What happened to the hop supply?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Grimsawyer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2006
Messages
877
Reaction score
10
Location
Salem, OR
I have seen the prices of hops jump BIGTIME this year. Does anyone know what's up? Freshops.com doubled their prices(about) and it looks like certain varieties are just going to be impossible to get. Does anyone know what is going on? Crop failure? Fire in some huge hop warehouse(s)? Nobody grew any this year? a combination?:(
 
And this is from their (austinhomebrew) website, looks like we won't know how many IBU's our beer will have until we try it. You can e-mail them and they will give you an estimate on the IBU's if your lucky, if not, it's just medium, high, etc.

The shortage of hops will require us to buy hops from a variety of sources. This fact combined with the adverse weather conditions in hop growing regions means that the alpha acid percentage will vary so much that we can no longer post exact alpha acid percentages on our website.
 
News flash --- wheat futures were recently well over $9.00 - this is almost triple of the price from a year ago. We will definitely see our grain and extract prices go up, too...
 
ilikestuff said:
And this is from their (austinhomebrew) website, looks like we won't know how many IBU's our beer will have until we try it. You can e-mail them and they will give you an estimate on the IBU's if your lucky, if not, it's just medium, high, etc.

I think the point of that disclaimer is that they are going to be sourcing hops from different suppliers and will likely have a variance between alpha values...I would suspect that each package's alpha content will be known but since batches will vary they won't put a specific value on the website. Just a guess. :)
 
brewt00l said:
I think the point of that disclaimer is that they are going to be sourcing hops from different suppliers and will likely have a variance between alpha values...I would suspect that each package's alpha content will be known but since batches will vary they won't put a specific value on the website. Just a guess. :)
I am sure this is the case. In the past they have only given a (large) range anyway. I e-mailed to get a specific AA content on some cascades a while back...they responded but it wasn't thee same as the pack I got a couple days later. Oh well.
 
oh yeah- that WAS last year. Whoops. Well it still could offer an explanation of why hops prices are higher than ever.
 
This is what kills me about beer.

With wine, this would make for some extremely rare and valuable wines. People look at beer as a commodity product with little variation when in fact there can be huge variations. I notice it in Craft Brews all the time. Some batches are more or less bitter, have different flavors. But beer doesn't get the respect that wine receives.
 
kaj030201 said:
oh yeah- that WAS last year. Whoops. Well it still could offer an explanation of why hops prices are higher than ever.


Did ya read what Ralph Olson had to say in that link I posted?
 
Yea. Did anyone read Brewt001's post from Ralph Olson on Probrewer.com? :confused:

The major issue here is that world wide hop acreage has been declining for the past 20 years. We are now in the "supply does not equal demand" part of the economic curve. Thus, prices rise do to not enough hops and some variieties are not available. It is also not easy to just plant more hops next year. Hops require special equipment to harvest, process, etc. When a grower stops growing hops, he will not return to hop any time soon due to the capital to start again. Add to that an OK crop in 2007 not a great crop.

Dr Malt:eek:
 
The sad thing is like Gasoline, the prices will never come back down to the same we had in the past.

Its a shame. How much of this is true too? What they are saying about supply and demand. I am skeptical about the whole price rise thing no matter what it is. The blame is always something mother nature caused or over population caused. These things have been happening for millions of years and to me they are "normal events". Price hikes associated with natural causes is acceptible in many peoples minds, whether they truly are the cause or not. So why not jump on the bandwagon and raise prices.

Its ashame. Truly ashame.

- WW
 
Ps. When is the last time you have seen the price of corn triple?

Never, its government subsidized.

- WW
 
The European crop was bad this year in many regions and the US crop was only average. Cascades will probably be in very short supply.
 
It's not just the natural causes (ie. less acreage, poor harvest); our own obsession with hoppy craft brews increases the demand which can drive up prices even if supply remains constant. It's no accident that Cascades hops have had a larger price increase than some of the other varietals - we all dump them into our Imperial IPAs like there was no tomorrow. A simple solution for home brewers (who don't have to worry about consistency) is to switch to less popular varieties; the prices will be lower and the availability better.
 
One question on Alternitave fuel. Why not use sugar beets instead of corn? I don't get it. Corn is used as feed and is an inefficent source of sugar to turn to ethanol compaired to sugar beets, right? I dunno... That always struck me as goofy. And next year for sure I'm buying like 30 ryzomes. Sure you don't get alot the first year but hey, 2 bucks for the ounce to 3 ounces you get from first year hop plant yield is still better than buying them from another source and they just keep giving more and more every year!
 
Big Ag is involved -- Cargill, etc.. There's money to be made on the corn side - seed providers, companies that have genetically modified strains; companies that sell combines, planters, etc. I don't think the sugar beet has that kind of big Ag behind it, if it did it would probably do well. Another note- shipping dried kernels of corn has got to be more efficient than sugar beets w/85% (my SWAG) moisture content. So by weight (the weight that arrives to the plant), the corn is probably able to produce more ethanol. I'm sure there;s a lot more to it than that...
 
Back
Top