Environmental Protection Ale

So a while back, my girlfriend applied for a research grant from the EPA for a grad school fellowship. At the time, I brewed a beer to commemorate that (guess what style, hyuck); it turned out pretty successful, and became one of my flagship beers, I had the recipe set in extract, partial mash and all-grain, and came up with some pretty similar results across the board.

People would often ask me, "well, what does it have to do with the environment?" I would always have to laugh and say, "nothing at all."

At the time, I had never had an organic beer that tasted as good as a non-organic alternative in the same category, so I had no interest in brewing organic. However, in the interest of trying to make that beer a little more true to the name, I think I am going to try and dip my feet into the organic mash.

Briess malting out of Wisconsin, produces a wide range of excellent specialty malts, and has quite the organic selection. I like local, and I love Briess (for the most part). They supply all of the malts necessary for my recipe, except for brumalt (I used Gambrinus' Honey Malt), for which I will try to use real honey instead (I'm pretty sure all honey is organic, unless they pump steroids into each bee, I will have to research this).

Hops will be a challenge, there are a couple small organic hop growers in the US, but not nearly enough to make them very easily available. I may have to cave on this, I think I can be comfortable doing this, since organic beer didn't need to be made with organic hops (although I remember hearing that the USDA was thinking about eliminating hops from the allowable ingredients for organic beer, last fall. I'm not sure if that passed or not).

With regards to yeast, I am absolutely sure that I want to stay away from "organic," as I would be surprised to hear that many organic brewers use yeast that is not from lab conditions (I think organic would mean putting your unfermented wort in the woods, opening the top, and letting mother nature do her thing).

Either way, if it turns out, my stock recipe for a pale ale will indeed be more environment friendly. I'll post a recipe when I have one made up (or maybe once I think its not going to suck, I've got most of it down already).