Beer prices to go up due to hops shortage

this could be the worst news of the week.

Switch to the hard stuff I guess

yep, looks like JD is calling my name...

Yeah, I've been reading this for awhile now. Basically, in the 90s a ton of people started growing hops and there was an oversupply. As such the prices went way down and farmers started abandoning the crop. Now, finally, the 2007 crop will not meet the yearly demand for hops, and prices will go way up, I'm sure. The problem stems from the fact that hop plants don't produce usable quantities until they're in their third or fourth year, so farmers must stick with it for a few years to see a yield. They can plant all the new plants they want this year and it still won't likely help until 3-4 years pass.

The worst part is that it'll really effect us homebrewers the most. We're the last in the list to get the hops, and you can bet that the big breweries will not be missing out on their supplies. Most of the microbreweries will probably get what they want as well, but the homebrewers will get screwed. There are already a bunch of suppliers that are out of 2006 hops and haven't received their 2007 crop yet. Now if the 2007 crop falls well below their needs, it's only going to get worse.

Anyone with freezer space would probably be wise to stock up on supplies...especially the common ones like Cascades, which you know you'll be able to use.


Edited to add:

All that being said, most of you will be fine. Most standard American piss doesn't even have hops, except for what they add to put out cool marketing ads showing them adding hops

Bingo. I think the Natty Light fans will be alright.

Just wait until we learn that magically "95% of American hops are grown in Southern California, in the exact location of the recent wildfires" and prices "have" to go up again...

Oh, and there was an oil refinery kinda/sorta/almost near there, too, so gas will have to hit $5 by Christmas to keep up.

Nah, the hops are mostly grown in the pacific northwest.

I was reading some more articles on this last night, apparently another one of the problems is that the American Hops have been getting incredibly popular in Europe as well. With the Euro being so strong against the American Dollar they're having no problems overpaying to get them shipped over.

So what we've got are 3 factors killing us for this year:

1. Less American acreage for hops, due to oversupply in previous years.
2. Higher demand for American hops from the Europeans buying them up.
3. A historically horrible yield in '07 for most hop growing regions.


We can hope that next year's weather will improve and the hop yields will go back up, but it will take a couple more years for the acreage to pick back up, and I don't think the 2nd issue is going away anytime soon, either.

Like I said, it's us homebrewers that will really get screwed in this. In our case it won't be the prices that are out of whack, it will quite likely be that we cannot even get our hands on some varieties of hops.

I'm no botanist, so I don't really know what the germination process is for hops, but is it possible that bees dying off recently could have an impact on hop prices? Its starting to impact a lot of other crop prices, and as crops go, hops are sort of a "luxury" crop.

No clue man. The articles I've read have just basically said that the yield this year was incredibly low. I haven't heard if it was weather conditions, bees, or what. I just know that it's gonna suck to have beer prices go up, and may be nearly impossible to homebrew some beers this year...at least it won't be possible to use the same old recipes