After years of trying, organic hop growers, most clustered in the Northwest, are poised to win a bitter and bizarre battle: requiring organic hops in organic beer.

The National Organic Standards Board will take up the issue later this month. Last week, a board subcommittee voted to mandate organic hops in organic beer in about three years.

Pat Leavy, a Willamette Valley hops grower and president of the American Organic Hop Grower Association, says he's taking nothing for granted until the board vote. But he's pleased with the recommendation. "It's a reasonable policy that gets us where we want to go," Leavy says.

The tale of organic hops is a window on the little-known exceptions built into organic standards. In some cases, including in the $41 million organic beer market, carrying the coveted organic stamp doesn't always mean a product is completely organic.

When the board, which operates within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, deems an organic ingredient too hard to get, it can waive it for producers and still allow them to display the USDA's certified organic label. The non-organic ingredients have to be less than 5 percent of the product's total weight, excluding water.

In 2007, a lawsuit forced the board to spell out the exceptions and draw up a list -- enshrined as Section 205.606 in federal organic regulations -- with reviews for each item every five years.

For the most part, the 42 exceptions hail from the netherworld of food processing: whey protein concentrate, for example.

Celery powder. Chia. Purple potato juice.

Then there's hops.

In the case of organic beer, the other main ingredient -- barley -- has to be organic because it's the bulk of the product's weight.

But brewers argued successfully in 2007 that organic hops were too few and far between, at least domestically, to require them in organic beer. Hops add prized aroma and bitterness.

Leavy and other growers say the ruling generated a Catch-22. U.S. farmers didn't want to grow organic hops unless there was demand. But, with organic prices far higher than conventional, the board's waiver stifled demand.

Their pleas, formalized most recently in a December 2009 filing, initially went unheeded.

In early September, the board subcommittee voted unanimously to keep the hops exception, noting many of the 200-plus varieties aren't yet available organically.

Then Leavy and his colleagues dug in. They marshaled organic beer aficionados, requested records and sharply questioned the behind-closed-doors nature of the subcommittee's deliberations.

"It's in nobody's interests in the long run to have non-organic hops in organic beer," Leavy says. "I have never met a person who thinks it makes any sense."

Last week, the committee reversed itself, voting unanimously to yank hops from the exception list by Jan. 1, 2013 -- though it left an out for organic brewers to apply to keep specific varieties on the list.

Organic beer rising

Organic beer remains a sliver of the $7 billion U.S. craft beer market. But the economic stakes are significant for organic growers and brewers. From 2003 to 2009, U.S. organic beer sales grew more than fourfold, from $9 million to $41 million, the Organic Trade Association says.

Portland, which hosts the North American Organic Brewers Festival (saving the planet, "one beer at a time"), is the market's spiritual epicenter. This June, the festival featured 55 varieties of organic beer and 35 brewers from Oregon, Washington, California, Colorado, Utah and Hawaii.

Hop growers congregate in the Northwest, drawn by the moderate climate, short summer nights and ready labor supply. Washington's Yakima Valley leads the pack, followed by Oregon and Idaho.

Leavy, 55, lives and works on his family's 300-acre farm in Butteville, established in 1913 near rolling hills and the Willamette River. He grows both organic and non-organic hops.

The capital investment is large, including several million for hop dryers and a hop "picker" -- a complex, two-story contraption of strippers, conveyer belts and blowers that separates the oily hop flower from vines and leaves.

Labor is extensive, too. Workers stand atop tractor-pulled platforms to run string from 18-foot-high wires that the hop plants can climb.

The challenges grow for organic production. Natural fertilizer -- manure, bone meal, feather meal -- costs more than synthetic fertilizer. Yields are lower.

Farmers fight mildew by using mildew-resistant hop varieties. They battle aphids with insecticidal soap and spider mites with predator mites that dine on the pests. Those methods are also pricier than conventional approaches.

As a result, organic hops today are two to three times more expensive than conventional hops, Leavy says. But some breweries buy them anyway, including Vermont-based Wolaver's, whose offerings include "Pat Leavy's All-American Ale."

Brewer concerns

The main brewer to weigh in with concerns about ending the exception for hops was Peak Organic Brewing of Portland, Maine.

But Northwest brewers also have concerns about organic hops' price, quality and availability, says Jim Solberg, co-founder and CEO of Indie Hops in Portland, which supplies hops to craft brewers.

Indie Hops is contracting with Silverton farmer Gayle Goschie to produce 20 acres of organic hops. But at this point, U.S. organic growers are scant, Solberg says.

Organic yields are lower and less predictable than conventional harvests, he says, worrying brewers in an industry that relies on multi-year contracts with farmers.

And beer drinkers, unlike consumers of other organic products, don't seem as willing to pay big premiums for organic beer.

"If all of a sudden brewers are required to use organic hops, the big question is how many are going to continue to go that organic route?" Solberg says.

Leavy agrees the industry has to expand. But he says the 2013 deadline would give the market enough time to adjust, in part because many Northwest hop growers have extra acreage already qualified for organic crops or on its way toward qualifying.

"We can do it next year," he says. "We can ramp up organic production easily around here."

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