Moderator?

[BigWilley]

How exactly does Hop Union "Moderate" this forum. I rarely see feedback from them on anything and this should be their area of expertise. Cargill seems to chime in regularly on the malt board. Maybe Hop Union simply sponsors the forum. ANyway i just thought it would be nice to get feedback from the experts.

[beertje46]

Funny you mention Cargil...

I'm having dinner and a ball game (Go Bats!) with my Cargill Rep. tonight. I asked him who does the moderation for Cargill and it is actually someone from their tech. department. I always "assumed" the responses were from the sales side.

You might try contacting David Edgar @ White Labs, he reps for Hop Union as well and is great about returning calls. dedgar at whitelabs dot com

[banjo]

Hopunion

Hi Guys,
I just talked to Ralph at Hopunion and it seems the person who previously monitored the Hops Q&A for Hopunion recently left and we, Probrewer.com, had not updated the contact to the new email address. We apologize for this oversight on our part and we will rectify the problem asap.

[ralpho123]

Hopunion is here!!

Ok you got me!! Not sure what hop questions are out there at the moment, but let me know. Normally get a email when there is a hop question from Probrewer, but upon talking with probrewer notice there was a problem in the form of an electronic glitch. Think we have it worked out now.

Lots going on in the hop world and most of it centers around supply and demand of which supply is appearing to get less and less around the world. Has kept us busy just trying to keep inventories this year.Don't see it getting any better in the next few years. Can talk more on this if there is interest. Is a very large subject, but is an important one.

Another good item is to talk about availability of varieties and how all this works?

I did look back a little at the postings for hop related items, but none popped out right away. Will dig a little further back, but let me know if there was a question that you would like to see a little something more on.

Be the first to admit, I haven't looked at this site in a while, but here we go!

thx

Ralph Olson
Overworked hop guy at Hopunion. Who isn't anymore!

[jarviw]

Lots going on in the hop world and most of it centers around supply and demand of which supply is appearing to get less and less around the world. Has kept us busy just trying to keep inventories this year.Don't see it getting any better in the next few years. Can talk more on this if there is interest. Is a very large subject, but is an important one.

Yes, please elaborate it!
What's going on with the decreasing hop supply? Why wouldn't it get better in the next few years? what's your forecast? and what can brewers do to help?

[beertje46]

And what's the deal with

Contracting? How does a brewery start a contract?

It seems I'm the only one who didn't this year.

[edramshaw]

Save the hops. Plant your rhizomes now!!

Mine are looking pretty nasty heading into year three.



Ed

Blue Line Draft Systems

[BMOOR]

contracting

David,
I know that Ralph will elaborate more, but my experiences have been very simple.
Call you supplier of choice and tell them which varieties and how much oyu might need for a full year's worth of produciton.
They will send you an official looking contract to sign and those hops from that crop are yours.
Order them as needed and pay when each shipment arrives.
If you don't use them all, pay for full alottment around August-unless they are in desperate need and will agree to take some back. Might happen with all the shortages.
This has been my experience and it works great. Each company could be doing it slightly differently.
Matt

[ralpho123]

More from Hopunion

Hello All,

See multiple posts to this thread so will start with the first on after my last reply.
1. Supply around the world. It is real easy to only think of one’s needs and how to get them from a dealer. A brewer might just buy US hops and wonder why he should worry about the world. Reality is, hops are traded back and forth between countries and are treated as a world commodity, although too small a business to be on any real commodity market. The Germans run or have a large hand in most of the hop business and that includes countries like the US, UK, China, Australia and so forth. Most of the breweries around the world also had roots to German brew masters whether it is the US, Japan, South America or where ever.
The US is more of an exporter of hops than an importer, but hops commonly pass each other in the night coming to and from Europe and the US. The main hops to leave the US are high alpha or bitter hops that are sold in a per KG of alpha basis and are either pellets or extract. Prices for these high alpha hops have almost tripled in the past year. The main reason is a shortage of hops in the world. Large breweries are now in a little of a panic mode to buy hops and when they get like this, price goes out the window. They pay whatever is needed to get them. Our problem with supply started around the mid 1990's. Many countries including the US were jockeying for position for hop acreage. The world acreage grew to around 230,000 acres. In my book, we probably needed around 180,000. We grew hops that had bigger alpha contents and bigger yields than their predecessors. Many downstream products were being used that gave huge utilizations in brewing and many of the large brewers with going down in IBU's in their beer. As the years went on the acreage was on a steady downward trend, but because of the excess acres of previous years, we had excess inventory to sell in the system. Most of this was in the form of extract, which by the way is a major way hops are sold. This excess kept the alpha price down which kept other hop prices down as well. Bottom line is that this scenario kept playing until this past year, we were down to 113,000 acres worldwide and in the meanwhile all excess hops got sold off. Now we have no excess to sell and not enough acreage in the ground to meet demands. Prices for high alpha hops went thru the roof and now growers of aroma hops are saying we need more for our hops or it would be easier to just plant high alpha hops that have better returns per acre. It gets even more complicated, because many of the farms that went out of business are now in other crops or has had things like housing or commercial real estate planted now in where hops once were. Bottom line is having a greater price today has stopped the bleeding that the industry has seen for the last decade and hopefully will keep people in the business. Many of the younger generation farmers have left to the big cities to find better jobs and this leaves many growers today in a bit of a dilemma. This same story can be told of the US grower and the German grower or most any other country with the exception of China. That is more state run. China is one of the big four countries that grows hops and some think they will grow in size as the demand rises. Right now they can't keep up with their own brewing demands. Anyway a few thoughts on the business of hops. More to come.

[ralpho123]

Contracting

Part 2. Contracting- Lots of people haven’t contracted yet for the 2007 crop year, so no you are not too late. In fact still having people trying to modify or contract lots of stuff for the 2006 crop hops. It is simple to set up a contract, but keep in mind a few things for us at Hopunion. To set up a contract all you need to be is a customer or get set up as one. That requires a credit application. Pretty easy stuff. Our difficulties are in keeping all the inventories in order. We have almost 450 inventories at present. Need I say more? This has become colossal for us. One of the things we do like for a customer to do is take their inventory in chunks. This makes it easier for us and helps out with shipping costs as well. We also like to be paid sooner than later. Most of the hops I receive are consigned and the grower doesn’t get paid until we do. With the market getting tighter, growers are also wanting to get their money a little sooner and who can blame them. The cost for a growing year starts right after the preceding crop is harvested. They have lots of costs and must borrow from the bank to get their line of credit set up to even start farming. Just a few thoughts for the forum.

[Fred Scheer]

I'm having dinner and a ball game (Go Bats!) with my Cargill Rep. tonight. I asked him who does the moderation for Cargill and it is actually someone from their tech. department. I always "assumed" the responses were from the sales side.

You might try contacting David Edgar @ White Labs, he reps for Hop Union as well and is great about returning calls. dedgar at whitelabs dot com

First, Thanks to HOPUNION and Ralph and Ralph for being with us again on the message board.
David, how was the Dinner.........any luck getting Cargill on board here???

[ralpho123]

Rhizomes

Saw Ed post a note on planting rhizomes. Always good to have a few around. If you want to buy rhizomes, the best time of year to place orders is February thru April. After that it gets harder to find rhizomes. I do get requests for them all year and have to mention the dates to buy. Ed mentioned his were pretty "nasty" going into year three. I does take three years for a hop to go into full maturity. I have some Chinooks in my back yard that are going crazy this year and this would be year three.


Ralph Olson
Hopunion

[gitchegumee]

"We also like to be paid sooner than later"

Does that mean that these hop contracts are prepaid?

[ralpho123]

Prepaid sooner

Hello Forum,
Currently travelling, so will keep all short. In answer to being paid sooner, it means having a final payment date a little sooner, but does no mean to prepay for inventory, especially before they are set up, but often for large inventories we have final dates late as September the following year. By meaning sooner, it is meant to say have these paid for by say June of the next year or when shipped. Currently on a remote computer (sloow) so can talk more after I am back next week.

thx

Ralph Olson

Hopunion LLC