If you see Mark Hood, congratulate him for an excellent showing in the National Organic Homebrew Challenge. His "Organifest" took 1st place in the European Amber Lager category and was the Top Scoring Entry from the west region. His prize for top scoring entry is hands-on brewing experience at Uncommon Brewers in Santa Cruz, CA (if he can make it down there to collect).
Mark's "Bionator" Doppelbock took 2nd place in the Specialty & Other Beers category.
Way to go, Mark!! You can find all the results here.
Speaking of organic beer, it is a subject Mark is very passionate about. He wanted to pass along the following info:
It is important that people understand this issue. Our large commercial breweries have won on an issue that really effects the small organic breweries.
In the US, a brewer can label a beer as "Organic" even though it contains NON organiically grown hops. Hops farming using fungicides and pesticides, and should not be in products labeled as organic. Because the large brewers lobbied and used loopholes in our regs to do it, it means that our hop farmers do not find it commercially viable to grow organic hops, as brewers can label it as such using the cheaper hops that are grown with fungicides.
To me, it's just so wrong that I have to buy organically grown cascade hops from new zealand, or from local non commercial growers.
It's equally wrong that the label "Organic" has become a marketing gimmic in beer instead of a true label of contents, and that even if a brewer wanted to brew 100% totally organic they would be a huge cost disadvantage because no one would ever know the difference from the label.
Even if you don't care about drinking beer with pesticides and fungicides and putting it into our ecosystem, the very injustice of this should be worth the small amount of time to sign the petition and support the cause.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/471608186
