Is the Hop drought over?

[Bigjas]

Looks like the Hop drought of 2015 might be over? I didn't realize Germany was such a big Hop grower? Bet the prices don't come down due to the weak pound though......

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-hops-idUSKCN1201CY

Jas

 

[Pfeffer]

Looking at the weather over here, I don't necessarily the season was that good (especially the start of the summer was extremely wet, something hops absolutely hates - but considering the hop price due to the bad harvest, I can imagine the producers invested in output. It was the same with coffee and cocoa in the past couple of years. They just put down more acres, so have more production.

And yes, I'm afraid you guys are in a bad spot due to the brexit currency drop. The pound went from 1.50 USD in June to about 1.23 USD now. So that's about a 20% increase in cost right there (the EUR stays pretty stable, although it looks quite jumpy). Postage isn't that much though, it might be an idea to grow some of your own hops from rhizomes. They should be pretty affordable if bought as a group. If they have a lot of plants, rhizomes theoretically should also drop a bit in price.

 

[Robin54]

I think, and I may be wrong, (and I usually is) but hops are bought on a 'futures' market...so folks are already buying into next years crop, which means that a lot of small craft breweries can't get what they want.

 

[Simonh82]

Most hops are sold under contract. The big industry boys get first bite of the pie then it goes down the pecking order.

Last year the global hop harvest was poor pretty much everywhere so many contracts couldn't even be honoured for the most popular hops.

I've heard the north America harvest was quite good this year.

I'm not sure about the UK harvest. Overall the summer here was good although it was a very wet June. Hopefully the sunshine later made up for it.

I did look at growing my own hops but realised that it would probably be at least 4 years before I saw any return of investment and I don't really have the space to dry large quantities of hops.