two brands, Wild Hop Lager and Stone Mill Pale Ale. During the public debate on labeling, they were strongly criticized for not using 100% organic hops by misguided consumer groups who believed that if you are big enough and have enough money then it should be easy enough for you to get whatever you want, including organic hops. But the hops business doesn’t work like that. Hop growers are just beginning to come out of a decade-long down cycle that has seen many leave the business just as demand for hops is on the rise. By every account, there is a worldwide hop shortage that has no easy solutions. Unfortunately, A-B bowed to public pressure and announced their organic beers would be made with 100% organic hops. Even they’re unsure where a steady supply of hops is likely to come from. Thanks to A-B’s having been forced into this decision by consumer groups, small craft brewers who make organic beer may very well have a much tougher time finding organic hops and even staying in business because what hops may be available will be at least twice as expensive as conventionally grown varieties. According to Morgan Wolaver, founder of Wolaver’s Organic Ales, this is perhaps organic beer’s biggest challenge. “We need to find an answer to these crop issues, because the controversy will not simply go away. If a beer is made with 100% of the more expensive organic hops, will consumers be willing to spend another dollar per six-pack?”

So that’s my recycled three cents on organic beer, most of it written before today but in one place for the first time, so that should count for something.

 
Below is a list of many of the organic beers and beer producers available today.

Domestic Organic Breweries

• Bison Brewing; Berkeley, California
• Blackfoot River Brewing; Helena, Montana
• Butte Creek Brewing; Chico, California
• Eel River Brewing; Fortuna, California
• Elliott Bay Brewing; Seattle, Washington
• Fish Brewing; Olympia, Washington
• Laurelwood Brewing; Portland, Oregon
• North Coast Brewing; Fort Bragg, California
• Peak Organic Brewing; Burlington, Massachusetts
• Pisgah Brewing; Black Mountain, North Carolina
• Roots Organic Brewery; Portland, Oregon
• Wolaver’s Certified Organic Ales; Middlebury, Vermont
• Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing; Santa Cruz, California
• Ukiah Brewing; Ukiah, California

Domestic Organic Beers

• Big “O” Organic, Snake River Brewing; Jackson Hole, Wyoming
• Biologique Dupont Beers (5), Brasserie Dupont; Tourpes, Belgium
• Kaya Organic Pale, Fitger’s Brewhouse; Duluth, Minnesota
• Kraftbräu Summer Moon Organic Ale, Kraftbräu Brewery; Kalamazoo, Michigan
• Mothership Wit, New Belgium Brewing; Fort Collins, Colorado
• OGA (Organic Golden Ale), Lucky Labrador; Portland, Oregon
• Organic Amber, Bluegrass Brewing; Louisville, Kentucky
• Organic Bock, Big Horse Brewpub; Hood River, Oregon
• Organic ESB, Lakefront Brewery; Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Organic Porter, Brooklyn Brewery; Brooklyn, New York
• Tree Hugger Organic IPA, Redfish New Orleans Brewhouse; Boulder, Colorado

Organic Breweries Abroad

• Arkell’s; Swindon, England
• Black Isle Brewery; Munlochy, Scotland
• Brauerei Pinkus Mueller; Munster, Germany
• Crannog Ales; Sorrento, BC, Canada
• Clarke’s Organic Brewery; Dewsbury, England
• Founders Organic Brewery; Nelson New Zealand
• Marble Beers; Manchester, England
• Mongozo Exotic Beers; Venray, Netherlands
• O’Hanlon’s Brewing; Devon, England
• Pacific Western Brewing; Burnaby, BC, Canada
• Pitfields Organic Brewery; London, England
• The 4 Elements; Richelbach, Germany
• Thisted Bryghus; Thisted, Denmark
• Waedenswiler Bierwelt; Wädenswil, Switzerland
• Wild Rose Brewery; Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Organic Beers Abroad

• Border Gold & Angel Lager, Broughtan Ales; Broughtan, Scotland
• Brakspear Organic Beer, Brakspear Brewery, Witney, England
• Cantillon Gueuze 100% Lambic-Bio, Brasserie Cantillon, Brussels, Belgium
• Duchy Originals Organic, Wychwood Brewery; Witney, England
• Eisenbahn Natural, Eisenbahn; Brazil
• Emerson’s Organic Pilsner, Emerson’s Brewery; Dunedin, New Zealand
• Golden Promise Organic, Caldonian Brewery; Edinburgh, Scotland
• Mill Street Original Organic Lager, Mill Street Brewery; Toronto, Canada
• Organic Ale, Brasserie Rancho El Paso; Hokkaido, Japan
• Organic Ale & Best Bitter, St. Peter’s Brewery; Suffolk, England
• Organic Beer Shinshu Sansan, Yo-Ho Brewing; Japan
• Organic Honeydew, Fuller’s; London, England
• Samuel Smith Organic Ale & Lager, Old Brewery at Tadcaster; Yorkshire, England
• Yella Bella Organic Ale, Batemans Brewery; Wainfleet, England

I’m not quite sure why people keep trying to “improve” beer by adding vitamins to it, trying to make it akin to the sort of health drinks one might find at a health food store. Beer is plenty healthy already and it certainly feels like brewers have pretty much perfected how to make it by now. If there’s a more perfected beverage, I can’t imagine what it might be.

It’s fairly well settled that when you drink, you lose B vitamins. Alcohol robs your body of those vitamin compounds. My personal regime after a night of drinking is to take a B complex vitamin pill along with two or three Advils before retiring (which has been nearly a perfect preemptive remedy for me).

A Philippine inventor, Virgilio “Billy” L. Malang, has come with yet another beer that adds vitamin B back into the beer. He recently presented his beer at the First International Inventors Day Convention held February 2 in Thailand. Malang’s beer also nabbed a gold medal at the Genius-Europe competition in 2004 out of 1,000 inventions submitted by 540 would-be inventors from forty-six different nations.

Malang apparently began homebrewing while living in the U.S. in the 1980s. He uses organic rice syrup as his wort, using no grains at all, which he believes gives his beer a distinctive taste. There’s also one more secret ingredient, which still has a patent pending, that he uses as a substitute for hops. This substitute he says is “sourced locally” so that suggests a plant that grows in the Philippines. At this point, it’s sounding less and less like an actual beer, since it uses only half the traditional ingredients: yeast and water.

Other related inventions by Malang include “a ‘tagay cup’ good for three drinkers—with three handles and three cup lips assigned to each member of a drinking trio, and an anti-hangover capsule derived from ‘activated’ coco shell charcoal.” For more on Malang and his inventions, there’s a story in the Philippine Inquirer.

I guess what I don’t quite understand is how simply adding vitamins to a beer at some point during the brewing process guarantees that it can be absorbed by the body when you drink the finished product. I mean, it my still be in there, but how do we know that the body can take it from the solution and add it to the body’s total amount, thus replenishing whatever B vitamins have been lost in the same process. Otherwise, it really doesn’t do much good, does it? And it seems like an awful lot of effort when simply keeping a bottle of vitamin pills on the nightstand would do the same job.

In a terrific gesture of solidarity and community, Jim Koch of the Boston Beer Co. announced yesterday that he would be making available to small brewers, twenty tons of aroma hops at his cost in an effort to help out the hop-strapped craft industry. They’re calling it the Hop Sharing Program, and making it available to brewers in need. There’s more information at the Samuel Adams website, click on the hop sharing icon to find out more details.

Koch explained the idea on the Brewer’s Forum, a online trade forum run by the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colorado.

So we looked at our own hops supplies at Boston Beer and decided we could share some of our hops with other craft brewers who are struggling to get hops this year. We’re offering 20,000 pounds at our cost to brewers who need them. Specifically, we are able to spare 10,000 pounds of East Kent Goldings from Tony Redsell, a top English grower featured by Michael Jackson in Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion (page 75 has a picture) and 10,000 pounds of the German Noble hop Tettnang Tettnanger from small farms in the Tettnang region in Germany.

Boston Beer will be selling the hops at their cost, plus a modest amount for shipping, to any brewer who really needs them. As Koch explains.

The purpose of doing this is to get some hops to the brewers who really need them. So if you don’t really need them, please don’t order them. And don’t order them just because we’re making them available at a price way below market. Order them because you need these hops to make your beer. We’re not asking questions, so let your conscience be your guide.

We hope this will make brewing a little easier for those hardest hit by the hop shortage.

What a truly beautiful show of support for the industry as a whole. It’s times like these that showcase how supportive the craft beer industry is of one another. It restores one’s faith in humanity.

Jim Koch, flanked by two Longshot winners, Lili Hess and Rodney Kibzey, during a reception at last year’s GABF. Cheers, indeed, Jim.

The 8th annual Double IPA Festival took place yesterday at the Bistro in Hayward, California. We couldn’t have asked for better weather. After weeks of rain, blue skies and a warm sun filled the sky. I think a lot of festival-goers were coaxed out of hibernation by the beautiful day. And what better way to spend it but enjoying countless Imperial IPAs?

As noted in the previous post, Flying Dog’s Double Dog was chosen best in show. Kenny Gross, who works for their local distributor, shyly accepted the medal on their behalf.

The crowds came out to the Bistro to sample over thirty Imperial IPAs.

For many more photos from this year’s Double IPA Festival at the Bistro, visit the photo gallery.