Brewing with a Conscience
There are plenty of ways to make beer. There are fewer ways to make beer that you can genuinely feel good about — from the soil the ingredients were grown in, to the glass in your hand. Organic brewing is one of those ways. It costs more, takes more effort, and demands a level of commitment that most breweries aren’t willing to make. We think it’s worth every bit of it.
This page is dedicated to everything that goes into brewing organically — what it means, why it matters, and what it produces in the glass.
What Does “Certified Organic” Actually Mean?
The word “organic” gets used loosely in the food and beverage world. In the context of brewing, a genuine organic certification means something specific and verifiable.
To be certified organic, a brewery must use ingredients — malt, hops, yeast nutrients, adjuncts — that are grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. The farming practices must be certified by a recognized authority. In the United States, that means USDA certification and, for breweries operating in California, certification through the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) — one of the oldest and most rigorous organic certification bodies in the country.
The FDA also maintains its own standards for organic food and beverage production. Meeting both the CCOF and FDA standards simultaneously is a genuine achievement, and one that requires ongoing audits, documentation, and supply chain discipline.
Organic certification is not a one-time label. It is an annual commitment, re-earned every year through verified practices at every stage of production.
Why Organic Brewing Matters
The case for organic brewing is rooted in something simple: agriculture has consequences.
Conventional hop farming and barley growing rely heavily on synthetic chemicals — pesticides, fungicides, herbicides — that affect not just the crop but the surrounding soil, waterways, and the people who work the land. The long-term costs of industrial agriculture are increasingly difficult to ignore.
Organic farming takes a different approach. By relying on natural inputs, crop rotation, composting, and biological pest management, organic farmers work with their ecosystems rather than against them. The soil stays healthier. The water table stays cleaner. The land remains productive for future generations.
For a brewery, choosing organic ingredients is a declaration that the beer it produces is connected to something larger than the pint glass. It is a bet on a farming system that can last.
There is also the matter of flavor. Organic hops, grown in healthy soil without synthetic intervention, can express a depth and complexity that conventionally grown hops sometimes cannot. The same is true of organic malt. When ingredients come from well-tended land, they tend to taste like it.
The Challenges of Brewing Organic
It would be dishonest to present organic brewing as simple. It is not.
Ingredient availability is the first challenge. The organic hop farming industry, while growing, remains far smaller than conventional hop production. Many of the most exciting new hop varieties developed for the craft beer market are not yet available in certified organic form. Organic brewers often have to work closely with hop farmers to track experimental organic varietals — sometimes years before they are commercially released — in order to incorporate them into new recipes.
Cost is the second challenge. Organic malt and hops carry a significant price premium over their conventional equivalents. For a brewery that distributes widely, that cost is difficult to absorb across the supply chain. For a brewpub that sells directly to the drinker, it is more manageable — but it still represents a genuine financial commitment.
Supply consistency is the third challenge. Organic agriculture is more susceptible to seasonal variation than conventional farming. A bad growing season for organic hops is a bad growing season — there is no synthetic intervention available to compensate. Organic brewers learn to plan around variability, build relationships with multiple growers, and occasionally adapt recipes to work with what is available.
None of these challenges change the calculus. They simply mean that organic brewing requires more intentionality, more planning, and more genuine commitment than the alternative.
Small Batch, On-Draught, and Only Here
One of the defining features of serious organic brewery operations is the decision to remain small. Mass production and organic certification are not impossible to combine, but they pull in opposite directions. Scale requires standardization. Organic brewing, at its best, rewards responsiveness — to the season, to the available ingredients, to what the brewmaster finds interesting.
Small-batch brewing means every batch gets full attention. It means the brewer can experiment — exploring a new organic hop variety, trialing a different malt combination, aging a batch in barrels — without the entire operation depending on the outcome. It means the beer that ends up in the glass is the result of genuine craft rather than industrial process optimization.
Serving beer exclusively on draught, directly at the source, adds another dimension. Draft beer consumed close to where it was brewed is beer at its best. No pasteurization for shelf stability. No degradation from transportation and storage. No compromise between what the brewer intended and what the drinker receives.
The Beer Styles of an Organic Brewery
Organic brewing doesn’t favor any particular style. The philosophy is about ingredients and process, not about what ends up in the fermenter. That said, certain styles have a natural affinity with the organic approach:
- Pilsners and Lagers — Perhaps the most demanding test of an organic brewer’s skill. Lager styles offer nowhere to hide — the quality of the malt, the precision of the fermentation, and the purity of the water are immediately apparent. A great organic pilsner is a statement of brewing confidence.
- IPAs and Pale Ales — Hop-forward styles benefit enormously from high-quality organic hops. When the hops are grown well, the aromatic payoff in the finished beer is extraordinary.
- Belgian-Inspired Ales — Styles where yeast character drives flavor complexity. Organic malt provides a clean, expressive base for the yeast to work with.
- Cask-Conditioned Ales — Traditional British-style cask beer, undergoing secondary fermentation in the vessel it is served from. Organic ingredients in a cask-conditioned ale produce a depth of flavor and a natural carbonation that is genuinely unlike anything else.
- Barrel-Aged Beers — Organic base beers aged in spirit, wine, or other barrels develop complexity that rewards patience. The interaction between organic malt character and barrel influence can produce exceptional results.
- Session Beers — Lower-alcohol beers designed for drinking at length. When the ingredients are organic, a session beer becomes something worth paying attention to rather than simply consuming.
- Sours and Wild-Fermented Ales — Beers fermented with wild yeast and bacteria. The natural microbial complexity of organic farming environments has a natural kinship with wild fermentation.
Organic Brewing and the Green Business Standard
Organic certification addresses what goes into the beer. A Green Business certification addresses everything else — energy use, water consumption, waste management, and the broader environmental footprint of running a brewery.
The two certifications are complementary. Brewing organically and operating sustainably are both expressions of the same underlying commitment: to run a business that takes its impact on the world seriously.
In practice, that means things like composting spent grain rather than landfilling it, recycling cooking oil into biodiesel, using energy-efficient equipment throughout the brewery and kitchen, conserving water in both the brewing process and the restaurant, and choosing recyclable and compostable packaging and serviceware.
These are not marketing decisions. They are operational ones, made at real cost, because they are the right thing to do.
The Ingredients Behind the Beer
- Organic Malt: Malted barley is the backbone of nearly every beer. Organic malt comes from barley grown without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, malted and kilned to the same standards as conventional malt but with a certified organic supply chain. The range of organic malt available to brewers has expanded significantly over the past two decades, from basic pale malt to specialty crystal, roasted, and smoked varieties.
- Organic Hops: Hops are the ingredient that most defines the flavor and aroma identity of modern craft beer. Organic hop farming is concentrated primarily in the Pacific Northwest — Oregon and Washington — where the climate and soil conditions are ideal. West Coast organic hop farms have developed organic versions of many sought-after varieties, and experimental organic breeding programs continue to expand what is available to organic brewers.
- Water: Water makes up the vast majority of every beer. Its mineral content — the levels of calcium, magnesium, sulfate, chloride, and bicarbonate — profoundly affects how the finished beer tastes. Many breweries adjust their water chemistry to match the profile of a particular style’s historical home. Water itself is not subject to organic certification, but how a brewery manages and conserves water is part of a genuine sustainability commitment.
- Yeast: Yeast drives fermentation and shapes flavor in ways that no other ingredient can replicate. While yeast is not typically subject to organic certification requirements, organic brewers pay close attention to yeast health and vitality — propagating their own strains, maintaining rigorous pitching practices, and in some cases working with wild or mixed-fermentation cultures that reflect the natural microbial environment of the brewery.
A Commitment Worth Making
Organic brewing is not a trend. It is not a marketing strategy. It is a decision to operate a brewery in a way that is accountable to something beyond the bottom line — to the farmers who grow the ingredients, to the communities that surround the operation, and to the long-term health of the agricultural systems that make great beer possible.
The beer that results from that commitment is better for it. And the experience of drinking it — knowing where it came from, how it was made, and what values went into producing it — adds a dimension to enjoyment that no conventional beer can offer.