Yesterday Summit Brewing Company formally announced the launch of the twelfth beer in their Unchained series, 100% Organic Ale. We first brought you news of this beer at the end of December when the label was approved. What we missed, of course is that not only is this beer to be an organic beer, it’ll be Minnesota’s first 100% certified organic beer. This beer is brewer Gabe Smoley’s first Unchained creation and it will be available in draught and bottles the week of March 5.Though organic beers hardly saturate the market, finding one or two isn’t difficult. In fact as far as we know, Flat Earth’s Angry Planet was (to our memory) Minnesota’s first packaged organic beer. As Gabe points out, though, “Most USDA certified organic beers on the market are about 95-99.9% organic because it is extremely difficult to find ingredients like organic yeast. This beer is made with 100% organic ingredients including malts, hops and yeast. I created my own certified organic yeast strain to do this, as there are virtually no organic strains available from laboratories.”
“This has been a challenge, but we enjoy those at Summit. Our company is full of innovators and I am excited to continue that tradition,” added Smoley. “The organic segment of the brewing industry is slowly growing and building steam. My hope is that by working with organic ingredients, we’ll learn some new, sustainable approaches to brewing and promote organic ingredients as a whole to the industry.”