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Hello fellow brewers,
I find myself in much the same position that I imagine many of you are in. I've watched prices on most hops jump 60 to 100% over the course of a year. I've seen previously plentiful and cheap varieties become impossible to find. More maddeningly, I've seen varieties that I selected for inclusion in beers because they were cheap shoot up to astronomical prices. Also, previously where I saw future contract years available at lower and lower prices, now I see price increases extending out infinitely.
I realize that this years harvest was particularly bad, but do you believe this to be the new normal with the continued growth of the craft beer industry and the lag required to increase hop production? How are you managing forward contracts? Are you taking the risk to wait for prices to come back down to earth before securing additional contracts for 2016 and beyond? How many of you are resorting to recipe changes, process changes or other tricks to stretch expensive hops further in your beers?
I wasn't brewing professionally when the 2008 hop shortage hit. Does the situation seem analogous? I think that much of the price spike has been caused by false scarcity generated by all of us contracting for the maximum amount of hop imaginable with the knowledge that we will be able to use excess supply in future years or sell it on to new brewers. I'm not sure how to wrestle control of prices back from the big hop conglomerates, but it seems as though we have gotten ourselves into a bad spot.
Thanks,
Anthony
I find myself in much the same position that I imagine many of you are in. I've watched prices on most hops jump 60 to 100% over the course of a year. I've seen previously plentiful and cheap varieties become impossible to find. More maddeningly, I've seen varieties that I selected for inclusion in beers because they were cheap shoot up to astronomical prices. Also, previously where I saw future contract years available at lower and lower prices, now I see price increases extending out infinitely.
I realize that this years harvest was particularly bad, but do you believe this to be the new normal with the continued growth of the craft beer industry and the lag required to increase hop production? How are you managing forward contracts? Are you taking the risk to wait for prices to come back down to earth before securing additional contracts for 2016 and beyond? How many of you are resorting to recipe changes, process changes or other tricks to stretch expensive hops further in your beers?
I wasn't brewing professionally when the 2008 hop shortage hit. Does the situation seem analogous? I think that much of the price spike has been caused by false scarcity generated by all of us contracting for the maximum amount of hop imaginable with the knowledge that we will be able to use excess supply in future years or sell it on to new brewers. I'm not sure how to wrestle control of prices back from the big hop conglomerates, but it seems as though we have gotten ourselves into a bad spot.
Thanks,
Anthony