The hop shortage

Williams 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I really wish I had gotten out of the habit of buying what I need, when I need it. When will I learn?

The guy at my LHBS said that they won't have ANY hallertauer until next year (if then). I rarely use those hops, but that still really worries me. And I had to sub two (out of three) kinds of hops for my next kind of brew. Well, at least I got the cascades, which are going to be the main players this time around. Mmmm, cascade hops!

Anyway, if I understand correctly, most of what caused the shortage was previous overproduction, which led to a massive price drop, which led to crops downsizing, and then there was a poor season that had a profound effect because of the lower acreage. Hasn't this same sort of thing been happening in agriculture since the dawn of agricultural economy? I'm no economist, but it seems to me like it would make more sense to plan things a little differently, bring in less revenue in the short-term, but make the market (and the farmers' livelyhood) more stable. Let's face it, the poor guys growing the hops are really getting the short end of the stick.

Then again, boom/bust cycles are kind of an inevitable part of capitalism. I guess it's just something you've gotta live with.
 
beta pleated sheet said:
...The guy at my LHBS said that they won't have ANY hallertauer until next year (if then). ...And I had to sub two (out of three) kinds of hops for my next kind of brew.
Click to expand...

You’re looking at it all wrong…

Think of substituting hops like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Hallertau sub includes: Tettnanger
Tettnanger sub includes: Fuggle
Fuggle sub includes: Willamette

Ergo…find some Willamette :D
 
BierMuncher said:
Ergo…find some Willamette :D
Click to expand...

Which may be harder than you think...

AHS, where I usually order from - ~(Out of stock) Willamette Pellet Hops (1 oz) This product will be in stock on Saturday 31 January, 2009.

WTF, some of there hops are out until January 2010, seems a little extreme to me.
 
BierMuncher said:
Ergo…find some Willamette :D
Click to expand...

Well, fine. Hallertauer can be replaced by Liberty. Liberty can be replaced by Mt. Hood. However, Mt. Hood can be replaced by Hersbrucker. Hersbrucker can then be replaced by Strisslespalt, which can be replaced by Crystal. Thusly, you could find some Crystal instead.

In summary, Conan did not make Huckabee - but in fact, Jon Stewart made Huckabee.

...Who later denounced that any one person made him, but in fact was made by America.
 
The word I hear is that a 'boatload' of hops are on their way over from Germany. Apparently they are all claimed/bought. Hopefully some are bought by our dealers. Charlie
 
Stocked up on everything last fall, but for various reasons i have not been brewing since last August.

So with a freezer full of hops and the "hop shortage" not really affecting prices and availability greatly over here i just threw 1.5 oz of hops in my secondary, so my 5 gal of IPA will have taken 6 oz all in all.

Then i come online to look at what my HBS have to offer on malt these days. I have not bought malt for 7-8 months as i buy my base malts in 50# sacks and really stock up on the special malts from time to time.

Now all the Weiermann malts cost 180-200% of what i paid last time :eek:

Well, only option now is to pay up, or start using corn or rice to stretch the malts :(

Cheers
Jakob
 
I know it's not a great price, but like someone mentioned earlier in this thread, morebeer.com has cascade whole leaf back in stock at $16.80/lb (4oz * $4.20). I bought a few other hops and a new manifold to get free shipping. I got a total of 28 oz for $36.80, so $1.31/oz which is about as good of a price as I've seen lately.

Sure makes me wish I bought a couple lbs when my LHBS was selling stuff for $11/lb, but back then I was buying kits and didn't need to buy hops on their own.
 
I talked to Dave at Fresh Hops yesterday. He was out cutting rhizomes. Looks like everyone is expecting a run on rhizomes with all the "grow your own" talk going on.
 
BierMuncher said:
I talked to Dave at Fresh Hops yesterday. He was out cutting rhizomes. Looks like everyone is expecting a run on rhizomes with all the "grow your own" talk going on.
Click to expand...

It will be interesting to see what kind of beer people produce with home grown hops. I for one know little to nothing about growing them, but even I have a pre-order in at Midwest.
I predict a "how to grow hops" stickey before the spring really takes off. Freshops.com has a bit of a growing guide available. Just got to interpret all the gardening mumbo jumbo into a "beer drinking" level of instruction. SO as long as were on the topic... what does everyone plan on planting this year?

I'm planting cascade, fuggles, williamette, golding, Northern Brewer, and sterling.
 
Vels said:
Stocked up on everything last fall, but for various reasons i have not been brewing since last August.

So with a freezer full of hops and the "hop shortage" not really affecting prices and availability greatly over here i just threw 1.5 oz of hops in my secondary, so my 5 gal of IPA will have taken 6 oz all in all.

Then i come online to look at what my HBS have to offer on malt these days. I have not bought malt for 7-8 months as i buy my base malts in 50# sacks and really stock up on the special malts from time to time.

Now all the Weiermann malts cost 180-200% of what i paid last time :eek:

Well, only option now is to pay up, or start using corn or rice to stretch the malts :(

Jakob
Click to expand...

Yes, over here in northern europe the effects of the "hop shortage" seems allmost non-existent. I'm not really that concerned about the hop or malt prices because the way I see it the time and effort I put into brewing my 5 gl batches grossy outweighs the cost of the grains and hops.

I run my own buissness and I could easilly work 24/7. From time to time I choose to take (half) a day off, relax and brew (or doing something else I feel like doing).

When adding the lost income into the equation it probably approaches 20 bucks a beer so high hop prices isn't really a concern when you look at it that way...

H
 
I'm planning for Summit dwarf, also maybe some Sunbeam (albino, likes shade) and I definitely am thinking about either a Cascade or a Fuggle/Golding/something.

I'm still debating if this will work, though, because I'm on a major arterial street, so it's fairly bright outside, even at night. I'm worried it's bright enough that they won't flower.
 
BierMuncher said:
I talked to Dave at Fresh Hops yesterday. He was out cutting rhizomes. Looks like everyone is expecting a run on rhizomes with all the "grow your own" talk going on.
Click to expand...


Do you know which types they are going to sell?
 
I put my pre-order in yesterday for cascade, nugget and williamette at northern brewer. If I have room, I still may go for a golding variety, but I'm "borrowing" my parents backyard for the season since apartments don't have yards, so we'll see.

I have heard that AA's are greatly affected by climate, so does anyone have any ideas on how to test the levels in our homegrown hops since we sre growing them in a wide range of climates?
 
chriso said:
I'm still debating if this will work, though, because I'm on a major arterial street, so it's fairly bright outside, even at night. I'm worried it's bright enough that they won't flower.
Click to expand...

Even if you have a lot of ambient light, it probably won't affect them too much, and you can also bump up the phosphurus levels with fertilizers (prefreably organic, tastes and smells better) to force flower them.

Have you ever seen the pumpkins from Alaska, they are huge due to the longer duration of light they recieve but have obviously flowered because they have produced a fruit/seed. Of course long duration of low light levels could cause some serious stretching and may result in a weak spindly plant with a very small yield.

I say try it, rhizomes aren't that expensive and you could get a few pounds of great homegrown hops off of them. And if your a hop head like me, it's your chance to brew a wet hopped IPA like I will definatley be doing.
 
Mustangj said:
Do you know which types they are going to sell?
Click to expand...
Sorry no. My guess is it will be a pretty broad selection. Dave was busy taking my order for some summit hops and dealing with a Fed Ex truck that had just showed up so not much time to chit-chat.
 
I just placed an order with these guys for hop rhizomes.
I orded
2 Cascade
2 Centennial
1 Fuggle
1 Perle
1 Hallertauer
1 Mt-Hood
1 Northern Brewer
1 Willamette

I don't remeber hearing anything about these people on here so I may have just pissed away $50. But I just I will find out in the next 8 weeks. :mug:
 
What kind of yield can you expect from one plant for the first year (assuming conditions are good)?

I also just read that India's consumption of beer is growing like crazy, and along with Chinese, they will create a shortage for many years to come.
 
It depends on what kind of hops you're growing to begin with. Some are abundant producers naturally, some aren't.

I'm not a pro, but I would guess roughly one pound per plant in the first season if the stars are in alignment. The good thing is that hops multiply, so you can cut your own rhizomes and plant more.....and more, and more, and more.:)

I need to get some high alpha rhizome varieties this month.
 
I just went to my LHBS today, and they had pretty much everything in stock (except for EKG). They attributed it to their new policy of 3 oz. maximum of hops for each batch you buy ingredients for. It's been working out great for me, every few batches I have enough leftover hops for a higher hopped batch.
 
Anyone out there think the "hop shortage" is a scam? (I love a good conspiracy). I was at my LHBS and they had a fairly good selection and only charging $2 an oz. Said they have no supply issues. You know how gas prices shoot up when there's a hurricane near oil rigs??? And then we hear about record profits 6 months later... Hmmm.
 
foxtrot said:
Anyone out there think the "hop shortage" is a scam? (I love a good conspiracy). I was at my LHBS and they had a fairly good selection and only charging $2 an oz. Said they have no supply issues. You know how gas prices shoot up when there's a hurricane near oil rigs??? And then we hear about record profits 6 months later... Hmmm.
Click to expand...


There are stores that purchased their hops in advance of the shortage or paid in advance for upcoming hops. They will have plenty of hops, but not always the ones they need. The stores that weren't paying attention will not have any hops.

The place that most stores buy their hops don't have much to sell and the other source (who buys them from the first source) is rationing out only 25 oz per week to homebrew stores.

The first sign I saw of the shortage is when Anheiser-Bush bought all of the Cascade they could find. It was funny to see some homebrew stores (who hadn't heard that there was not going to be any Cascade available for a couple of years) selling Cascade at a clearance price of $6.99 a pound. I bought what I could from them. Now the cascade is up to $50 a pound.

There will be a lot of homebrew stores that will go out of business because of the hop shortage. It is a real problem.
 
Yep the $50 per pound for cascade is about right. I paid $3.25 an ounce for fresh cascade hops this past weekend for use in my IPA. I don't think I'll be making many more IPAs any time soon, they're gonna be way too expensive.
 
I bought a Pale Ale extract kit over the weekend that was meant to have Cascade hops in it. They were all substituted with Galena hops.

I'm assuming Galena is a common replacement for Cascade when necessary? They smelled absolutely delicious - similar to Cascade.


.....Although after reading up some more, sounds like this brew might be a bit more on the bitter side with Galena.
 
Austinhomebrew said:
there was not going to be any Cascade available for a couple of years
Click to expand...

Now this really does not make sense to me. The growing season is what, 5-6 months, "Keep in mind, normal hop havesting begins here in the states about the 20th of August," according to hopsdirect, yet it will take a couple of years to get any of the most popular aroma variety, all the way from Washington state? I hopefully will have some of my own cascade come the end of this growing season along with a couple other varieties, but this has got to be a joke right?

Now I could MAYBE understand not being able to get saaz or some of the other german nobles, because we don't grow those here, but seriously, AHS is saying January 2010 until there are any cascade, just hard for me to believe. Somehow we have gone from the largest held inventory of hops ever last year with approx. 85mil pounds, 23% more than '06 and 12% more than '05 according to the US Dept. of Agriculture, to having next to none now?

I'm waiting for this years hop stock report to see what's really going on, till then I have a decent supply, let's just hope something happens soon and we find that huge cache of hops that someone has been overlooking.
 
ilikestuff said:
Now this really does not make sense to me. The growing season is what, 5-6 months, "Keep in mind, normal hop havesting begins here in the states about the 20th of August," according to hopsdirect, yet it will take a couple of years to get any of the most popular aroma variety, all the way from Washington state? ...
Click to expand...

Cascade will be grown and sold, but only to firms with the foresight to put a contract in place before the 'crisis'. So Cascade will be out there, but its not likely you'll be able to get your hands on any.

Here is a BYO article on the hop shortage that you might find interesting. It describes how the hop market works, where all the hops are going, and why homebrewers are having a hard time finding any.
 
Just received (on the ol' front porch) from hops direct:
1# galana
1# williamette
1# Fuggles

So far I'm doing pretty well. I think I'm locked on for the year. Before this shipment I had 47 Oz of various hops in the freezer. So I'm good. but I'll keep my eyes open for a deal here and there.
 
Seabee John said:
Just received (on the ol' front porch) from hops direct:
1# galana
1# williamette
1# Fuggles

So far I'm doing pretty well. I think I'm locked on for the year. Before this shipment I had 47 Oz of various hops in the freezer. So I'm good. but I'll keep my eyes open for a deal here and there.
Click to expand...

How did you order from hopsdirect? I don't show them as offering any verities for sale anymore.
 
Jekster said:
How did you order from hopsdirect? I don't show them as offering any verities for sale anymore.
Click to expand...

Some peoples orders got deferred until they could take inventory and see what they had left.
 
Seabee John said:
how the hell could you even know what you were getting?I can't imagine buying hops from anyone on ebay unless they were reputable. Sure the bag SAYS Cascade... but who knows what they are.
Click to expand...

85249812.jpg
 

Similar threads

MMP126
Homebrewers Hop Quality
Replies
10
Views
886
ncbrewer
N
mattman91
Mystery Roadside Hops and Gifted Grains
Replies
17
Views
912
mattman91
mattman91
A
Thoughts/input for a newbie getting into the hobby
2 3
Replies
84
Views
4K
AlbertaBeer
A
Kornssj
Concept of a Beer Centrifuge
Replies
12
Views
610
MaxStout
MaxStout
J
Please help my hops! What is this stuff on the leaf....
Replies
17
Views
2K
bguzz
B

Latest posts

Back
Top