I’ve talked about the shortage of hops and barley a few times now, but it’s probably more interesting to hear about it from someone who knows about it firsthand. This article in Flavorpittsburgh.com tells the tale of a grim future for highly hopped beers if the trend continues. According to the brewer at Pittsburgh’s tiny East End Brewing Co., hop prices have quadrupled and the scarcity of hops may lead to reformulation of Big Hop, that brewery’s most popular brew, before summer’s end. I’m sure the same calculation is going on in a lot of microbreweries across the country.
I suppose …read more

Wow, this is the second time I’ve written a nice thing about Boston Beer Company recently! The first time, I was thrilled to see Jim Koch taking over the old Rolling Rock brewery instead of building anew to expand capacity. Now they’ve decided to make hops available for brewers impacted by the shortage of hops. Information about the program is available on Boston Beer Company’s website. Now maybe they have some barley to spare as well.
image from wikipedia

It’s a little late in the game for a top ten list, but here’s an interesting post from the Brookstone beer bulletin listing some of the top beer stories from last year. As per my earlier post, the biggest news for beer lovers may be the short supply of hops and barley, followed by the loss of Michael Jackson.
In Philadelphia beer news, the possible loss of Yards tied with the opening of Dock Street (which I still haven’t managed to visit, check back next week). Hopefully we’ll keep both.
If you know of another story which deserves to be in …read more

I’ve been reading more about the increasing shortage of barley, largely due to the turn towards biofuels. I’ve long wondered whether this whole ethanol nonsense makes sense, particularly given that we’ve made very little effort to reduce consumption. That said, this article from der Spiegel (sort of the German version of Time) suggests that brewers’ own efforts to keep prices low may also be to blame.
Aside from the politics of it, I can only hope that the increase in prices (said to be up to 25%) doesn’t slow the growth of quality beer.