Brewers help one another

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

1

The price of hops shot up this summer, and brewers passed along that cost to drinkers, who ended up paying a dollar or more extra per six pack to drink the same beer.

Then the hops crunch went away. So what happened? The Charlotte Observer tells us, and quotes an Asheville brewmeister:

Craft brewers are trading hops, letting smaller brewers piggyback on large hops contracts and, sometimes, just helping a fellow brewer out.

“It’s a pretty small industry, and just about everybody out there knows each other,” said Brian Dunn, owner of Denver’s Great Divide Brewing Co. and maker of Fresh Hop Pale Ale, one of the fall’s hottest brews. “A lot of people were put in a jam.”

Hops are pinecone-shaped flowers that give beer their flavor and bitterness. They are especially prominent in robust beers, such as IPAs and porters. But a drought in Australia and excessive rains in Europe dramatically thinned worldwide supply.

The shortage left brewers scrambling. One of the industry’s biggest craft brewers, Samuel Adams, set the helpful tone this spring by releasing 20,000 pounds of hops in a sharing program for those small brewers.

At the Great American Beer Festival this month, brewers compared inventories and made hops exchanges, said John Lyda, brewmaster of Asheville’s Highland Brewing Co. Lyda found 8,000 pounds of much-needed Chinook hops from an old friend who is now a supplier. He returned the favor by letting a small brewer piggyback on one of Highland’s hops contracts.