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Food & Beverage Industry

Hops in beer often laced with pesticides, writer says

Modern Brewery Age, Feb 23, 1998

As toxic residues seep into our groundwater, we face concerns over the purity of what we imbibe. And beer production today may be part of the problem, wrote Christopher Brooks in an article in the current issue of Country Living. Not only do the chemical fertilizers used to maximize barley yields and the caustic cleansers that help bring a shine to brewing systems add to water's contamination, but hops, the bittering agent responsible for beer's spicy, floral taste, are generally laced with pesticides.

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Some responsible brewers have begun to use ingredients that are free of pesticides and chemical fertilizers to craft their organic beers, and there are only a handful of American companies which sell them: Merchant du Vin Corp., in Seattle imports Germany's Pinkus Muller beers; Vanberg & DeWulf Importers, in Cooperstown, N.Y., imports Jade French Country Ale and Belgium's Dupont Forjt; Oregon Fields Brewing Co., in Eugene, makes a pesticide-free Hefe-Ryezen; Humes Brewing Co. Inc., in Milwaukee, offers an organic E.S.B and Beer Line Barley Wine.

Yet while the flavor, for instance, of an organically grown tomato is, to sortie, vastly superior to its pesticides-bathed brother, organic barley malt and hops do not automatically translate into a superior-tasting beer.

For one mason, there is still a very limited selection of organic raw materials available to brewers. Another relates to the complexities of making beer. "An ordinary recipe, using organic ingredients, is still going to result in an ordinary beer," explains Charles Finkel, president of the Merchant du Vin Corp.

Indeed the lack of aromatic hop varieties remains a major obstacle that brewers, and hop growers, must overcome before organic brewing can become more widespread. The Hefe-Ryezen of Oregon Fields Brewing Co. provides one example of how a brewery might deal with such a restriction. A deep-gold top fermenter sporting as estery, grainy, rye-accented palate, Hefe-Ryezen originally was pesticide-free in every respect but one, its German Hersbrucker finishing hops. "I used that hop because I didn't like the aromatic quality of the organic version," explains David Sohigian, former head brewer there. Current brewing chief Richard Strom has now upgraded this delicious Hefe-Ryezen to all-organic hops.

Sadly, until brewers commission more farmers to invest in organic agriculture, as Pinkus does with hop farms, or the growers adopt such practices on their own, the organic beer niche is likely to remain small.

"The limited choice in hops wood make it difficult for us to replace our standard products with organic renditions," observes James Emmerson, executive brewmaster at Full Sail Brewing, in Hood River, Ore., which uses a large variety of hops in its beers.

Additionally, Emmerson notes that the price of organic pale malt is more than double that of specialty malts. "To bring the price of grain down, more farmers must be willing to accept a slightly lower yield per acre," he remarks.

Either that or consumers should be willing to pay more for a more wholesome beverage. That's the attitude taken by the Humes Brewing Co., which produces a quartet of chemical-free beers. "I wanted to create a company that has no negative impact on the environment," brewer Peter Humes says.

"In a resource-limited world," says Russell Klisch, president of Lakefront Brewery, Inc., "we can't keep using these chemicals as a crutch. We should try to grow something better without all the energy that goes into producing pesticides and fertilizers."

That, of course, is the point behind organic agriculture.

Food & Beverage Industry

Hops in beer often laced with pesticides, writer says

Modern Brewery Age, Feb 23, 1998

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