Kosher Craft Beer

Serve it! Don't be so nitpicky all religion is just mythology, anyway. Like, ohh, man, which supernatural being do you try to communicate with, dude.

 

@HopBackGorilla , I have a similar story - Chabad until 11ish, explored life but returned when I was 22. I can confirm that there are plenty of lubavitchers who are extremely careful about the hashgocha of their liquor. Clearly - there are also those who don't, but let's not generalize an entire movement, please. :-)
As for kosher beer - here's a list: http://www.crcweb.org/LiquorList.pdf

The star-k certification agency has a nice write up on beer kasherus. A copy can be found here: http://www.ecbrews.com/uploads/2/5/0/0/25004328/clarifying_kashrus_of_beer.pdf

 

@captaincoffee, pretty sure there is no issue with you serving your Jewish friend the home brew you made on Saturday. You have no personal obligations regarding Shabbat. It WOULD be an issue of your Jewish friend paid you to make the beer and structured the transaction in a way that required you to make the beer on Shabbat. In that case, your friend did something unkosher by having you work on his behalf at an activity he himself is forbidden to do. Make sense?

 

Actually, goos island made a quinia beer a few years ago...

 

Check out this blog http://kosherbeers.blogspot.com/ he reviews kosher certified beers

 

So I recently bought Hardywood Singel. They are certified. I was amused to see that the Richmond kashrut authority is the VAad. Get it?

 

This is an interesting question. I've never given it much thought. I'm curious what if any differences in the brewing process need to be observed and how this affects the final product. Please, no one take offense to this but kosher wine is one of the few alcoholic beverages I'm not able to get down. It's like a decent red wine with a pixie stick dumped in it.

 

Have you tried any Baron Herzog Reserve there are some pretty decent ones, alsosome great stuff from Israel i.e. The Cave, Yatir Forest...

 

Basically anything German is fine, because they're brewed under the Bavarian Purity Laws.

 

No. I don't think so anyway. My only experience with it is a Jewish neighbor I had that insisted on pouring me a glass whenever I came over. He was a great old guy and I choked it down to be polite.

 

He probably gave you Manischewitz or something. Any wine drinker worth his salt won't even shop at a store that sells that stuff. Herzog is generally high quality stuff.

Which is why I said "basically." I've generally had luck calling up breweries and asking for information on individual beers and their operation as a whole. They're usually very forthcoming.

 

Most of Jailbreak's offerings, if not all.

 

I would expect that Layla Blonde ale brewed with water from The Mount of the Kings is kosher.

 

What makes a beer kosher or not?

 

in general beer in and of itself is kosher. however there are additives (flavoring and the like) which may render a beer non-kosher. if a brewery makes one such beer all other beers might be affected as the laws of kosher need more than just a washdown. also surprisingly enough if the owner is jewish there might be issues.

 

Yeah, I mean there are way too many rules and exceptions and opinions, etc. to put anything exhaustive on here. Several breweries have kosher certifications, such as Sam Adams. If you look carefully on the back of any Sam bottle, you'll see a small "U" symbol with a circle around it. That's the certification symbol for the Orthodox Union. They certify all of Sam Adams beer as well as many, many items you find in your neighborhood grocery store. Leinenkugel also has the same certification.

Generally speaking, as I mentioned earlier, beer brewed under the Bavarian Purity laws are kosher, as they contain only water, hops, barley, and yeast. Any type of additive is potentially an issue.

As with most kosher questions, the proper thing to do is ask your local orthodox rabbi.

For instance, the vast majority of rabbis will have absolutely no issue with Belgian candi sugar, but some very will might. Probably the most divisive issue is beer aged in barrels. Bourbon barrels, generally speaking, are 100% fine as bourbon is, generally speaking, 100% kosher. Wine barrels, however, are extremely problematic. Since wine and grape products are used for many of our rituals, there are very specific rules for the handling and serving of kosher wine. If a non-jew handles any non-boiled (non-mevushal) wine, then it is immediately rendered not kosher. So any kosher restaurant that employs non-Jewish wait staff will only serve boiled (mevushal) kosher wine.

Furthermore, there is a leniency in Jewish law called "batel b'shishim," which literally translates to "cancelled with 60." In other words, if something non-kosher is mixed into something kosher at a ratio of less than 1/60th, then we consider it to be cancelled out, and the mixture is still kosher. The divisiveness arises as some experts in Jewish law only invoke this leniency when the non-kosher addition is mixed in by accident, so aging anything in a cask that previously held non-kosher wine would render the product not kosher, as the small amount of wine left in the barrel was included in the mixture on purpose. You might see this issue in practice when it comes to Scotch aged/finished in sherry casks. Many orthodox Jews will not drink Macallan for that very reason.

Anyway, here's the point: don't drink oyster stouts.

 

I'm Jewish and I didn't even know beer wasn't kosher...