Great home-crafted beers are the result of high-quality ingredients, good recipes, and good brewing practices. If you want your beer to excel, not just in flavor but in kindness to the environment, you will also want to choose locally grown and/or organic ingredients as much as possible. Organic ingredients are sometimes more expensive and can be a bit harder to find, and the selection of organic brewing ingredients is not as wide as the selection of conventionally grown ingredients.
Despite these inconveniences, with a little diligence and creativity, it is possible to brew virtually every beer style imaginable using just organic ingredients, and do it well. Many organic beers, a few of mine included, have won blue ribbons in competitions going head to head with beers made with nonorganic ingredients. The main ingredients for any beer are malt, yeast, and hops. Here is an overview of each, along with a discussion of adjunct ingredients.
Next to water, malt makes up the largest percentage of any beer and thus contributes much of the flavor, so it’s critical that you start with the best malt possible. Malting is the process of sprouting grain, typically barley, then drying it at low temperatures. The process converts most of the grain starches to fermentable sugars, primarily maltose, and makes the barley more digestible by yeast. Other grains can be malted — wheat and rye are also malted for the brewing industry — but barley is the base for virtually every commercial beer style.
Barley malt is available in whole kernel, as a liquid extract, or as a powdered extract. Beer made from whole kernel malt has to be mashed — a process of steeping the grains in water, which activates enzymes that convert starches in the grains to fermentable sugar. This more advanced brewing process is fully explained in chapter 4. It is much easier to brew beer with extract because the starches have already been converted to sugars, then condensed into a syrup or powder. Many brewers find it convenient to brew with extract even after they have brewed for years.
The quality of malt extracts varies widely. As of this writing, there is just one brand of organic malt extract on the market, a pale unhopped extract made by Briess Malt and Ingredients Company. This extract is very good when fresh but will darken with age, as do all brands. Older extracts can have a stronger flavor, often called an “extract tang,” and may produce a darker-colored beer. Seek suppliers who maintain fresh inventory, order by mail, or buy dry extract when in doubt, as it is much more shelf stable.
Powdered malt extract should flow freely. If it has clumped into a brick, it has been exposed to too much moisture, which degrades the quality. Liquid malt extract is harder to evaluate, especially if it is packaged in a bucket or can. Check for a “packed on” or “sell by” date on the package. Give obviously dusty, dented, or swollen packages a pass.
Whole-kernel barley malts fall into two main categories. The first is base malts, lightly kilned malts such as pale ale, pilsner, wheat malt, and Munich malt. These malts contain starches that need to be mashed to extract fermentable sugars from the grains. A few pounds of this type of malt can be mashed together with some specialty grains and combined with extract to produce full-strength beer (see chapter 3). This partial-mash method is fairly easy for new brewers and does not require much special equipment. Alternatively, beer can be brewed entirely with base malts and no added extract using the all-grain process covered in chapter 4. Specialty malts can be added to the all-grain malt bill as needed to create certain beer styles.
The other main category of malts is usually called specialty malts and includes crystal, caramel, and chocolate malts. These malts have had the grain starches converted to sugars right inside the grain kernel. They are heated to starch conversion temperatures while still wet from the germination phase of the malting process and before being dried in the kiln. Then the grains, which now contain fermentable sugars, are kilned at higher temperatures to create caramelization. The longer the caramelized grains are roasted, the darker and more complex are the flavors that develop. (See Kilning Specialty Malt for information on kilning your own specialty malts.)
For millennia humans have been making fermented beverages from grains they could gather or grow locally. Some historians even theorize that agriculture actually began because people were producing larger quantities of grain for drinking purposes. Each culture evolved a way of converting the starchy grain to fermentable sugar, in many cases by chewing the grain and spitting it out, letting the enzymes present in saliva break down the starch. Some traditional fermented recipes that are still being brewed today include chicha, the South American beer made primarily from corn; sake, made from rice in Japan; and Bantu or Kaffir beer made from millet or sorghum in Africa.
Some caramel or crystal malts are roasted to amber shades to produce light, sweet caramel color and flavor, while others are roasted to dark reddish brown colors with more intense burnt caramel, plum, and raisin flavors. These malts are often given a color rating in the Lovibond color scale ranging from 10°L to 140°L. Lovibond is an international standard of measure commonly used in the beer industry. Specialty malts can be roasted even longer to produce the dark chocolate or almost black color and chocolaty, roasted flavors desired for dark beers such as stouts. Specialty malts are often blended to achieve a complex mix of flavors, and exact quantities are used to develop the precise color of finished beer that the recipe designer is looking for. See chapter 6 for a simple guide to malting your own grain and chapter 9 for recipe creation tips.
Malt produced in different areas of the world can contribute different and unique properties to a beer. The term terroir, often heard in wine circles, describes the effect of climate, soil, and local water on the taste of the crops from a given area. This term can be rightly applied to a grain if it is grown in a single area and is not commingled with grain from other areas when it is processed into malt.
Now that small malt houses are reviving the craft of malting grains from distinctive regions, unlike large houses that blend the grains from many different regions for the sake of uniformity, the possibilities for distinctive regionally produced beers have grown significantly in recent years. Some homebrewers have taken this effect even further by growing and malting their own brewing grain (see chapter 6).
Just as the gourmet craft beer trend is fostering the start-up of small hop growers, a few grain producers are leaping into the challenging field of small-scale grain malting. For example, the Riverbend Malt House in North Carolina grows and malts varieties of grain that are still virtually unheard of in the brewing world: Thoroughbred Barley, Appalachian Wheat, and Carolina Rye.
Because commercial malting of barley has become very centralized, there are only a few producers of organic barley malt in North America. Unless you live near one, the chances are you will not be able to buy barley malt that has been grown and processed locally. The reality is that most barley growers have no hand in the malting process. They grow the barley to the specifications required by the malt house and ship the raw grain to the malt house, where it is malted, dried, and sometimes processed into extract.
The finished malt is then shipped to distribution points around the country. From the distributors the malt travels once again to breweries or homebrew shops. All of this travel adds up to a significant carbon footprint. However, the energy expended per glass of beer produced is much less than it would be to ship the finished beer, so by the simple act of making your own beer, you are doing something to help the environment. Cheers to that!
The most important factor when purchasing malt is to make sure it is fresh. Obviously, you do not want to use musty, stale, or damp malt, or grains that are crawling with bugs, but it does take some experience to tell fresh, high-quality ingredients from stale ones. Start by smelling every grain and hop that you use. At first you might not be able to detect the highest quality, but it is not too hard to smell when a grain is off.
Good-quality malt has a pleasant smell. Base malt grains smell malty, grassy, or biscuity when fresh, but more like stale crackers or cereal when they are not in great shape. Flaked grains such as oats and rye that have a high oil content develop a rancid odor as they age. Crystal and dark malts can transform from a malted candy, raisiny, or fresh-roasted coffee smell to one that is bitter and sour smelling. Taste a small amount of the grains, too (unless there are bugs crawling in it).
If your community supports a homebrew store, the shop probably turns its inventory over frequently enough to maintain fresh stocks of popular grains. This is not always the case with organic ingredients because the demand for organic is lower than for conventionally grown, primarily because of higher prices. When buying organic malt, ask to see a sample or buy a small quantity the first time to make sure the quality meets your expectations.
If your local homebrew shop doesn’t stock many organic ingredients or has a limited selection, it makes sense to divide your purchases between what you can obtain locally and what you can order by mail. You can save shipping costs by ordering 50-pound bags of base malt through your local shop, then ordering specialty grains and hops by mail. If you are an extract brewer, you may be able to special-order a 50-pound sack of dry malt extract or a 60-pound bucket of liquid malt extract. Since these make up the base of each batch of homebrew, you can expect to brew between five and ten 5-gallon batches of beer from each bulk bag or bucket.
Malt is quite shelf stable as long as it is stored properly. Whole-grain malt should be stored whole, and if possible crushed just before use. If you do not have a grain mill and buy your grain milled by the homebrew supplier, store it in airtight containers until use.
Whole grains and dry malt extract can be stored in a refrigerator as long as precautions are taken to prevent moist air from entering the packaging. Double-bag the product and remove excess air to avoid condensation. Dampness will offset the benefit of the cooler temperatures, because damp malt loses quality very rapidly. It is fine to store malt at temperatures of 50 to 70°F (10 to 21°C) instead of refrigerating, as long as the temperature does not regularly exceed 70°F.
Store grains in a clean dry area that is protected from rodent and insect pests. Grains can be stored in their original 50-pound sacks until opened and then transferred to buckets or bins with securely sealed lids. If your storage area is dry and ventilated, the bag tops can be rolled down and taped securely shut.
Liquid and dry malt extract store well for up to 2 years under the right conditions, but both varieties will slowly darken with age. Dry malt extract tends to cake up over time and can turn into a solid brick if exposed to moisture. Make sure it is in an absolutely airtight package and keep in a cool place or even a refrigerator. Liquid malt extract can develop some undesirable flavors as it ages, ranging from a mild effect, such as licorice or molasses, to more unpleasant wet-cardboard or sherrylike flavors. If you need to store it for longer than a few months, refrigerate liquid malt extract to extend the shelf life and maintain the best quality.
Any off-flavors imparted by old liquid extract are much more noticeable in lighter-bodied beers. As an eco-conscious brewer, you want to avoid throwing anything away, so recycling older ingredients into a dark, hoppy, or spicy beer is one solution. You can end up with a drinkable beer this way, but it is always best to buy ingredients that you will be able to use within a few months.
Hops are the flowers from the hop plant (Humulus lupulus), a climbing vine that grows quite prolifically in many parts of the world but does best between 35 and 55 degrees latitude, where most of the world’s commercial hop production is concentrated. Most hops produced for the brewing industry are processed into pellets, which preserves the quality and blends all of the hops in a given harvest to produce uniformity of alpha acids and aroma compounds. For large-scale commercial brewing, this consistency is invaluable.
Hops are available to the homebrewer in two main forms: whole and pelleted. Whole hops are simply the dried flowers. Often they are vacuum sealed or compressed into plugs to preserve freshness. Whole hops are sometimes inaccurately called leaf hops. Since the flower is the part used for beer making, the correct term is hop flowers or hop cones, which refers to the pinecone shape of the hop flower.
Whole hops
Hop pellets are simply hops that have been partially dried, then finely ground at low temperatures and compressed into small pellets, similar in appearance to rabbit food. Hop pellets are widely available, and often there is a larger selection of varieties. Although many eco-minded brewers instinctively prefer whole-flower hops, the pelleted form can often be of higher quality because the tight compression of the pellet better preserves the delicate hop oils.
Hop pellets
Hops are very aromatic when fresh, and though the aroma depends on the variety of hop, they should never smell dusty or cheesy. Most hops are bright green when fresh, although some pellets may have a dark exterior. To release the full aroma of hop pellets, crumble a few between your fingers to release the aromas trapped inside the dense pellets.
Because most hop buyers demand pelletized hops and hop-pelleting machinery is expensive and difficult to operate, there are only a few hop processors in North America, primarily located in the Pacific Northwest, where most modern hop cultivation takes place. However, hop shortages in 2008 and 2009 had an interesting effect: in response to the rising demand for organic hops, which most of the large established growers seemed to have little interest in filling, many small start-ups decided to cultivate organic hops to meet this new niche market (see Resources). Although organic hops are often more expensive, harder to find, and available in fewer varieties than conventionally grown hops, as demand rises, new varieties of organic hops find their way to market every year.
Short of growing your own hops, supporting growers who are practicing sustainable, organic agriculture is an excellent way to green up your brewing! Using creativity and the hop variety chart in chapter 9, you should be able to brew a wide variety of organic beers with hops that are grown reasonably close to home.
Once your hops are dried, they need to be properly packaged for storage. The longer you plan to store your hops, the better the packaging should be. The best storage conditions remove light, heat, and oxygen — all factors that speed deterioration. Over time, most hops lose alpha acid value and the aroma oils break down. As the hops oxidize, their fresh, clean aroma is lost, while stale, rancid, or even cheesy ones develop. Some varieties degrade faster than others — in general, higher-alpha hops have more natural antioxidants and retain alpha acid levels and freshness longer, while the low-alpha-aroma hops are more delicate and require the most careful storage.
There are several ways to avoid exposure to damaging elements including vacuum sealing, freezing, compressing, and using specially designed packaging. One easy and inexpensive method is to compress as many hops as you possibly can into mason jars or other airtight glass containers and freeze them. This method has a few drawbacks, however: it requires significant freezer space; there is the danger of broken glass; less oxygen is removed than with vacuum sealing; and if you remove some of the hops and store a partially emptied jar, more air is introduced. However, glass is more airtight than most plastic and is infinitely reusable.
I prefer to use the zippered foil pouches that are widely available online. For a small investment you can purchase enough of these bags to meet your hop storage needs for many years. These heavy-duty bags can be washed and reused many times, and they can be used without a vacuum sealer: simply stuff full of hops, seal the zipper almost all the way, then press flat to push out excess air before sealing completely. To prevent the bags from tearing during their life in your freezer, keep them in a heavy paper bag or other protective wrapper. If you have a vacuum sealer, it might be possible to use it with these bags, depending on the model of sealer you have.
Without yeast, beer would not be beer. Yeast is a type of fungus that consumes simple sugars such as glucose and maltose and excretes alcohol, carbon dioxide, and other gases. Brewer’s yeast is quite different from bread yeast, and you will want to use a good-quality version if you care about the flavor of your homebrew. Unless you want to make a singularly bad-tasting batch of beer, you should never use bread yeast to brew beer.
There are two main types of brewer’s yeast, ale and lager. Ale yeast thrives at room temperature, and most ale yeast performs best between 60 and 70°F (16 and 21°C). Lager yeast thrives best at much cooler temperatures, usually ranging between 40 and 50°F (4 and 10°C). Brewer’s yeast is commonly available in both dry and liquid form.
Dry yeast is a powder or granular form of dehydrated yeast that looks like baking yeast. Dry yeast survives shipping over long distances better than liquid and if refrigerated has a shelf life of several years, but the variety available to brewers is limited compared to the selection of liquid yeast.
Yeast in liquid form is in its natural living state. Liquid yeast is usually available to homebrewers as a pure culture packaged in a foil pouch or plastic vial. Brewers in North America, parts of Europe, and a few other lucky places have access to dozens of liquid yeast strains through homebrew retailers. Liquid yeast has a limited shelf life of 3 to 6 months but can often be revived after 6 to 18 months by making a starter culture. Liquid yeast absolutely must be stored under refrigeration, which adds a slight energy-cost premium. Because of its high perishability and more complex packaging, liquid yeast is typically three times more expensive than dry yeast.
Liquid and dry yeast
If you live near a smaller-scale craft brewery, you might be able to obtain liquid yeast directly from it. Most such breweries have a surplus of yeast, and most brewers are receptive to sharing with homebrewers. Brewers have busy schedules, so contact the company to arrange a time, and have your container ready when you pick up the yeast. If you show up unannounced without a sanitized container, you should not be surprised if you are turned away. Mason jars, pub growlers, or Erlenmeyer flasks all make good transport containers for liquid yeast. Store the yeast in the refrigerator in a well-sealed container until use. If the yeast is more than a few weeks old, you should revive it with a starter (see Making a Yeast Starter).
The cost of liquid yeast can be ameliorated somewhat by culturing it and making starters. Yeast can also be propagated and stored for future use, or harvested from beer bottles from commercial breweries that bottle-condition their beer or pasteurize it. Yeast culturing and harvesting goes beyond the scope of this book, but if you love science-geeky brew stuff, there are some excellent online tutorials.
When it comes to enhancing a beer’s flavor by adding herbs, spices, and other flavors, the possibilities are almost endless. Culinary spices, fresh or dried herbs, freshly grated citrus peel, chocolate, vanilla, and coffee add great flavor to select beer styles. Organic spices and flavors are widely available, although some of the more unusual flavors may be harder to find. Things like mugwort and heather that have long been used in traditional beer recipes are hard to pick up, even at the local health food store (see Resources).
Most beer recipes calling for herbs, spices, or other flavors use a small amount, and just as when brewing with hops, it is important to be careful about weights. Many flavors can easily overpower a beer — sometimes the difference between a great beer with wonderful aroma and flavor nuances and one that makes you cringe could be as little as a few grams too much of a given spice.
As with other ingredients, you want these additives to be organically grown and minimally processed whenever possible. Luckily there is a great selection of high-quality organic herbs and spices available to homebrewers — check farmers’ markets and health food stores or grow your own! The quality and depth of flavor of the organic version is typically far superior to the conventionally grown counterpart.
As of this writing organic beer yeast is not commercially available, though there is real interest in making organic yeast strains available to craft and homebrewers, and I fervently hope it will happen soon. Meanwhile, we are not going to worry too much about it, because once you understand how yeast works, you’ll realize that if you feed the yeast organic food the yeast itself becomes organic. In fact, commercial organic beers are produced with the same yeast as nonorganic beers, within strict guidelines, of course.
If you follow best practices, you will be in the habit of making a yeast starter for each batch using organic malt. When the starter is pitched (added) into an organic beer, the vast majority of yeast cells will pretty much be organic by the time they finish fermenting. When the beer is finished, most of the yeast cells go dormant and sink to the bottom of the fermenter, leaving very little residue. So by the time you pop the cap of that beer made with “nonorganic” yeast, you are looking at a faint trace of nonorganic material, if any, in the finished beer.
One environmental concern, however, is that the manufacture of dry yeast does create some hazardous by-products that can have a detrimental effect on the environment if the waste is not treated properly. Production of dry yeast releases a significant amount of acetaldehyde, which is considered a hazardous air pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions are also a concern, and most yeast manufacturing plants do not have wastewater treatment sufficient to handle the volume of waste produced. This is more of a concern in the production of dry yeast for the baking industry than it is for the brewing industry, because the scale of baking production is much higher and some of the aging production facilities in the United States currently lack state-of-the-art pollution controls.
Yeast degenerates most rapidly at room temperature, and overly high temperatures can kill yeast. Thus, it is best to store yeast in a refrigerator except when it is actively growing (as in a starter or in your fermenter). Dehydrated or freeze-dried yeast may be stored in the freezer with very little detriment. Liquid yeast should not be stored in a freezer unless it is suspended in a glycerin solution. This is an advanced procedure, usually not necessary unless you want to preserve a specific strain of yeast for a long time.
Water is an often overlooked ingredient, yet it accounts for at least 90 percent of the weight and volume of beer and often exceeds 95 percent of the total. A simple guideline when it comes to brewing is this: if you think your tap water is good enough to drink, it is probably sufficient for brewing most basic beers. Mineral content of the water is a consideration, but the extract used in beginner recipes usually has enough minerals to provide the foundation for a good beer. For a deeper discussion of water chemistry, see Looking at Water Chemistry.
If you use tap water for your beer, you should filter it to remove the added chlorine. A basic charcoal filter is sufficient to remove chlorine and any heavy metals or other toxic compounds while leaving most of the beneficial minerals in the water. Unless you are concerned about possible toxins or contaminants in the water, it is not necessary to filter water for cleaning or chilling. If you are very lucky, you have a well or a local spring provides your brewing water! I advise against using distilled water as it doesn’t have the mineral profile necessary to make good beer (see Use Local Brewing Water). See chapter 4 for more information about the mineral content of water used for brewing.
The most sustainable approach is to use your own tap water and filter it. A basic activated carbon water filter should be all you need. It works with simple water pressure, retains beneficial minerals, and does not waste water. Sometimes you can find a local spring to collect water from.
Some homebrewers brew most of their beers with distilled or reverse osmosis– filtered water, then add minerals to adjust the water mineral profile to exact specifications. Although this is a very scientific approach, it is costly — both to the environment and to the wallet. Making distilled water uses a lot of energy, and the last time I checked, it was selling for three dollars a gallon at the local supermarket. Mining, processing, packaging, and shipping mineral additives also requires energy and resources. From an eco-brewing standpoint it does not make much sense to remove minerals from water, then put more minerals back in.
If your style of brewing calls for a low mineral profile, you can build a solar still, plans for which can be found in many good survival guides or online. When Technology Fails by Matthew Stein includes plans for a basic one you can make with a sheet of plastic, a few rocks, a container, and a hole in the ground.
Another option is to buy water in bulk from the filtered water–dispensing machines found at many grocery stores (try Whole Foods) that allow you to use your own containers. Many of these machines do have an option to dispense reverse osmosis (RO)–filtered water, which is probably a cheaper and more sustainable option than buying distilled water in plastic jugs. The most important thing is to avoid buying bottled water.
If your house is equipped with a reverse osmosis system, you’re not really ahead of the game. Most household RO water filters discharge between 4 and 18 gallons of wastewater for every gallon of purified water produced, and some systems use electric power as well. If water conservation is a part of your eco-brewing regime, using RO–filtered water is a bit counterproductive.
In modern brewer’s lingo adjuncts are unmalted grains used in beer recipes to add flavor or other characteristics not found in base malt or specialty grains. Buckwheat, corn, millet, oats, quinoa, rice, rye, sorghum, unmalted barley, and wheat are all adjunct grains that can be used to make beer. Some large commercial brewers add adjuncts such as corn or rice to cut costs and to make the beer lighter in color or flavor.
Most homebrewers use adjuncts to add texture, such as the silky mouthfeel that oats can add, or unique flavors, such as the crisp, dry, slightly sour flavor from rye. Flaked grains are the easiest form of adjunct grains to use, as they can be added directly to the mash. Whole grains such as rice or corn should be cooked and ground up before adding, as they are too tough to be broken down into fermentable sugars without this extra step.
Almost any grain can be added to the mash and the starches in the grains will be broken down into fermentable sugars as long as there are enough enzymes present in the base malts to break them down. If you are using a good-quality base malt such as a pale ale malt or a pilsner malt, it is possible to use up to two-thirds adjunct to one-third base malt. This is a useful capability when brewing partial mash recipes with a large portion of adjunct grains.
Organic adjunct grains are readily available, and here is where the bulk bin department of a well-stocked health food store is an organic brewer’s best friend. The prices are usually reasonable, and you can buy exactly the amount you need. It is always a good idea to check for freshness, especially when buying in bulk. Although the reduced packaging is great for the environment, bulk bins allow more rapid oxidation, so the natural oils in the grains could cause them to turn rancid if the stock is not turned over regularly. If your local stores do not stock organic grains, see Resources.
A myriad of other sugar sources can be put to good use as brewing ingredients. Corn sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar, and honey are the ones used most often. Maple syrup, agave syrup, palm sugar, and molasses can also contribute fermentable sugar, as well as a unique flavor profile. Many of these sugars are available in organic form in health food stores or by mail order. These sugars are usually used in conjunction with barley malt to add flavor or other characteristics. They can be used on their own to make fermented beverages — these are gluten-free but do not usually closely resemble beer!
Corn sugar creates a fine bubble, is neutral in flavor, and is highly fermentable, leaving little sediment in the bottle. Corn sugar is often called dextrose, although dextrose can be made from ingredients other than corn. Dextrose is almost 100 percent glucose, which is nearly 100 percent fermentable by yeast. Organic dextrose made from corn or from tapioca is available from Internet retailers that sell organic brewing supplies.
Beet sugar is commonly used to make candi sugar syrup, an ingredient in many popular Belgian styles. Organic beet sugar is not readily available, although several sources of conventional (nonorganic) beet sugar exist for the household market. Candi sugar can be easily made from organic cane sugar, which is widely available (see Making Organic Candi Syrup for directions).
Honey is widely used in brewing, both as a fermentable sugar and as the base for mead, an ancient wine made entirely from honey. Honey is 95 percent fermentable. It should be pasteurized before adding to beer, as it contains wild yeast, bacteria, and enzymes that could interfere with the fermentation of lower-alcohol beers.
In recent years bee populations have been dropping dramatically, which is an alarming development because pollination by bees is essential to the future of sustainable agriculture and the stability of our ecosystem. The recent decline in bee populations has been linked to heavy agricultural pesticide use. You can help reverse this problem by buying honey that is locally produced and organically farmed if possible.
Although the idea of organic honey may seem somewhat problematic since foraging bees can fly anywhere, it may be labeled as such if the hives are located on certified land and are not within two miles of a sanitary landfill, incinerator, power plant, golf course, town or city; or of any crops sprayed with prohibited substances or genetically modified crops; or other sources of contamination. This is better for the bees, and the honey is better for your brew!
Fruit has been used in beer recipes for a very long time. Lambics are the oldest and perhaps the most well-known styles that use fruit to produce exceptional beers. Brewing with fruit can be a little tricky — it is best not to boil it, as this can cause the natural pectins to develop and gelatinize, which lead to cloudiness. Pasteurization is a good idea to kill unwanted bacteria.
Buying fresh fruit for your homebrew is where you can truly shop local and add to your organic brewing ingredients list. Farmers’ markets, farm stands, and even the produce sections of some large grocery stores are great places to obtain fruit for brewing. When it comes to buying organic fruit, most of us have a variety of options close to home, and choosing organic fruit is a wise move, since many commercial fruit crops are heavily sprayed. The potential for chemical residues reaching harmful levels on sprayed fruit is amplified when you start using the large quantities of fruit that some beer recipes call for. A handful of berries seems harmless enough, but any chemical residues are multiplied with 5 pounds of them. See chapter 6 for a more thorough discussion of adding fruit to beer.
I would be remiss in my discussion of organic sugar if I did not bring up the issue of genetically modified organisms, commonly referred to as GMOs. The industry that promotes genetic engineering of food crops uses the argument that GMOs produce higher yields and will thus solve the world’s food shortage problems. This is a laudable theory, but it has yet to be fully backed up in practice, with little real evidence that GMO crops are indeed producing higher yields or lower food production costs in any meaningful way.
The problems associated with GMO crops include a heightened reliance on pesticides and herbicides, which increases contamination of cropland and water supplies. Over 75 percent of GMO crops in production today are engineered to have increased tolerance to being sprayed with herbicide. GMOs can also create unexpected toxins or allergens in genetically modified food crops. The full extent of the potential health effects of consuming GMOs has not been fully studied, but these crops are steadily being released into the general food supply anyway.
Companies that sell food products containing GMOs in the United States are not required to disclose the presence of GMOs on the label, even though the same foods must contain GMO information on the label when exported to about 50 other countries. Some states have put forth ballot initiatives to require labeling of GMOs, but thus far such initiatives have been defeated by the companies that stand to gain the most profit by keeping consumers uninformed.
At the moment the only way to be completely sure the food products you consume are free from GMOs is to buy organic or to buy conventional single-ingredient foods that are known to be GMO-free. A number of consumer guides are available to help those of us concerned about avoiding GMOs (see Resources). However, much of the corn and sugar beet crop in the United States has been converted to GMO crops. Because of poor labeling laws and the industry-wide practice of shipping crops to a central facility for processing, GMO crops are mixed with non-GMO crops, so most sugars cannot be guaranteed to be GMO-free by the manufacturer.
It is always a great idea to check in with your local homebrew retailer if you have one. A homebrew retailer is a great asset to any community that has a strong interest in homebrewing. These shops serve as a hub of homebrewing activities and often sponsor events or contests. Many shops offer low-cost or free classes taught by avid homebrewers. You may be able to find locally grown hops and other ingredients at your retailer; if not, the staff will know about growers in the area and may have a bulletin board where local sellers can advertise. They may also stock a few organic ingredients and might be willing to special-order others for you.
Ordering through the local shop supports your own homebrewing community, and it may save you money on shipping costs. Even if you cannot buy organic ingredients at your local shop, it will stock all the basic homebrewing essentials, from yeast to glass carboys, so I encourage you to shop locally for such needed supplies.
Another good source for ingredients such as flaked grains, honey, agave syrup, and rice syrup is your local health food store or the natural foods section of some large supermarkets. A farmers’ market is a great resource for fresh fruit, herbs, honey, or brewing-friendly produce such as pumpkins, especially if you are seeking large quantities. Often you can get a bulk price on such things as honey or fruit when you buy directly from the farmer. It certainly never hurts to ask!
For the best honey flavor and fermenting performance, add honey to the secondary fermenter after pasteurizing: Heat the honey to 180°F (82°C) and hold at that temperature for at least 20 minutes; then cool to room temperature, and add to the fermenter.