I know this may be a pedestrian question but does anyone know the rules on beer additives?
Not to admit this but have become a fan of 10 barrels cucumber sour, I went on the website to see if it’s actually real cuber being used and there is no info telling me what’s actually in the can.
Not that I’ve tried them but have been curious about the several flavored stouts I’ve seen, peanut butter, coconut… You get the picture, are these real flavor a or synthetic food stuffs being added.
I don’t think I want to drink a German chocolate stout but I’m curious as to where they get these flavor a and where they have to be listed?
Jason, they use artificial cucumber flavoring in that beer. It’s on the can (label). The TTB allows malt, hops, yeast, and water in beer. If you add any other flavoring you need to disclose it on the label.
Thanks Rick, I looked on the side but should have read the bottom text.
I was curious because I get these emails from Tavour (the garagiste of beer) and they have all these crazy flavors but no notation of wether it’s ‘real’ flavoring or synthetic.
I’m well aware of synthetic foodstuff (I was a chef and have known ‘chefs’ that did RND for big companies) but never really thought about it in beer…
There is another step in the process as well. If you add alcohol, something artificial or anything generally not consumable to the beer, you need to get formula approval from the TTB. If you add something “natural” (for example, blueberries or blueberry concentrate), you need to disclose but you don’t need formula approval. The rules used to be much more strict, but the TTB was overwhelmed by people asking for formula approval so they loosened the standards.
In 2016, the TTB greatly expanded on it’s fruit/vegetable/spice list that is considered acceptable without recipe approval but there is many of these that are not yet on the list. As for flavorings, we use the term WONF (with all natural flavoring) to describe what’s being used in most beers these days. Our brewery ONLY uses REAL stuff…no WONF…no extracts. We are kosher certified if only to prove that we we use NOT “natural flavors” but real ingredients. Doesn’t matter to most but it does for us.