How Craft Breweries Are Approaching Kosher Certification | CraftBeer.com

One of the biggest imperatives for the craft beer industry is broadening its demographic reach, achieved through events, welcoming taprooms, and even ingredient selection.

After all, modern craft beer broke free from orthodoxy by resuscitating historical styles, embracing excess, and tinkering with culinary ingredients. The anything-goes approach garnered attention and sales, but experimentalism left many kosher-adherent customers behind.

“When there’s stuff added beyond the four basic ingredients”—water, yeast, grains, hops—”it raises kosher questions,” says Rabbi Zvi Holland, director of special projects for Star-K, a kosher certification agency in Baltimore, Maryland.

For CraftBeer.com, I explored how breweries are approaching and embracing kosher certification, a food-safety certification that can seem confusing but should be familiar to an industry that deeply cares about sourcing high-quality raw materials.

“It’s a big traceability exercise,” says Tom Fiorenzi, the director of brewery and distillery operations at Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas.