Between a rock and a hop place

By Colin Burch
For Weekly Surge

Josh Quigley, owner of Quigley's Plate and Pint in Pawleys Island, used to teach beer classes. He would describe the importance of hops - essential to beer - by letting the folks in the class rub the hops in their hands, releasing the unique aroma, and then opening a bottle of Sierra Nevada and smelling it.

Sierra Nevada's orange-tinged aroma comes from cascade hops. Other types of hops bring herbal and citrus aromas and flavor to different kinds of beer. Hops bring a good bitterness to beer.

"There would be no balance to the malt sweetness without hops," Quigley said.

Those hops, once easily had, are becoming harder for brewers to get their hands on. The low-supply, high-demand scenario has caused hops prices to triple within roughly the past year. Meanwhile, the prices for barley are increasing, too, as many farmers have turned from barley to growing corn and other crops that can be made into bio-fuels.

"You're going to be paying more for your beer out there in the market," said Dave Epstein, owner of New South Brewing Co. in Myrtle Beach.

Beer-making typically requires much more barley than hops, so the price increases for the hops are easier to handle. The problem with hops now isn't pricing but availability. There used to be a hop glut, and prices were so low that farmers couldn't support growing hops, so they turned to other crops, and production dropped by millions of pounds without much impact on brewers. Between 1996 and 2006, U.S. hop production dropped from 74.9 million pounds to 57.6 million pounds, and German hop production fell from 81.5 million pounds to 62.8 million pounds, according to Hop Growers of America.

Two or three years ago, a European drought slashed hop harvests - at a time when many farmers had already switched to other crops. Many U.S. beer-makers buy special hops from Germany.

"Prices are up, and selection is down," Quigley said. "For the first 10 years of my brewing career, you could buy whatever you wanted and you could buy it for four to seven bucks a pound."

Ed Waldorf, at Beach HomeBrew in Myrtle Beach, said these days he won't sell hops unless the customer is buying malt, too. It doesn't help him to sell out of a key ingredient while he has other key ingredients in stock. He sells one-ounce bags of hops for $2.30-$3.50, depending on the variety. He's seen some Web sites "scalping" hops for $5-$7 per ounce.

"The hoppy beers are real popular right now," Waldorf said, adding that brewers like Samuel Adams advertise the amount of hops they include in their beers. It's as if the shortage isn't happening in the hop market. "It's not really the time to go crazy about them."

Epstein, at New South Brewing, said he used to pay $6-$8 per pound for hops. Now he's paying $23-$26 per pound. "And that's if you can find it....There are certain varieties of hops that have just disappeared," Epstein said.

Barley prices have been a bigger bite. Just within the past month, prices for barley went up about 8 cents a pound. That doesn't sound like much, but Epstein's typical order is 22,000 pounds, so 8 cents adds up.

Epstein hasn't increased prices on his kegs, but he foresees raising prices in the future.

Others feel the barley price-increase. "The thing is, you can get it, but it costs more," Quigley said. And now companies like John Bull and BierKeller are getting out of the canned-malt business, targeted to home brewers, Waldorf said.

So the beer market is getting pinched from barley and hops. I told Quigley I bet he wouldn't let students in a beer class rub hops nowadays.

"Yep, they're too valuable!" he said.

Contact Colin Burch - the Beerman - at beerpour@yahoo.com or visit his beer blog at http://maltyhops.blogspot.com.