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We have a small hop field that is close by that is in the beginning of harvesting. I got a call a few days ago from my sales rep asking if we wanted to purchase some fresh hops off the vine and they will just drive them over.
I've made plenty of wet hop pale ales and IPA's when I homebrewed and used what was growing in my garden, so I have had some experience in using them. Being that we are a new brewpub, this is our first harvest to use fresh hops to make beer.
I was astonished to find out that this supplier charges the exact same price for fresh hops as they do for dry hops or pellets. This seems like an astronomical price to pay for hops to add to beer. They are making 4 times the profit on these, and don't have to dry them or pulverize them?
I realize that there is a limited time to purchase wet hops, and that could potentially effect the price. But driving my hop cost in a batch around 4 times seems a bit extream.
Since this is my first experience with this, I was just curious if this is normal in the industry? Maybe only with smaller growers? Anyone else have different/similar experiences?
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There is a lot of chatter and people calling "scam" to fresh hop sales however as a hop grower and home brewer myself, I can tell you that I expect my hop buying customers to pay a premium for fresh hops because they are a huge PITA to deliver. Its all about timing with wet green fresh hops. There is only one time per year that fresh hops are available so yes the higher price 4x or 5x the price of dried.
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This is the first time I've seen someone from the growing side actually admit that these are priced at a premium. Whether it's fair or not depends on prevailing market conditions but it's actually refreshing to see someone tell it like it is (i.e. this takes up a lot of my time and is limited in quantity, therefore, it costs more).Originally Posted by fmbrewing
Registered User
I am also a small scale hops farmer, and while I agree wet hops cost a little more to deliver, I would say pricing them at 4-5x dried ones is a little much. But I could see them being double. That's to say if they are $10 dried then $5 wet, which equals about $20-25 dried. Also If a brewer is willing to send their fridge truck to load them right off of the picker and they deal with them from there, that would obviously affect the cost, and would most likely even the price out, or better.
Che`
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