Is the Beer Organic If the Hops Aren't?

If a bottle of beer carries the organic seal and has “organic” in its name, it’s safe to assume that the hops in that beer are organic, right? Not exactly.

The US Department of Agriculture has a short list of 38 non-organic ingredients that are permitted in certified-organic products, and in 2007 Anheuser-Busch successfully petitioned USDA to include hops on that list. Organic beer is held to the same standard as other foods: 95 percent of the ingredients must be organic in order for it to be certified. But because hops make up less than 5 percent of the ingredients in beer, they don’t have to be organic.

One consequence of the USDA’s “95 Percent Rule” (or the "Budweiser Exemption," as it’s known in the industry) is that it has stifled organic hop production in America, creating a shortage of domestically grown organic hops.

“I felt that it was a sure way to kill the organic hop industry, to put hops on that list,” says Russ Klisch, President of Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee. Lakefront currently gets most of its organic hops from New Zealand and Germany, but they plan to switch to Wisconsin-based growers later this year.

“A lot of organic hops are being produced in Europe and New Zealand, but we also have increasing production in the US in Oregon and Washington,” says Alec Stefansky from Uncommon Brewers, a small organic brewery in Santa Cruz. Stefansky says organic hops are much more expensive than conventional, but he was fortunate to have signed long-term contracts that froze the price at 2007 levels.

Stefansky and Klisch don’t resent brewers that produce organic beer without using organic hops, but they do worry that it devalues their own beer. The message I got from my conversations with each of them is that brewers should use the best available ingredients, and that if you can’t find organic hops, you shouldn’t call the beer organic, even if USDA says you can.

“The one that I thought was the craziest was one that was called ‘Wild Hop Organic Beer,’ and the hops that they put in there weren’t wild and they weren’t organic,” says Klisch, referring to the Anheuser Busch beer that started this whole mess. However, as of last year, Anheuser Busch announced that it would use all-organic ingredients in their organic beers. And now that the big boys are in the business of buying organic hops, there's hope that domestic production will increase.

“It will set your teeth a little tighter, but I’m not going to begrudge them," says Stefansky of brewers that get organic certification without using organic hops. "One of the reasons we didn't launch with an IPA is because when I was getting the brewery going, there really weren’t the organic hops available to make an organic IPA. So rather than make that concession, we went with the beers that we did.”

Organic brewers are passionate about the issue because they want to produce the highest-quality beer possible. Stefansky compares it to mac & cheese: “If you’re making macaroni and cheese with Velveeta or a nice farmhouse cheddar, you’re going to end up with a very different meal in the end.”

-Mark