Do you worry about running out of Hops?

Question

My world would surely implode without beer.

Answer 1

No. It is true that we are in a hops shortage, but it has been widely exaggerated as to its devastating effect. You see...we're short of the most popular varieties, but overflowing in other less popular ones. What most brewers and homebrewers are doing right now are looking at alternative or clone variations. For example just yesterday I ordered Columbus hops, a abundant variation of the more popular and rareomahawk.

Furthermore, some brewers are looking at far more traditional methods of bittering beers. For those of you not aware of this the use of hops to bitter beer is a relatively recent idea. Before this brewers would use pine, herbs and grasses as bittering agents. Commonly known today as Gruit ales, these hahearkenack to the earliest days of brewing.

What you should be more worried about than hops is corn. More spspecificallythanol. The front runner of the alternative fufuelss killing our food supplies and doing far more harm than good to our environment. Lets start off with what I feel is ethanol's worst impact...it takes 1.5 to 2 gallons of fossil fuel gas to produce 1 gallon of E85 ethanol. which means that we are burning more traditional fuel to produce a less of a lower eficiency fuel...E85 is only about 80% as efficients gas. This is driving up the cost of gasoline, which in turn drives up the cost of panting, maintaining, harvesting, shipping and so on until this extra cost is passed on to use the consumer. With the growth in demand for ethanol also comes the demand for more farmland to feed it. Shrinking farm land means less barley as well as hops. Which of course leads to higher cost as well.

I'm starting to beat a dead horse here, but I think you get my point. There are more things to worry about than your hops...in fact it is one of my least concerns. I worry more about the growing power of SABMiller and InBev. Both companies known for ruthless business practices.

Answer 2

yes... maybe because I am really running out of hopes. or just because my life really sucks =)

x*x

cri from Italy

Answer 3

No. I don't think that's a realistic fear. I'd like to grow my own in the future.