Organically certified ingredients

[brewbrew]

There is currently a lot of interest and growing sales in commercially available organically certified craft beers - but amateur brewers and micro breweries have little if any choice. Organic malt is available (I can only find one on-line retailer and the minimum order is 25kg) but I can't find any hops. As an amateur, I find this frustrating - I have to buy my organic beer ready brewed and I have limited choices such as shown here; www.vintageroots.co.uk/organic-beers

If I was to create a collection of organic ingredients for amateur brewers and micro breweries and sell them on line, would you be interested? or would I be wasting my time?

Organically certified ingredients offer unique qualities of purity and authenticity - to understand more, see this link. www.soilassociation.org/organic-living/what-is-organic/

If you have any interest, feel free to PM me or post your comments on the forum.

Thanks for any feedback

BB

[MonsieurBadgerCheese]

Hi,

I think that is a good idea. Having said that, I wonder what percentage of home brewers are in pursuit of a bespoke product, and how many 'brew their own' to keep the cost down. I'm assuming that organic ingredients would be significantly more expensive. I believe that you would have an enthusiastic, but perhaps limited market.

MBC

[Dmondaye]

I'd be very interested in that!

I too have been frustrated with the lack of options available!

[scuppeteer]

Charles Faram have a wide range of "organic" hops. Minimum order is 5kg though. You could always sell on the excess but as already mentioned, they are not cheap and I've no idea how the quality compares to non-organic.

[Fil]

I would have a lot more faith in the organic brand if its label didnt cost an arm and a leg, I appreciate there are some admin and lab costs involved but charging 1,000's for a service worth a few hundred isnt exactly starting on a very ethical basis which kinda devalues the whole concept.

[Dmondaye]

[quote="Fil"]I would have a lot more faith in the organic brand if its label didnt cost an arm and a leg, I appreciate there are some admin and lab costs involved but charging 1,000's for a service worth a few hundred isnt exactly starting on a very ethical basis which kinda devalues the whole concept.[/quote]

Hmmmm.

Think we need to look at this the other way around in that most 'conventionally' produced agricultural produce is at half price but comes with huuuuuuuuge strings attached.

Yields may be great whlist the fertilisers/ground water/pesticides/herbicides flow but is at the expense of the medium/long term viability of the model.

The 'organic' label maybe reflects a more true cost price than we've all been used to paying for a bag of spuds/carrots/hops etc.

Sooner or later this will become very real to us all.

(And then we'll all have to grow our own?)

[Rookie]

Here in the States out of the large number of HBSs there is only one HBS that is all organic (that I know of). My LHBS has a few organic ingredients. I wanted to brew an organic Vienna lager a few months ago and had to order online because my LHBS doesn't carry organic vienna malt. I'm thinking about brewing an organic wheat beer which I can get organic 2-row and wheat malt locally. I support my LHBS as much as possible.

[Rookie]

Here's the organic HBS: https://www.breworganic.com/beer/ingred ... -hops.html
There is a Post Office shipping option, which would be the cheapest way to ship internationally, but I have no idea whether they do or not.

[simon12]

My guess would be since most home brew hop sellers buy from Charles faram who have organic varieties don't sell organic varieties there isn't enough demand for them, but it could just be what they think and though the hops are twice the price most of the charge to home brewers is for postage and repackaging likely the real extra cost is £2-3 per 100g pack.

[orlando]

PM Critch on here. He is involved with the Liverpool Organic Brewery, I'm sure he might have some advice.