Truely organic beer?

I am dismayed with the lack of news being presented to our fellow beer connoisseurs on the evolving market of organic beer. A great atrocity is being committed right now in our beer world, the downplaying of hops in beer. Any avid beer drinker can tell you the most important ingredients in beer, and hops is at the top. The issue at hand is that today organic beer is NOT required to have organic hops if they are unable to obtain suitable amounts or quality. In June 2007 this was supposed to change to “organic beer” must have only organic ingredients, granted some ingredients like gypsum are chemical additives which were ruled out. Unfortunately large national breweries like Anheuser-Busch want the organic label so bad they were willing to cheat their way to get it.

These breweries are not willing to pay the higher prices for organic hops, and have decided to by-pass this law by petitioning the Organics commission to allow NON-ORGANIC hops in ORGANIC beer. Backwards? I think so! This is down right crooked, and inexcusable. This is classic big business trying to dilute laws so as to have a higher profit margin. They know damn well hops are a major part of beer flavor, quoting the small percentage of beer that is actually comprised of hops is misleading. Breweries need to put more effort into developing organic hop resources here in the USA before they try and make organic beer with inorganic hops. Demand products that live up to the set standards, not lowering quality to make a buck.