May 16-22 is American Craft Beer Week. And what exactly is craft beer? Interpreted differently depending on the inventiveness of each individual brewer, craft beer is a movement in the world of beer—away from a cheap beverage mass-produced by a large corporation and often swilled down relatively unconsciously with the goal of getting drunk to the artisanal creation of a small brewer using high-quality, often local ingredients to be savored in moderate quantities.

But is craft beer healthy?

We’ve written about some of the pluses and minuses of alcohol before. Although alcohol is a toxin, a healthy person can tolerate, and may even benefit from, drinking alcohol in moderation. Red wine is our alcoholic beverage of choice, but beer can offer many nutritional benefits if it’s made the right way.  The question is what’s in your beer and how was it made?

One thing you don’t want is the mass-produced cheap stuff. For one thing, you don’t know what’s in it. Unlike most beverages, alcoholic beverages aren’t regulated by the Food & Drug Administration, but rather by an obscure agency called the Tax & Trade Bureau (TTB). This agency doesn’t require beer to list its ingredients on the label. Although all ingredients have to be approved by the TTB, this doesn’t necessarily mean they are healthy. This beer often contains allergens, like lactose, gluten, corn, food dyes, and even peanuts, and unhealthy chemicals that act as foam stabilizers, clarifying agents, and preservatives. Beer cans leech endocrine-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA) into beer.  Many of its ingredients, such as high fructose corn syrup, are genetically modified.  Filtering and pasteurization destroy nutrient value.

Craft beer is likely to be superior to mass-produced beer, and many craft brewers are committed to values like sustainability, using local ingredients to support local economies, using returnable glass bottles, etc. They are also more apt to encourage responsible and moderate drinking.

However there are vast differences among craft beers. Craft brewing is a rapidly growing market, with close to 3,400 craft brewers in 2014—almost a thousand more than existed in 2012. Part of the beauty of the craft beer industry is that each one has their own approach. So it pays to get to know your brewer.

Ingredients in craft beers can be just about anything that’s edible. A writer who calls himself The Beer Snob mentions chocolate, coffee, oak, caramel, molasses, dark fruit, grass, floral hops, citrus fruit, coriander, pumpkin, and hazelnut as only some of the many different ingredients one might find in a craft beer.

Craft beers can be filtered and pasteurized, but you’ll find more nutrition in those that aren’t.

Finally, only a small segment of the craft beer industry is organic, and there are levels of organic certification:

“100% organic” means only organically produced ingredients and processing agents are used.

“Organic” means the beer contains at least 95% organically produced ingredients.

“Made with Organic” means at least 70% of the ingredients must be organically certified.

Bottom line, when selecting a craft beer, know its ingredients, and try to find an unfiltered, unpasteurized, 100% organic craft beer.