You say that organic hops are not grown in the U.S., but UCSC has an experimental garden that is growing organic hops there. Evidently quite a bit. Why is it so hard to grow organic hops? I’m growing some in my garden, so I don’t get the difficulty here.

Can’t we just ask some organic farms to consider growing organic hops?

That’s correct. There are currently no commercially available organic hops grown in the US. However, many brewers use imported hops already, and organic hops are now available from Germany, UK, and New Zealand. Ideally, American brewers would have organic hops available from the US. Seven Bridges (www.breworganic) has struggled to get hop growers to try growing organically.

But the bottom line is that as long as long as the USDA rule exempts hops from needing to be organic, its unlikely any US growers will bother trying. The original rule change would have removed hops form the exemption list, thus creating instant demand for much more organic hops. That increased demand would likely have stimulated the growth of a US supply.

All in all though, hops are light and compact and comprise only a small fraction of the weight of a beer, which means the environmental footprint created by shipping them is relatively small. So I’ll continue to support organic beers that use imported organic hops and I’ll continue to homebrew with imported organic hops. Eventually the demand will be great enough that some enterprising grower will offering organic hops in the US.

Cheers,
Chris