To Your Health, Indeed!

Even the most cynical about the benefits of organic food can have their heads turned with the mention of one simple organic product which may have eluded their attention. Two words: Organic. Beer. Now we're talking: Can Joe Sixpack be brought into the organic army? It just may be possible.

The recent proliferation of microbreweries in America can take most of the credit for a concomitant rise in organic beer brands. This is one area in which the not quite as health-conscious Europeans maintain a healthy lead over the red, white, and blue. Produced under the guidance of standards such as the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516 (one of the oldest food-standard laws ever), European brewers have been cranking out organic brewskis for half a millennium. The Bavarian Purity Law is well-adapted to today's demands for the prestigious official organic product label, as it essentially states that all beer should be comprised of three ingredients: malt, hops and water. Yeast is typically commonly accepted as a fourth ingredient, chalking up the lack of its mention in the law as 16th-century ignorance of the existence of microorganisms.

Resulting from the newfound popularity of the microbrew are a plethora of organic beer brands, of which there are far far too many to list here. You can begin your organic beer quest with some of the breweries and brews listed below.

Vermont-based Otter Creek Brewing features a line of products that fulfill the company's mission to foster an entire lifestyle and economic switch to organics. Their year-round brews number three: their brown ale is their amber quaff mild of taste and boasting undertones of currant and cherry; this one is recommended by the Otters to accompany light foods. The Otter Creek India Pale Ale is their addition to the burgeoning popularity of the pale ale. Hoppy like a typically pale ale, Otter Creek IPA carries a nice spicy taste making it ideal for food with zip. Otter Creek's traditional pale ale is a bit heavier than most with the distinctive Otter creaminess.

A bit further south lies the Delaware-based Dogfish Head Brewing. Odd of moniker, the only thing peculiar about the Dogfish brews is their intriguing makeup. Check out the Chicory Stout: a combination of two of the world's favorite legal drugs, Dogfish brewers actually combine their stout with honest-to-god organic coffee beans, in themselves not easy to obtain these days. Talk about robust, talk about satisfying…talk about Dogfish Chicory Stout.

Dogfish's excellently named Raison d'Etre is a mahogany ale with a couple of surprising ingredients incorporated: Herein are beet sugar and green raisins. The beer presumably gets the name as a paean to the Belgian-style yeast used in the product. Malt Advocate Magazine bestowed their "American Beer of the Year" prize in 2000 to this little dandy, and the Dogfish guys have yet to stop producing the variety.
Dogfish also produces a green beer specifically for the St. Patrick's season. How do you make beer green organically? The folks at Dogfish creatively use spirulina, a high-protein blue-green algae common in some organic cooking. The base beer is a Dortmunder, which is a sort of golden lager falling between German pilsner and British bitter in taste. Beer Advocate notes this beer's "aromatic aroma." And check out the name: Verdi Verdi Good. Nice.

Or maybe you're ready for the ultimate challenge…brewing organic beer yourself. Look no further than online supplier Seven Bridges Cooperative. Seven Bridges sells extracts, yeast, growlers, recipe books and really everything you need. This company can also boast that they are the sole certified organic homebrew retailer in the United States; Seven Bridges products carry the USDA organic seal.
Cheers!