What ever happened to America's hops growers???!
Today the world is in the throws of an all out hops shortage, making difficult and expensive for microbreweries and home brewers to get a hold of hops to brew with. Why didn’t American farmers pick up hops as a crop after prohibition?
Answers: Prior to prohibition, America grew hops. Granted, American hops farmers were dealing with pest and plant disease issues, but so did American grape growers. Years of study, control and cross breeding have created the grapes we drink in American wines today. Hops could have gone the same route.
Today the world is in the throws of an all out hops shortage, making difficult and expensive for microbreweries and home brewers to get a hold of hops to brew with. Why didn’t American farmers pick up hops as a crop after prohibition?
Ethanol.
They did pick it back up and America is the largest hops producing country in the world. What is happening now is the demand for corn to make ethanol.
Edit:
Part 1 - Sorry, I'm at work and had to go take care of some stuff. Ethanol is one of the greatest scams ever! Did you know that it takes about 3 gallons of gas to make 4 gallons of ethanol? What a rip off!
Part 2 - There is a great article about the impact on the hops shortage in last months AAB (or is it this months). If you can get issues of it you should check it out. Anyway, most brewers are going start experimenting with other flavors. Look for extreme beers to be sour or malt heavy instead of hoppy in the coming months.
Part 3 - Sterling is an American hop and has become one of the most popularly used today.
Part 4 - According to the wiki page I linked to below we are number two in hops not one... But I think we may have passed Germany to become number one since 2005.
Part 5 - Nope still number two... I guess.
http://www.usahops.org/english/graphics/...
The government is paying farmers much more to farmers for acreage to grow corn that it doesn't make sense for them to make less money growing hops. There still is a shortage and a few brewers are having to change their recipes to account for it.
Most of our hops are grown in the Yakima River valley in the Pacific Northwest. As was already stated, the US is #2 in the world for total hops production, surpassed only by Germany. America does grow the largest VARIETY of hops, though. Many are unique to America, such as Sterling.
As was already mentioned, the biggest problem we are facing is this BS ethanol situation. You can thank the liberal fascists in Washington for this one... Now you'll have to pay more for your beer, and ethanol benefits NO ONE.
On a more positive note...
Cheers!
The way I heard it, hops were cheap because there had been a surplus in years past. The surplus, in the form of hop extract, has been used up and market forces have taken over. More hops may be planted but it will take a couple of years for them to statr producing and lower the costs for us. There is no need to blame the liberals or the conservatives or the farm lobby.