Organic Beer

I came across this article from the Boston Phoenix about Peak Organic Brewing Company. Now I've had a lot of different kinds of beer, but I had never heard of such a thing as organic beer. The organic thing is pretty big now, so it makes a lot of sense that there is an organic brewing company out there. Here's a little snippet from the piece:

Put aside for a moment the personal, environmental, and social dimensions of organic food and drink. Think instead about the flavor. One of beer’s strong points is its simplicity: barley, hops, water, yeast. Shouldn’t it follow that those ingredients be as unadulterated as possible? Peak’s hops (from the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, Canada, and New Zealand) and barley are grown entirely without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

“The most important thing in a beer is the purity of the ingredients,” says Cadoux, who’s been brewing Peak Organic from Portland, Maine, since last spring. “They just really make it pop with flavor. That’s why organic products are doing so well.” (Organic beer sales topped $19 million in 2005, a 40 percent increase.)