For those not in the know, or not hunting for reasons, their is a global shortages of malts and hops and this is causing strain upon beer brewers around the world. At first this was only really noticed by brewers, their distributors and people in the industry but now people have begun to notice. Some folks have gone as far as to ask “why?”
Flying Dog Brewery has stated on their blog that there is a problem and it’s not going away for a few year, “we structured our price increases to translate to $0.50-$1 more per 6-pack, but distributors and retailers are independent businesses and legally we have no control over their pricing.” You may notice some brewers aren’t seeing as big of an impact from this widespread shortage… why?
“Because we, and most other craft brewers use more malt and hops in their beers relative to the bland, mass produced lagers, these prices have had a greater impact on brewers of flavorful beers,” says Flying Dog.
It’s a reasonable estimation that breweries that use less hops and less malts will have less costs associated with them. They point to many issues in the shortage which have been quoted by industry sources and agreed by all, shortages are really due to pricing being so low on the hops and malts that farmers simply stopped growing them in favor of crops with better margins, recent crop failures, biofuel upping the price of grains and an ever declining value of the dollar.
Can it get worse? Yeah, a bit. The demand for beer has increased as the supplies have decreased making for a costly beverage indeed (at least for the flavorful brands). We’re going to have to hold out for a few years of high pricing before we see relief if we see relief at all; how many times have you seen a pricing structure rise to decline back to normal again?
Has your beer costs risen? I’m sure it’s not over yet…
(Thanks, FlyingDogNews)
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