Drink organic
At the Organic Beer Bash, suds with a social conscience
Tonia Guffey, mixologist of Counter
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The organic food movement has expanded well beyond its base among college activists and fair-traders and into the kitchens of average America. With nearly a decade of double-digit sales growth, organic producers are convincing an increasingly large swath of consumers that eating livestock and vegetation farmed with fewer chemical additives isn't just healthier or more ecologically responsible, it's also delicious.
Take, for example, the most delicious of vegetables: beer. Made less by the industry of men than through the digestive labors of microbial fungus, beer is, in a way, as organic as it gets. But before magical yeasts do their thing, beer is nothing but a starchy soup of malted barley and hops--and the quality of that barley and hops matters.
This was the guiding principle behind the second annual "Organic Beer Bash," a kind of Oktoberfest for the socially conscious hosted at the East Village vegetarian bistro Counter.
A longtime vendor of organic goods at the Union Square Greenmarket, Counter impresario Deborah Gavito launched the Beer Bash as a way to focus attention on the worldwide network of artisanal brewers using organic methods to create libations with a conscience. On offer at this year's event were samples of more than 40 ales, lagers, ciders, and meads. Here are some highlights:
Peak Espresso Amber Ale
(Peak Organic Brewing Company; Portland, Maine)
Brewed from a base of toasty Munich malts and spiked with a heavy dose of fair trade espresso beans, this is built as an amber ale but has a richer, stouter (pun intended) flavor profile. The coffee beans hammer the nose, but not the palate. It would be good for a morning tipple, and at 7.3 percent alcohol by volume, an especially boozy morning tipple at that.
Lakefront ESB
(Lakefront Brewery; Milwaukee, Wisc.)
This impressively balanced and very satisfying British-style bitter out of Milwaukee is caramel-colored and sharp on the tooth. A fellow sampler remarked that the ESB tastes like cheese, in a good way. She wasn't wrong. This isn't what made Milwaukee famous, but it ought to have been.
Doc's Draft Hard Pear Cider
(Warwick Valley Winery & Distillery; Warwick, N.Y.)
Made from a blend of apples and pears (Bartlett and Bosc pears, for those keeping score at home) from New York State, this is a pale, quite dry cider fermented with champagne yeast. The result is clean, crisp, fizzy, and refreshing--thanks mostly to pears that demarcate themselves nicely and lend a tongue-smacking tartness to the affair.
Jubilate Dark Lager
(Pinkus Müller; Münster, Germany)
Made with richer malts more commonly associated with ales, slim-bodied dark lagers offer a juxtaposition that American beer-drinkers would likely go crazy over, if only there were more of them around. This one from Pinkus Müller, the oldest continuously running brewery in Münster, is a doozie: a 7.3 percent alcohol powerhouse of Munich malt delivered with a slight mouth feel and a nose of delicate, vaguely fruity Hallertau hops.
Triple Exultation
(Eel River Brewing; Fortuna, Calif.)
A dark amber "old ale" like those you'd find emanating from the crustiest old casks in England, this is a sweet, super-hoppy, and ancient-tasting beer, and the booziest the bash had on offer. Eel River, America's first organic brewery, calls it "the Ozzy Osbourne of Old Ales." If by that they mean that both Ozzy and Triple Exultation are 9.7 percent alcohol by volume, they're certainly right.
Foret Saison Ale
(Brasserie Dupont; Hainaut, Belgium)
Only a handful of breweries along Belgium's border with France turn out traditional saisons: unfiltered, low-alcohol pale ales that were used back in the day to hydrate farmhands throughout the harvest season. Brasserie Dupont, with its legendary house yeast, makes some of the best. Cloudy, almost green, heavy with spice and citrus notes, and bound up in Goldings hops, the Foret is the organic cousin of the classic Dupont Saison, which is always at least in the running for the best beer in the world. Ah, but could an un-organic cousin be said to have a conscience? Of course not.
