Nowadays, we see ads for organic this and organic that, sold at Wild Oats or Whole Foods or in the growing health food section in your regular, run-of-the mill grocer. The organic label is supposed to give us a sense of comfort about our food. It’s meant to reassure us that the ingredients used are grown free of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, sludge, radioactive waste, etc. It also means that they are processed sans additives and ionizing radiation. I had heard of organic wines before, but hadn’t been cognizant of in companies producing organic beer until I passed by an end cap in my local Sweetbay grocery store and saw Samuel Smith bottles labeled as such. I had tried Samuel Smith’s porter and stout before with some friends in Michigan (you know who you are) and was very impressed with the quality of the beer. So I thought it’d be interesting to try a lager and ale from the same company and the fact that the beer was organic made it even more intriguing. So I grabbed an 18.7 ounce bottle of each.
I prefer ales, so I started there. The Samuel Smith ale didn’t have much in the way of aroma. The flavor was nice and full. The beer was full of competing flavors of malt, grain, sour apples, and even a hint of pineapple. It was a nice blend of tastes, with a slightly hoppy finish to balance things out. I couldn’t honestly attribute any of the good flavors to being organic but the brewery, as expected, is definitely producing a high quality ale.
Next up was the lager. Honestly, I have a slight bias against lagers since many have a tendency to be bland and difficult to distinguish from one another. The aroma was no exception. There wasn’t any to speak of. The taste was fairly bland and boring. Not a bad beer but it certainly didn’t stand out for any reason; and it certainly didn’t warrant paying for a premium beer. Organic or no, I’d stick with the ale. Taste-wise the organic didn’t really didn’t seem to impact the flavor or impart anything that I could identify to the beers. So all in all, I’ll stick with the regular beer until I come across an organic beer that tastes organic (whatever that means) - and is worth the price.
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