One of the frustrating things about Pennsylvania is that it’s nearly impossible to sample a new beer outside of a bar without buying a whole case (stupid beer laws, don’t get me started). One of the things that I love about vacationing in Maine is that you can pop into local stores and buy just one or two beers – a nice option when you’re in the mood to try something new.

A few years ago, I was itching to try some of the organic brews hitting the market. Chris was a bit skeptical. And we didn’t want to end up with a case of something we’d hate – so it was nice to have the option of picking up just a couple of different bottles while on vacation. Some of those that we sampled – especially the Samuel Smith organics – have become favorites. It was incredibly hard to local them outside of the smaller beer specialty stores until the last few years when they hit the mainstream markets.

Organic beer sales are actually skyrocketing, according to the Organic Trade Association, with sales more than doubling from 2003 to 2005, even while beer sales overall fell slight.

Larger breweries are taking notice. The now Belgian owned Anheuser-Busch produces organic brews – a sign that organic is perhaps more than a trend. Two of the first organic products to hit the market from A-B did not even flout the Budweiser name. Wild Hop is brewed at the A-B brewery in Fairfield, California, and Stone Mill is brewed at the Red Hook brewery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

While larger breweries are making an impression in the organic market, it’s the smaller breweries who are leading the way. In 1999, California-based Eel River Brewing Company became America’s first certified organic brewery (as an aside, nearly ten years later, the brewery became the nation’s first biomass powered brewery).

Other popular organic brews include Wolavers, Peak and, as mentioned earlier, Samuel Smith (all Samuel Smith beers are also vegan).

So what makes a beer organic? It’s made the same as regular beer, but under USDA standards, to be labeled “organic”, at least 95% of the ingredients must be produced and grown without the use of chemicals and pesticides.

No junk in your beer? Always sounds good to me!

Do you have a favorite organic brew? Tell us your favorite by clicking here. You can win some cool beer merch!

(c) Brew Ha-Ha, 2008

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