Beer that’s good for you

Ok, maybe that’s a bit much said, but let’s face it, many cultures throughout history have considered beer to be a healthy product. Since many people today equate healthy food with organic, it’s nice to know there are a few organic beers out there to enjoy.

As I write this, I’m enjoying Wolaver’s Brown Ale, an organic ale from Vermont. It’s tasty, even if it decided for some reason to explode all over my kitchen floor. Never much for describing the nose and the taste of a beer, it’s particularly difficult when the nose is accompanied by the smell of the bleach-containing product I used to clean it up.

In any case, organic beers seems to have become a mini-rage in the subculture of microbrews, at least according to some observers. There’s even an organization for organic brewers, and they have enough members to at least try to hold a festival. In addition to the ubiquitous Samuel Smith, there’s another organic beer I’ve enjoyed over the years, St. Peters. St Peters is a UK-based beer definitely worth purchasing, in cool bottles which look like something out of the the US colonial era. Now I know why, at least according to this excerpt from the website:

Our Bottle is a 500ml copy of one from Gibbstown, near Philadelphia which dates from c. 1770. It was produced for Thomas Gerrard, an innkeeper with a tidewater inn on the Delaware River.

Huh, so a Suffolk brewer is using a bottle from Philadelphia, where I’m writing this post – another reason to like them, although it’s a little odd given that any bottle from the colonial US should have a precursor from the UK. Anyway, now that I’ve seen the brewery pub, pictured above, I’m thinking I’ll have to grace them with my presence one of these days, although apparently tours have been discontinued. It’s rarely difficult to persuade my wife that we need to go to the UK.

In any case, try an organic beer next time you see them, I think you’ll enjoy it. Just open it over the sink.