The Hop Shortage
November 28, 2007 by Brian Q
If you spend much time reading blogs about beer, this probably isn’t the first time you heard this, but none-the-less: there’s a hop shortage and the hop shortage sucks - mostly. Why is there a hop shortage? Well, you’ll find more information from here. But suffice it to say, there had been a surplus of hops for the past several years, causing prices to plummet and farmers to rip up their hops in search of more profitable crops. The surplus is gone and now fewer farmers are growing hops. Larger interests (read beer’s equivalent of ‘The Man’) saw this coming and contracted their hop supplies. This leaves a very small supply for the rest of us, and that mostly sucks.
Notice I only said “mostly sucks”? Yes. From my experience, hop prices at my local brew store have doubled. That sucks. Also, certain varieties of hops are just not available. That sucks too. When certain hops aren’t available, I can’t make tried and tested recipes that I’ve fallen in love with over the years. This means I have to experiment, and that’s not such a bad thing. What makes it an even better thing is that breweries have to experiment too. Mario pointed out recently that Stone’s 11th Anniversary Ale is a Black IPA. He also was correct to sarcastically point out that a black India Pale Ale is somewhat of a contradiction, but Stone did some creative brewing in making this beer and it is black – but tastes IPA-like. What’s with this? Black malts are usually bitter because they’ve been roasted so hot that they’re actually burnt. This burnt stuff is bitter. Bitterness is part of what makes an IPA an IPA. So the black malts Stone used in their 11th Anniversary beer are making the beer bitter without using as much bittering hops as would otherwise be necessary. Cool! So that’s why I say this hop shortage isn’t an entirely terrible thing.
Another interesting result of the hop shortage is it is going to have some serious affects for little breweries who haven’t motivated to change their recipes in a while. Triple Rock, a Berkeley brewery uses an almost identical hop bill for most of their beers. While I love some of their beers, I think this lack of creativity is shameful, and results in some pretty bad beers (like Dragon’s Milk – a dark brown ale hopped like an IPA – it just doesn’t taste good). One of Triple Rock’s hops of choice (I’m pretty sure Cascade) is at the epicenter of the hop shortage. Triple Rock didn’t see the hop shortage coming (they are not The Man), and now they need to do some re-tooling. This doesn’t suck. I hope Triple Rock will kick some ass and make some good beers – but that remains to be seen.
3 Responses to “The Hop Shortage”
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So what “creative” brews are coming from Casa De Brian? I’ve considered trying a gruit beer, but then I considered the taste, and stopped considering.
I got all caught up in the idea of a black IPA, and a Rye IPA, so I went and made a black Rye IPA… we’ll see.
and out of curiosity, what the #*$@ is a ‘gruit’ beer? Sounds bad.
Gruit is the pre-hops mixture of herbs used as bittering and preserving agent. Some of the ingredients sound ok, others are known to be poisonous and even others are known to have narcotic effects. Basically, it’s a try at your own risk kind of deal.
Some beers are out there that use no hops, but they are rare, and from my guess, not very good. I guess there’s a Finnish brew called Sahti that uses juniper berries. Sounds foul.