A few nights back I had a great conversation with Ted to catch up on brewing. Ted was marveling at the massive new mashtun we were using and he had some practical questions about it. The one that stuck out to me was:
"Do you have something against batch sparging?"
While I have saught for the fly sparge that actually works, I have never stopped and asked myself if it's really worth all the effort. Perhaps I am totally focused on doing it just so I can say that I do it. Maybe it's the trickling water and the crazy hoisting of scaulding hot water that attracts me to the fly sparge like a moth to a flame, who knows.
All I know that it's time for me to take a step back and review the benefits and drawbacks of fly versus batch sparging. There is a great artile in BYO about this, but I would like to hear what you have to say, please make a vote on the survay (right side) and leave a comment. I'll do a follow up to sum up the stances.
So here I am, two years and some change later, still writing on this brew blog. I constantly have to ask myself "why do this?" and after the last few weeks, I am reminded of the answer.
I started this blog in late 2005 after reading Blog! By David Kline (and a whole host of other authors) and wanting to understand what this whole "blogging" thing was all about. As I began to explore blogs, I was also really starting to enjoy homebrewing and was making some very good beer (extract). It suddenly dawned on me; what a perfect medium for a brew journal! A place where your readers can critique your methods, recipes and overall brewing. Because the author is accessible, the comments are conversation instead of static feedback and visitors can review the evolution and eventual conclusion of an issue. Brilliant!
In the processes of doing this, I have learned about many other bloggers out there, some of whom are the commenter's on this blog. I have exchanged beers with other bloggers and written about beers I have tried.
So why is this better than a BA forum? Well in short, it's community. While yes, you can get answers quickly in a forum, no one is following your body of work. No one can note long-term trends in your methods of why you brew how you brew. No one notices if you haven't posted in a long time (I noticed Grove had gone dark for a while and realized he's a Dad now). It's the quality and source of the feedback that makes the blogging community different.
I bring this up because this past weekend, things really came full circle for me in my original objective for this blog. I took a recipe for an ESB I had done previously and made adjustments that were suggested to me by Bad Ben, commenter and fellow blogger, to make a second iteration of my ESB. In the comments for this brew, I had some very good observations where Glibbidy and Kevin where they noted the process of running off my mash was potentially going to give me a hot aeration. This led me to revisit the question of hot aeration and decide to make a slight adjustment on my process to avoid this potentially problematic step. Simple and was made possible my blog.
Further, these past few weeks have allowed me to have my beer tasted internationally! Alan, Ted and Brad were all part of the first (and not last)beer blog off. This one was for the ages. The battle over the Mason Dixon line was had between yours truly and the fellas at Monday Night Brewery. While both Alan and Brad gave the edge to MNB, Ted gave me a glimmer of hope with a single win. The guys at MNB even made a video of the tasting:
The point of this post is to thank everyone that has made this blog work. It's been a pleasure getting comments and feedback. The exciting thing is that most of the comments have blogs themselves so I can in turn comment on what they do. I would also like to extend a big thank you to everyone that participated in the brew off, even the bane of my existence; MNB.
As many of you know, I have been at war with the guys at Monday Night Brewery (or MNB as they are now officially called) and like all wars, it hasn't been pretty. I would like to begin by putting to rest the rumor that Bryan Adams is a member of Hezbollah. While his lyrics certainly raise the question of his commitment to the United States and it's war on terror, there is no physical evidence that links him to the leadership of Hezbollah.
I've come to this bit of a humble ending to my war with MNB due to the taste off we had. While MNB tried to butter us up with beer glasses and an awesome stout to go with the Swashchuckler IPA they sent us, I have to admit that without a doubt, (gulp) their beer was better.
Nick and I started off with the Swashchuckler and poured it into a pint glass. It poured a deep gold color with an off white head. IT started with two fingers of head and kept it's head for a good amount of time. I got a nice smell of pine and citrus on the nose, the pine sets in before the citrus, but it rounds out to a great aroma.
Once the head settled, it left a healthy amount of lacing in the glass. The taste was really dominated by the bittering hops bite. It finished clean and didn't linger, which was nice, but the hops were a dominant player in the mix.
Overall this was a great experience and if I were to make any recommendations, I would say to dial down the hops a little to let the malt profile stand out a little more.
With our Lagunitas clone there was a melon smell on the nose, a lighter color, more of a straw than a gold, and a white head. The problem came in the taste. There was a distinct metallic flavor that we picked up in the brew.
Bottling has been a loosing battle with me as of late, but I hope that this is not the case with all of the beers I sent out. In the end, the metallic flavor died down a little bit, but never enough to make the beer really appealing.
The Swashchuckler IPA took us hands down. I am now looking for recommendations on what beer pairs with crow for the main course and humble pie for desert. I am guessing that a nice Double IPA might wash down the crow and perhaps a barley wine for the humble pie?
Seriously though, they have a great start to a beer there, it could use a little fine tuning, but the malt profile was great (when I got into the beer a little more) and the nose it awesome. Congratulations from the Nick and I go out to the MNB crew. Cheers!
In this exclusive photo obtained by CNYBrew, it has been confirmed that Bryan Adams is an active member of Hezbollah. Pictured here with Hussan Nasrallah, Hezbollah head, Bryan Adams is clearly embracing the terrorist leader.
While little has been written of Adams connection to the terrorist organization, the evidence of his long standing relationship with Hezbollah is staggering.
As early as 1983 when Adams released "Cuts like a knife". In the same year, Hezbollah were responsible for a rash of bombings including the bombing of a US Embassy and attacks in Beirut. It became clear to CNYBrew that the song "Let him know" was a reference to Hezbollah letting Uncle Sam know they were going to destroy the US. This line in the song led CNYBrew to this shocking revelation:
"The news is out I guess you heard I shouldn't breathe a single word The bottom line is nothing's gonna stop you now You gotta let him know..."
Startling, I know. But there is more.
In 1992, the release of "Waking up the Neighbors" was eerily coupled with the Hezbollah attack on an Isaeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. The song in question is "Everything I do" which is an obvious pledge by Adams of his allegiance to Hezbollah:
"Don't tell me it's not worth tryin' for You can't tell me it's not worth dyin' for You know it's true Everything I do - I do it for you"
While there was no direct correlation between the influence of Bryan Adams anti-American rhetoric and Monday Night Brewery, CNYBrew continues to search for the connection. While CNYBrew has in the past thought that the MNB crew were a group of harmless Civil War Reenactment buddies, it's now apparent that this might be a much larger and more deep rooted militia fueled by the rantings of Bryan Adams...
So for Valentines Day, my brew wife got me an AWESOME gift certificate for my LHBS! This is $20 that HAS to be spent on brew supplies. While it's tempting to put it towards a brew session, I decided that I am going to spend it on a few odds and ends items I have been eying there at Ed's.
Since it's $20, I am looking for a little feedback on things that I am considering getting. Here are the contenders:
First up is this 12" funnel with a screen for my buckets (yea I am not rolling in a pre-civil war cotton fortune like the guys at MNB and I still use the modest bucket) - My thought on this is that I have not been crazy about the method that we use for our hops which is steeping them in the brew. With this I would like to filter the wort as it comes out to catch as much of the hops as possible and we could just dump the hops directly into the kettle.
Yea, I know, everyone has carboy handles. Well not me. Since I now have three 5 gallon glass carboys and one 3 gallon glass carboy, I was thinking about not tempting fate anymore and getting some decent handles for them.
The ever important brew spoon. My current brew spoon is plastic and I have been using is for a good 4 years and I think it may be time to retire it. Now on his website Ed only has plastic spoons, but I know he has stainless steal ones at the shop so I was thinking about a 18" stainless steal spoon as another option.
In the end, I am probably going to get all this stuff and just using the gift certificate towards it, why? Why not? I am still interested in hearing some arguments for or against any of the items listed.
Well this weekend was not a brewing weekend for me because of some medical stuff that I had to deal with. It's all good though, I should be back up and brewing next weekend.
For Valentines Day, my wife got me a six pack of beer and a gift certificate to my local homebrew shop. There is not much else I could ask for (yet another tribute to the brew wife).
The brew that she got me was from her trip to Philadelphia while I was in Colorado. It was a brewery called Yards Brewing Company. There is a restaurant there that has a long history and all the waiting staff dress in traditional garb. While the restaurant was built on the location of a famous political hangout for our founding fathers, the recipes they brew claim to be authentic to the era.
The six pack that my wife got me was a porter. It was a pretty sweet porter that poured a dark mahogany to almost red color. The head was cream color and hung out for a long time. The brew had the taste that really reminded me more of a sweet brown ale and finished with the porter bite that you expect. It was a pretty drinkable beer because of it's sweetness, not like a lot of the bigger beers that the porter is often associated with.
Over all I would say this is a pretty good beer. I can't wait for the website to launch so I can learn a little more about the recipes, but I have to say I am a fan of mixing politics and beer.
There has been a lot of talk on the brew blogs about Canadian artists and I figured I would chime in. Now I'm personally a die-hard T-Hip fan and would agree that there is no question that there are a lot of great Canadian comedians and bands. With that said, the chatter about Canadians drummed up memories for me of The Kids In The Hall and they have always been a favorite of mine.
Allen from A Good Beer Blog has pointed out a lot of classic Canadians of note, I would offer that The Kids in the Hall need to be in any conversation about notable Canadians. Unlike MNB's unnatural love of Bryan Adams, this is completely respect for, as Don Cherry would say:
"A bunch of good Canadian boys have good clean Canadian fun"
Without going into a lot of detail, I have seen a lot of political ads. While most of the good ones qualify as "good" only do so because "in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king", this ad is the exception.
This is hands down the best political ad ever and may be one of the best ads ever.
In yet another exclusive piece of undercover reporting from CNYBrew.com, I have blown the cover on Monday Night Brewery's publicity stunt. No more will they be able to destroy the lives of children by the ridicule for having a wacky name.
ajc.com with it's list of Georgia names allowed me to search and discover yet another shocking revelation about Monday Night Brewery. They have named a girl Monday in an attempt to build free publicity and drive their southern countrymen to drink their beer.
As crazy as this sounds, please think about the evidence and ask yourself, could this be a coincidence? I think not.
To make matters worse, in an attempt to head off the controversial attention this move would create for MNB other breweries have jumped on board as well:
Genesy - 1 girl (poor masking of Genesee brand beer)
Brewing is a hobby of humility, patience and pleasure. The guys of MNB have taken that to a whole new low with their shameless marketing and exploitation of children. When will it stop guys? When will it ever be enough?
Sunday was back to brewing for Nick and I in the face of REALLY cold conditions. A few weeks back I did a post about our attempt at making a Samuel Adams Lager clone but due to some unforeseen circumstances, that brew went on hold and I brewed my Tripel Nipple. Well this past Sunday we got back on track.
This brew came out really well and due to an increased efficiency (and the resulting increase in potency of this brew) we decided to change the name to Samuel L. Jackson Beer because this stuff will get ya drunk! I also made some adjustments to the recipe, this is what we ended up brewing:
Samuel L. Jackson Beer
Ingredients: ------------ Amount Item Type % or IBU 21.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 82.5 % 2.32 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 8.9 % 2.25 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 8.6 % 3.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (60 min) Hops 24.3 IBU 1.25 oz Tettnang [4.50%] (30 min) Hops 7.3 IBU 1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (Dry Hop 4 days) Hops - 0.53 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc 1 Pkgs Munich Lager (Wyeast Labs #2308) Yeast-Lager
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body Total Grain Weight: 26.07 lb ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temp Step Time Mash In Add 8.08 gal of water at 162.6 F151.0 F 75 min Mash Out Add 5.21 gal of water at 198.2 F168.0 F 10 min
Brew Notes
Despite some snow up Nick's way, we were still able to get started with a striking at 7:30am. We struck with about 155f as the temp. I was going for 151f to give this a little lighter body, but not a bog deal. Because this was a big recipe and we were working at the capacity of the mash tun, we ran off three gallons of the wort into a pot so that we could add it to the sparge water (this was Nick's idea and may have contributed to the name of the brew).
We hit our mash out temp of 168f on the nose and let it sit for 10 min. After this we added the sparge water and let the sparge happen for about 30 to 45 min. In the end our pre-boil gravity was 14.75brix or 1.058 gravity, a little more than a point above the projected 1.047.
Our yield was about 1/2 gallon lower than it should have been when things were all said and done and our gravity was 1.060, four above where we were aiming giving us the new name - Samuel Jackson Lager - due to the increase in potency.
In the end our efficiency was about 70% and we need to figure out if it was the recirculation of the wort or hitting the mash out temp that caused the spike.
In other news
I had a little stall in the fermentation of my Tripel Nipple that was solved by taking the bucket upstairs into the bathroom where it could sit at 72f. I have since racked it over and have the 5 gallon carboy on my bench where it's a consistent 68f. Contrary to rumors on the Internets, I don't think that a Tripel is equal portions Bud Lite, Miller Lite and Coors.
On that note, Southern Culture on the Skidz has decided to take some pot shots at my over carbonated (and very over oaked) stout. I didn't get a chance to respond because I was watching the NEW YORK Giants make it to the Super Bowl and I was basking in the light of an all north eastern Super Bowl. While I do sometimes have hiccups in my brewing operation, at least what I do to my beer is legal in all 50 states, unlike the boys at MNB:
Well doe to an unfortunate situation, Nick was not available this weekend to brew. With that said, I still need to get 'my brew on' so I am going to do a solo batch for my brain.
For this brew I am going to do a Belgium Tripel I am calling Tripel Nipple. When I went to get my supplies for the brew day at my LHBS, a kid Ed has working there mistakenly started to ground 2-row pale malt for me instead of pilsener. Ed offered to give me to two row for free and start it all over again, but I told him it was all good and made this with 9.8lbs european 2 row and 5.2lbs pilsener. No need to waste. I am not sure if that takes in out of the "Tripel" category or not though. Oh well, not like I care...
Ingredients: ------------ Amount Item Type % or IBU 9.80 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 48.40 % 5.20 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain 25.68 % 2.00 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 9.88 % 2.00 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 9.88 % 0.25 lb Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 1.23 % 1.00 oz Cluster [8.50 %] (60 min) Hops 20.9 IBU 1.00 oz Mt. Hood [6.00 %] (15 min) Hops 7.3 IBU 1.00 lb Candi Sugar, Clear (0.5 SRM) Sugar 4.94 % 5.50 gal Syracuse, New York Water 1 Pkgs Trappist High Gravity (Wyeast Labs #3787) Yeast-Wheat
Mash Schedule: Double Infusion, Full Body Total Grain Weight: 19.25 lb ---------------------------- Double Infusion, Full Body Step Time Name Description Step Temp 30 min Protein Rest Add 4.33 gal of water at 134.5 F 122.0 F 30 min Saccrification Add 3.85 gal of water at 206.7 F 158.0 F 10 min Mash Out Add 2.89 gal of water at 199.4 F 168.0 F
I got started this morning at about 6:30am (thanks Meatball for making sure I was up early on a Saturday) and finished at 11:30am. Pretty smooth brew day for the most part. I hit all of my temps and made some pH adjustments to the mash to get a 5.5pH. Everything went VERY smoothly up until the end.
I discovered that Beer Smith was giving me about 4 gallons more than I needed for the volume I was looking for. I am not exactally sure how it happened, but I can only assume that the quart of water to pound of grain volume is set too high. I am trying to figure out how to fix this for the future.
All was not lost though. I wound up with an extra gallon of brew and it still came in at a hefty 1.070 OG. I can live with that. I was dead on balls accurate with everything else so I am pleased with the day as a whole. Plus at a sunny 40f it was like brewing in Georgia only without being married to my cousin.
In other news...
First off, Ted from Ted's Homebrew Journal and I exchanged some brews over the holidays. Last night I tasted his Simcoe 100 and here are my notes:
Aroma - It's like opening a bag of hops and taking a whiff. There is a little malt tucked away in the background, but the hops are really the star of the show and you can get a complete hops aroma on this.
Appearance - Dark copper with a light brown finish. Depending on what light you hold it in, it can be very dark. The head was a cream color reminiscent of French vanilla. The head build up quickly and stuck around for a long time.
Flavor - Leads in with a hint of bitterness before you are hit with a strong grapefruit flavor. Its not an overly tart grapefruit, but just the citrus tang. Just like the nose, the hops is all over this one. It's a very complete hops flavor and the grapefruit plays very nicely with it.
Overall - My comments verbatim; "Wow - I love this beer!" It's a hell of a brew. My only regret is that I had but one to drink...
Second I racked over my Hairy Porter, very smooth and very sweet. It's actually a lot less harsh than I anticipated. I let it sit in secondary in the fridge for three weeks so its nicely mellowed. It was time well spent. The Anise has an interesting blend in this brew. More to come on this.
Finally it seems as though my "bottling for champs" el cheepo method might not be working. I need to do one of two things; break down and get a beer gun or prime every keg and bottle off of that. We will see...
After some investigation, I discovered the dark secret behind Monday Night Brewery and why they brew on Mondays when the rest of the free world brews on the weekend.
It all started while I was researching the phenomenon known as "Civil War Reenactment" that is a regular fixture in the south. While much of the north does participate in local civil war reenactment, the enigma of the south, reenacting a war that they lost has always been fascinating to me and I have been on a mission to understand why.
During my research I came across the picture above. At first I thought nothing of it, but upon closer inspection, I discovered that the guys of MNB and all of their MNB buddies (I can only assume) took the day off from brewing and "cornholing" to reenact the civil war!
Suddenly it all because very clear; this was why they could not brew on the weekend, they were busy replaying a war that was lost by the south! It all came full circle, the nonsense about Syracuse and upstate New York, they were trying to win the war!
Well my tooth deprived brew buddies from the south, let the brew war begin!
In the last issue of BYO there was an article about an in-line dry hops filter and I want to figure out how to make it. The guys from Aussie Home Brewer were the feature and the in-line hop filter consisted of some kind of in-line boat gas filter and some garden hose.
The gist of the article was that this was a $10 solution to dry hopping. What I was not able to figure out was how it worked. The article made it sound like it was something like this hop-back I found, but according to these guys, the in-line hop filter could just be dropped in a keg or in a fermentor.
If you saw this or have any information, I would appreciate some feedback and I will gladly post how I do with making one of these.
It's not been an easy past week. I am ready to do some brewing to take my mind off of everything.
This weekend we will be brewing a Hopped Bohemian Lager in the spirit of Boston Brewing Company's Samuel Adams Lager. If you don't know about this brew, I tell ya what. If you don't know about Sam Adams, just raise your hand and I'll have Tommy Boy here come back there and hit you in the head with a tack hammer because you're a RETARD.
I am calling this "Bogan's Bohemian Lager" after my professional mentor and close friend Ed Bogan. Ed's wisdom is the reason I am where I am today and I cannot thank him enough. I am going to miss you Ed.
The brew is going to be lagered at 48-50f (depending on how the weather cooperates) and should finish at about 4.5% ABV. Some of the recipes I saw used a decoction so we are going to be decocting this one. I think that it brings a lot of nice flavors and smells out of the malt so I am going to be pushing for us to do that.
Bogan's Bohemian Lager Brewer: Travis & Nick Asst Brewer: Meatball Style: Hopped Bohemian Lager TYPE: All Grain Taste: (35.0)
Ingredients: ------------ Amount 16.75 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 74.2 % 5.32 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 23.6 % 0.50 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 2.2 % 3.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (60 min) Hops 26.6 IBU 1.25 oz Tettnang [4.50%] (30 min) Hops 8.0 IBU 1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (Dry Hop 4 days) Hops - 1 Pkgs Munich Lager (Wyeast Labs #2308) Yeast-Lager
Mash Schedule: Decoction Mash, Single Total Grain Weight: 22.57 lb ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temp Step Time Protein Rest Add 11.29 gal of water at 126.6 122.0 F 35 min Saccharification Decoct 4.78 gal of mash and boil155.0 F 45 min Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min 168.0 F 10 min
Initially the plan was to take advantage of the cold weather for lagerning, but since it's been a heat wave here in Syracuse, I am not sure that's going to workout for us. Hopefully things cool down this weekend and we can shut that damn Al Gore up.
Happenings on the Internets
Freak Brothers were nice enough to include me in on a beer exchange that they are proposing through out the beer blogs. The bros have one of the best homebrew setups I have ever seen.
Finally, congratulations to the fellas from Monday Night Brewery, they have found the bond that connects them is more than beer, it's a game called "Cornhole". God only knows what those guys are up to with their "cornholes".
No brewing for the last two weekends and I am again not going to be brewing this coming weekend as I will be in New Hampshire campaigning for...well a presidential candidate (If you know me, you know who it is, otherwise I want to follow the rules of "no talking religion or politics on your brew blog"...well except when it's complaining about piss poor legislation as they had to do on MNB, that's always fair game).
That being the case, Nick, Meatball and I will be brewing the two weekends after. We are going to do some lagers so that we can take advantage of the weather. I was thinking about either a German Pils or a Maibock for 10 gallon batches on one weekend. We might do another IPA by request on that weekend as well, we will see. The weekend after we are going to plan a long brew day so that we can try the recirculation that was reading about in last month's BYO. The long and short of the technique is that you mash in two stages for 20 min each running all the water off. Now this should provide a very strong lager and we might be able to user the second runnings for another 10 gallon batch. This one is going to take some planning though.
Just a quick update, I brought the cream ale over to my in-laws house for Christmas Eve and it was a hit. Plus my brother-in-law took a case I bottled up for him home.
In my opinion, Oktoberfest is still the best gateway beer, but the cream ale is a close second. It's a nice session brew that's easy to make and it can be a little sneaky as well. My brother-in-law emailed and said he thought it was 8% ABV. I wouldn't go that far, but it ain't no Genny Cream Ale.
Happy New Years!
PS- New Years resolution for MNB - Cut the mullet and limit yourselves to 8 tattoos this year (one for each kid you're going to father, that's it).
So after my trip to the the brew shop I have to say that MAYBE I jumped the gun on the "apocalypse scenario" about the hops shortage. Ed from my LHBS EJ Wren just got in an unexpected full delivery of hops from his supplier. He has hops in all styles except some of the high alpha hops.
For those hops he is missing, as Ted has suggested, he is using alternative hops as a way to supplement the AAU for a recipe. After talking to Nick about it some more, the idea of learning about some new kinds of hops should be pretty cool.
Just so my WWII style "hops shelter" that I started digging in the back yard doesn't go to waste, I am going to step up my homegrown hops effort so that we can get a nice harvest next year.
In the meantime I am just going to live with the doubling of hops prices and continue down the "lighter" side of homebrewing.
Tomorrow Nick and I are going to be brewing the cream ale. Should be fun.
So far I have seen a lot of conversation about the hops shortage and what it is going to mean to brewers, both home and craft. Ted offered up a great post on pricing which spun into an ongoing conversation about how the hops shortage will affect us as homebrewers.
I'll admit, at first I figured that it would only mean a jack up in price and I would suck it up and brew on. However, it's much worse than I could have imagined. LHBS's all over the country are rationing hops to 2oz per kind of hops you buy. I went to my LHBS and the fridge was almost bare! He said he had ordered 800oz of hops and gotten 300 of them in.
Now as homebrewers, we are going to make changes much like our older brothers (and sisters for the sake of being PC) the craft brewers. Recipes that are milder in hops and have a greater malt profile will become the norm and we will brew on. Weak and infant breweries will probably die off and the strong breweries will prevail from this shortage. For homebrewers however, I honestly can’t see it having the kind of impact regarding peoples interest as it would to a small craft brewery.
With all of that said, I would like to offer my take one the hops shortage based on what I have been reading and what I understand:
Background
The hops industry has a turbulent history to say the least. As a cash crop it is heavy on expenses and light on profit. Globally, Germany and the United States supply two thirds of all the hops. In the US, Yakima Valley is chief producer of hops supplying 70% of all domestic hops.
Traditional hops producers such as England and the Czech Republic have decreased their production over the years. England is nearly out of the business all together contributing only 2% of the global hops production.
Why the decrease in production?
In the US there has been a 30% decrease in hops production since 1995 for a verity of reasons. Yakima Valley farmers have been turning in the farms to developers who are building houses and malls due to the high cost of growing hops and the low profit margins. The once rich hops fields are attractive to the booming Yakima Valley housing and development market.
This combined with "spot buying" of hops (consists of breweries seeking out inexpensive short-term year to year deals with hop farmers instead of the three and four year contracts) has created an environment where a lot of choices are out there for hop farmers and unfortunately at this point all of them are more attractive than dealing with the instability of hops farming. Spot buying was originally a way for small microbreweries to make ends meet, but in recent years many of the larger breweries have joined in and are now paying the price.
To further the shortage there was a fire at a Yakima Valley storage facility the destroyed 110 metric tons of hops (it's a lot). Europe has had two poor harvest years due to weather ranging from severe rains to hail. All of these coupled with normal to sub-par production years in other regions has led to a perfect storm.
How is this going to affect me?
No one knows. At best, we all pay a lot more for hops for the next few years. At worst hops rationing kicks in and homebrewers will have to start scrambling for their supply. Already I have heard multiple reports that LHBS are going to be only allowing brewers to buy 2oz of any one kind of hops.
The situation is still early, but unfortunately as Ed from my LHBS said "we are the low man on the totem pole" referring to homebrewers and the priority to supply us with hops.
What's next?
Rock soup? Packing up the wagon and headed to the rich plush growing fields of California (instead of Okies, maybe they will call us 'hoppies')? Who knows (OK, so I am being a little dramatic). There are a lot of things working that at least from the outside, give the impression that there is no short-term solution to this problem. Yakima Valley has become a popular place to live and prices are going to have to really skyrocket just to keep the growers we have. The price of wheat is up at $10 a bushel now, up from $3 a few years ago and this is a much more inexpensive crop to grow compared to hops. That coupled with the allure of selling out altogether leads me to believe that there is not going to be an end to shortage anytime soon.
Unfortunately the outlook is grim. Things will have to get bad before they get better and it's not going to happen overnight. Even if it does take place and hops is suddenly a very profitable cash crop, the reason that it will be profitable is because we will be paying for it. As one might expect it will have the most noticeable impact on craft brewers as they struggle to make ends meet. This will translate to increased prices on shelves and eventually a retarding of the once booming craft brew industry.
For the last few years craft brew has been the only growth in the beer industry. In the beer production world, the yellow fizz producers have battled over market share, but seen the only growth has gone to the craft brew market (up 12%). However, this could serve as at least an anchor to slow this growth. Is it the end of the world? No, but it will be the end to a lot of breweries unfortunately.
What about us?
Well we will all need to wash the salty tears in our beer down and move on. I would recommend that if you have a LHBS and you have been shopping online for lot of things to save money, you consider going back and keeping your money close to home. After all, it’s better for the environment that mailing things halfway across the country to save a buck. LHBSs are going to have to raise prices and there will be some fall out, suck it up and keep your money close to home. The last thing on Earth you want is your LHBS to close it's doors, that would suck.
Two other important ways that we as homebrewers can help out is brew on and get other people to join! Homebrewing is fun and if there are people with money they want to spend, products and retailers will be around. Are we going to be able to supplant the current craft industries usage? No, but just keep in mind that we want people drinking good beer. Even if they don't brew it, they will buy it. Once you go craft you never go back. This will help the industry work through this turbulent time.
Sorry for the depressing post. Relax and have a homebrew. Cheers
For those that have not already heard, the beer and whisky community has lost one of the great minds and writers of our time. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Jackson family.
