Organic Certification

[wildconstruct]

Hey everyone - we're in the planning stages of a gin distillery, and most likely sourcing organic NGS.  I was wondering if anyone here had any experience with organic certification when using organic NGS?

My main questions:

1. If the base grain is organic, and we are distilling through a gin basket, do we even have to worry about if our botanicals are organic?  Are they even ingredients if just vapor distilled?
2. If we can prove that more than 95% of our gin is NGS, then do we have to worry about all the botanicals being organic?

We're sourcing some botanicals locally / growing some ourselves that don't have organic certification, and leaning toward not certifying because (a) we can't organic-certify all the botanicals we use (b) I'm not sure customers really care, and (2) I'm worried about the cost.  But, if anyone has more info/advice, please let me know!

[OzDistilling]

Depending on which Organic organisation / country you certify with, they have differing levels of non organic ingredients allowed.  I am not sure what the USDA specifies.

But, in principal;

1. The botanicals are considered ingredients, but their small quantities may make them exempt from being organic input.  Pesticides and other agrichems will pass through a still.
2. As I think the USDA uses the 5% rule (5% of ingredients can be Non organic, but not GMO), if you secure a Organic CERTIFIED NGS you will be good to go.

Do speak to the organic certifiers, they will know whats allowed and what is possible.

Customers do care about OC.  It also gives you a solid differentiator.

OC production is more expensive, mainly due to the additional costs of process cleaning, paperwork, more manual labour, less chemicals.

[whiskeytango]

Yes they (botanicals) are considered part of the formula that calculates organic.  The thing your going to have to watch is that if your organic certified neural is only say 96% organic then if you add anything to the recipe that's not it can push you easily over that 95% organic threshold.  Just because something says organic (like your neural) doesn't mean you start with it being 100% organic then allowing you to add 5% of non organic items.