Kosher Beer - Keeping it Kosher Clip

I've gotten a lot of questions lately about beer;  kosher flavors and beer certification. Where's   the confusion over there? Beer was assumed to  be kosher because it's malted barley and it's   hops and it's yeast. What could possibly be  wrong with it? Then came micro breweries and   they started experimenting with all different  types of things. They would add some lactose.   Sometimes give a certain creamy texture to  the beer. Sometimes they use grape juice   which was not kosher unless specifically  made as kosher. Here in the United States,   people will not buy a soda unless it has a  hechsher because of the flavors. Compound   flavors potentially could have issues.  Once you start using flavors in beer,   it's like any other flavored beverage. The  large beer companies, the standard typical   beers probably haven't changed much. Once you  have all these different potential problems   and thank God there's also, you know, hundreds and  thousands of products which are kosher certified,   the OU and other kashrus agencies, the major  kashrus agencies, decided that instead of making   assumptions, instead of guesswork, there's  enough product available which is kosher,   which is certified, we should take a position  that when we, the OU, other agencies certify a   restaurant or certify a catered event, we should  insist on having a product with a hechsher.