Do you want to know your beer ingredients?

I already know that beer is primarily water, malt, hops, and yeast. Beyond that, I guess I don't care that much. I can see why it matters to some folks, I'm just not that interested.

 

Maybe no GMOS, But plenty of pesticides in America's water supplies. Yeah America!!!! btw, Racer 5 is the bomb.

 

Samuel Smith's has several Organic beers. --> http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/113/
Otter Creek has a line of beers called Wolaver's that are all organic. --> http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/119/
Beau's All Natural Brewing Company does too --> http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/15435/

Go crazy.

 

Yes. Simple ingredients.

 

You will find that the ingredients in beer are almost standard straight across the board. Hops, water, yeast, and some sort of grain. Normally if there is anything else like cocoa, coffee, vanilla, fruit, or anything else it is very common for it to be very clear that it was used in the labeling.

 

You seem surprised. It's not an uncommon ingredient for IPAs or IIPAs.

 

Some breweries (Deschutes comes to mind) share what kinds of malts, hops and other ingredients they use quite readily for homebrewers trying to clone their recipes. Others are less forthcoming about varieties and I don't know why you would list "water, malted barley, hops and yeast" on the side of every bottle and can when this is common knowledge.

I think a very large number of craft breweries don't list additives because they don't use them for the most part. Beer preserves well naturally and a proper malt bill should eliminate any need for artificial coloring. A lot of breweries treat their water, but I doubt many consumers really know much about water chemistry. I wouldn't tell my customers about water treatment unless they were homebrewers who had some idea why I would add, for example, calcium chloride to my water.

 

Honestly bottle dating and ABV % are much higher priorities for me then ingredients that is mostly just hops, barley, yeast, and water. And some do list whats in there throwing in plums, pumpkin, chocolate, wheat, peaches, etc.

For ingredients how specific do you want them to be? Is yeast good or do you want the specific strains? A couple years back they started pushing "with natural flavors added" which in the case of Anchor Foghorn just meant owning up to the fact that they put maple syrup in there(which they should advertise it could sell more of it).

There are good reasons for no ingredients listed such as taking up space on the label, not required by TTB, trade secrets(?), don't think it's important, and don't think it will help them sell more beer.

 

Start brewing your own so you know EXACTLY whats in there

 

As long as my beer has tons of gluten in it I don't care about an ingredient list.

 

No in fact I don't even really want to know the ABV to tell you the truth. It's just another way to inflate the price here in PA. Only thing that matters is bottle date

 

It sounds to me like you might be more concerned with sourcing & farming practices than actual ingredients, which are pretty close to identical in craft beer, save spices, herbs, and other adjuncts (already covered in other posts). Maybe you'd be better-served by requesting sources and suppliers, and you could query them about their farming practices in regards to pesticides, fertilizers, seeds & strains.

Also keep in mind that for a while, beers have been prohibited from including nutrition info -- but not ingredients -- on their labels (although I've seen some recently on ciders).

 

Good on you for having ideals.

My point of view, with care to avoid coming across as a total asshole: Just drink a beer, period.

 

If I'm not mistaken, dextrose is often used in IPA's and DIPA's to make more sugar available for the fermentation process, which in turn yields a higher ABV.

 

This. There just aren't that many additives in good beer. I'm not opposed to a brewery posting that info on a website if they want to; I'm very opposed to more mandatory requirements that will raise the cost to the brewery for little benefit.

 

Dextrose / corn sugar is a flavor neutral simple sugar. Sugars are commonly used in brewing to boost abv, and increase dryness. Sucks, and Brown Shugga are two that come to mind which openly declare their use of brown sugar in making them big dry sweet delicousness.
A brewery will straight out tell you when they are using something other than water, grain, hops, and yeast.
Most of them will also tell you when they are using certified organic sustainably raised grains and hops, because it is not a common practice. You can start asking the question of breweries about their choices in grain and hops. But you'll also set off a lot of grumbling about cost because of how expensive these items are in comparison to the regular stuff.