Our Own Little Hop Crisis: Turning Pro Part 10

Even being conservative in our numbers, we need more hops than we can get for this year and the next. Let me be more specific. Of course you can get hops, you just can’t get several of the most highly prized aroma/flavor varieties. I think you will always be able to get hops for generic, flavorless bittering. That is what the mega brewers focus on, so that will always exist.

However, a craft brewery that depends on all of those bold, citrusy, piney, floral, spicy hop flavors does need to worry. As crazy as the hop market was a few years ago, and however much it has improved, it really isn’t that much better now when it comes to popular varieties. There isn’t the panicked buying that there was with the last shortage, but you still need to think ahead and lock in any hops that are critical to your business. Supplies are limited and those that wait will miss out.

The only problem for us is that we haven’t brewed any beer yet and we do not have a good idea of how much beer we will sell. Yet here I am trying to commit to tens of thousands of dollars in hop contracts. If I don’t get these contracts, then we need to rethink the beers we want to brew. We’d have to start over figuring out exactly what hop character will work.

Initially, I had planned on starting with beers that didn’t use a lot of hop character. I figured we could start with beers that were special in other ways and avoid the hop crunch. But this being the west coast, it wasn’t long before hoppy beers began to creep into the mix. “OK, let’s tweak that with a little dry hop” or “Oh sure, I think that malt bill can carry double the amount of late hops.” Soon I was looking at a spreadsheet that indicated we would need a big load of hops.

I’m sure there are other industries that live and die by the availability of one commodity or another. I think I’ve avoided working in those fields, because it is fraught with risk and I don’t like the uncertainty. The
reality is, I am in one of those industries now. Without the character of these flavor and aroma hops, the craft beer industry (and the craft beer drinker) would be seriously hurt.

While the bigger craft beer breweries have more resources to plan out and secure contracts for the next five years, we’re much lower on the list and sourcing hops is much more challenging. Regardless, we need to be bold enough to ensure we have enough hops, but not so bold we sink ourselves financially with excessive hop contracts. Kind of difficult when you haven’t brewed or sold a drop of beer yet. However, that is the way the industry currently works, and we have no alternative but to play along. It is our own little hop crisis in miniature.

Written by Jamil Zainasheff