Organic Advantage: A Beer-Taster's Choice

Chris, a student of good beer, sipped his Cavedale Ale and smiled: "Fresh, good character. Finishes nicely." It was his first organic beer, but it probably won't be his last. Although organic brews are only just beginning to make a mark in the U.S., they already have one decided advantage: taste.

Taste drives the quality beer market these days. Already, droves of American beer fans have deserted the multinational brands--those yellow fizzy flavored waters advertised by talking bullfrogs and bathing beauties on jetskis--for microbreweries and their flavorful and distinctive ales, porters and stouts. With the addition of organic ingredients, and the rich yet subtle flavors they bring to brews, the taste advantage can be overwhelming.

Joan, also a connoisseur, tackled the Paradise Ale. "A bright little brew, isn't it? Not overly aggressive. Fluffy."

What goes into a beer determines the taste that comes out. "Conventional brewers add sugars and use rice instead of malt to make a cheaper beer," says Russell Sharp, owner of Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh, Scotland, which makes Golden Promise. Malt (barley that has been roasted and allowed to ferment) makes for a more robust flavor, and the alcohol that naturally results from its fermentation lacks the harsh chemical aftertaste of the sugar-boosted mass-market beers. Hops, the flowers of an herbaceous vine which give beer its distinctive accents, are as crucial. "The big boys use hop pellets; we use dried hop flowers," Sharp says. "It's like instant coffee and real coffee."

These are large differences even without considering the effect of using organic barley and hops. "Hops are very susceptible to fungus and the non-organic growers use a lot of fungicide," explains Chris Bell, president of International Marketing of Lake Worth, Florida, which sources for organic brewers. Bell helped Mark Butler get America's first organic beer, Perry's Majestic, out to market in 1993. "The reason I wanted to develop an organic beer," Butler says, "was not because of the environment, and not because organic was politically correct--but for the quality. I knew organic would make for tough, brawling beer, manly beer." (He adds that he got the idea from eating his wife's organic tomatoes.)

Of course, beer being over 90 percent water, the source is also an object of pride. Peter Humes of Humes Brewery in Cavedale, California--maker of the aforementioned Cavedale Ale, as well as a delicious Jaipur Pale Ale and a Thomas Hardy-esque Old Hophead Barleywine Ale--boasts of water filtered from a mountain spring. Caledonian's water comes from a well 400 feet deep in Edinburgh bedrock.

Flavor and finish highlighted our tasting's last entries: the Perry's Majestic and Pinkus Müller, a German import, were superior lagers on all fronts, while the Foret, a Belgian saison beer, had the distinctive cheddary sharpness I remembered from my home brew days. The verdict: organic beer is here to stay.