Organic Beer Goes Mainstream

Organic food and 'natural' products are all the rage now a days. As mentioned on this blog before, organic is almost always better than 'conventional' for a whole number of reasons. One of the original selling points about organic was that it was only being produced by small, local, independent people and businesses. Recently however, big business has gotten onto the organic bandwagon as they realize their is money to be made.

The same thing applies to beer. Until recently, organic beer was only available from small, local breweries across the US. Not anymore however. Budweiser now sells organic beer. As discussed in this article, organic beer has now gone mainstream (thanks to my friend P for sending this to me a couple months ago.)

Of course, 'Organic Bud' is not sold under such a name, it is sold under the Green Valley Brewing company label, with the beer name of Wild Hop Organic.

Is this a bad thing? Well, yes and no. It is a good thing in that organic ingredients are vastly superior for the environement, people's health, soil quality, etc. over conventionally grown crops. Having a beer giant like Anheuser Busch push the product into the mainstream may force more crops to be grown organically, which is a good thing.

However, like a lot of things that have started locally with a good cause by people actually dedicated to the movement, having big business jump on the organic bandwagon will probably water the cause down and change it for the negative. One of the original positive aspects of organic farming was the fact that only small, local farmers would grow food organically. By buying organic food you therefore would almost always be supporting small, local farmers and/or independent businesses. Is it likely that the organic food that Wal-mart now sells is from local, small farmers and businesses? Not likely. Like almost all big business they will look to buy from the cheapest sources possible. The same thing will most likely happen with organic beer. Instead of trying to buy locally like most of the small independent breweries try to do, 'Organic Bud' will most likely be made with the cheapest organic ingredients possible, whether that's local or from farmers halfway around the world.

Because big business exerts so much political power, they can change national food policy pretty easily. This has happened with organic food labelling. Food no longer has to be 100% organic to be labelled organic. If food is 100% organic it can be labelled '100% organic'. If it is 95% organic it can be labelled 'organic'. If it is 70% organic it can be labelled 'Made with organic ingredients'. Personally, I think that is a bit deceptive. Because big companies like Walmart or Anheuser Busch are so powerful, they can lobby to drop these percentages even lower, exempt certain ingredients, or change what the definition of organic is (maybe they'll push GMO food to be labelled organic? That would be scary).

I actually bought Wild Hop Beer a few months ago before learning it was 'Organic Bud'. I actually noticed when I bought the beer that the design on the six-pack bottles and packaging were pretty cheesy looking. When I drank it I was wholly unimpressed to say the least. At the time I'm not sure I thought it tasted like Budweiser, but I at least definitely remember it not having much taste. Now that I know it is by AB, I can taste the similarities. The website at least mentions it is part of AB. If it didn't say that, there are hints otherwise that it is not a small independent brewer. The biggest hint is they rather prominently advertise the beer as only having 150 calories, which most craft breweries do not mention, or if they do, not prominently. Most craft brewers brew their beer for taste, not calories which AB obviously focused on for this beer. After finding out this crappy organic beer I bought was 'Organic Bud' I had a Seinfeld moment. To quote Estelle Costanza on Seinfeld, "I was duped!"

To sum up, is organic beer going big time a good thing? As discussed, yes and no. If the big companies can keep organic pure and with its roots sourcing locally with fair prices, not trying to squeeze out small farmers who actually care about the product, and not just caring about profits then it is probably a great thing. If history is any lesson however, this will probably not happen.