Why Organic Beer?

Your beer? It’s mostly water. Any beer, really. From the blackest craft stout to the palest mass-market lager, beer—glorious beer!—is, by and large, water. At the same time, beer is basically an agricultural product. The barley and hops that make your pint began their lives on the farm. And through millennia, “the farm” simply was an organic farm, the bond so fundamental as to be taken for granted.

Since the late 19th century, however, synthetic fertilizers and petrochemical pesticides have become the norm in farming. In large part, these are the convention separating today’s “conventional agriculture” from modern organic farming.              

Of course, it’s hard to make good beer without good water. But those industrial fertilizers and pesticides in conventional agriculture don’t just go away with the harvest. Some seep into the ground, run with the rain, and eventually flow into streams, rivers, lakes and bays. 

That is, they eventually flow into the water: the salmon’s water, your water, and your beer’s water.

That’s why we brew Fish Tale Organic Ales with 100% Organic barley and the finest hops available. We see a day when all ales bearing the Fish Tale name will be Certified Organic. With an eye ever toward the integrity of our recipes, it’s our commitment to continue this transition as the proper ingredients become available in Organic form. And if this takes a bit of extra effort, we call it a wise investment. After all, your beer? It’s mostly water. Glorious water.