We feel the pinch of the hop shortages
Stories of the hops – and rumored increases in beer prices – have found their way onto NPR. Kristen sent in this report, which discusses the decreases in hops production and what that means for microbreweries (I’ll give you a hint: it’s bad). We at MNB have dealt with the hops shortages in our own way, in the form of our ailing hop plants:
Yep. Those suckers are dead. But not before we harvested a total of 0 lbs. of hops. Maybe next year.
Jonathan, Joel & Jeff
November 16th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I caught that story as well. It’s a real nasty reality. Ted recommended looking into low hops recipes to help deal with the prices. I would say that if you have lagering capabilities you have a lot of choices on the beers to create because lagers are great for low hops brews. Here in NY the garage becomes the favored lagerning place.
November 16th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Yeah, bitter with something else, and reserve the rest of the hops for some flavor/aroma. Many other non-hop bittering agents can balance well with varying malt’s sweetness.
Its really quite exciting for me, and my brother. We’ve had ideas like this for more than a year, and are finally starting to get going with some initial experiments.
November 18th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
You can cut that puppy back to the main vine and start over, but if you’re hoping to supplement your hop needs, make sure it’s a big alpha variety.
I’ve never tried using lupalin oil, but you can buy it online. The only commercial beer I knew of that used it was not good, so it might not be a reasonable option.
I’m prepared to drop my average IBU consumption level to a meager 60 BUs as a personal sacrifice. I’m not sure that’ll help much though.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:02 am
[...] best to not kill himself, I will be transplanting the rest of our hops. No longer will they grow (or not grow) on the volleyball court in my backyard. Nope, it’s only the sunniest areas of Jeff’s [...]
March 11th, 2008 at 10:34 am
[...] going to give this whole “growing hops thing” another go. Unruffled by our meager/nonexistent harvest last year, we have transplanted our hop plants to Jeff’s yard. Now they’re out of the pots, off [...]
March 27th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
[...] to popular belief, I didn’t completely kill our hops last year. They’ve peeked their bitter little heads above the surface of their new home along [...]