Hop-heavy beers such as pale ales and IPAs could become a thing of the past if global temperatures continue to lay siege on key growing regions, a leading beverage analyst has warned.
Francois Sonneville, senior analyst at Rabobank, said the conditions needed for hops to thrive meant climate change was a bigger threat to specialised hop growing than barley.
“Barley grows in many places, but the quality will differ a little bit depending on where you grow it,” he told The Grocer. “When you look at hop, it’s much more sensitive to having exactly the right climes.”
Rising global temperatures and extreme weather events are having a profound impact on hop harvests. In 2022, US production fell by 12%, whilst Germany saw a 21% decline. In the Czech Republic, yields fell by over 40%.
In the UK, smaller brewers are already feeling the effects. Thornbridge Brewery has found it tougher to source some hop varieties to use in its lagers, according to production manager Dominic Driscoll.
“Noble hops like Hallertau Tradition are getting much harder to get hold of and contract,” he said. “Hop merchants are trying to develop longer-rooted varieties that can cope with the big changes in the weather, but [I don’t know] whether they can match Hallertau Tradition in relation to flavour.”
Indoor hop growing
Sonneville suggested indoor hop growing and a return to more drought resistant barley varietals as two potential solutions to the threat of climate-induced beer shortages.
So far, only limited-scale indoor hop growing trials have taken place, including research by Spanish startup Ekonoke this year, and a one-off collaboration between Goose Island UK and AeroFarms in 2021.
The Ekonoke project has been part-funded by AB InBev and Estrella Galicia, and Sonneville said the cost of such research meant solutions were likely to be geared towards ingredients used in mainstream brews.
“When we’re looking at solutions it will first be for lagers because it is 90% of the market,” he said. “A special ale with special hops, the incentive to develop a solution will be smaller.”
He said big brewers like AB InBev, Carlsberg and Heineken may reassess their portfolios, reducing their range until the technology becomes more cost-effective. Other smaller brewers, however could find hoppier brews become too expensive to produce.
“There will be people whose business model was based on selling for £5 a bottle, with ingredients costs of like £4 a bottle and now the ingredients are suddenly £6 and their model doesn’t work anymore,” he added.
More British-hopped beers on the way
Faced with such uncertainty, London’s Five Points Brewing has transitioned more of its core range over to UK-grown hops, deepening its relationship with Kent-based supplier Hukins Hops.
“We’re looking to work more and more closely with Hukins and be less reliant on hops from the rest of the world for sustainability reasons,” head brewer Greg Hobbs said. “We might do a special like the West Coast IPA that we’re relaunching, which is heavily hopped with Cascade and Galaxy from Australian hops, but four of our core range are now exclusively hopped with hops grown just 50 miles away.”
Thornbridge also plans to use more British-grown hops in its beers, but Driscoll rejected the idea that rising prices caused by hop scarcity could push certain beer styles out of fashion.
“You could double the price and it wouldn’t even matter too much in the grand scheme of things,” he said. “We’ve always been able to weather changes in differences in price over the years; barley for example is up for us by 40% this year.”
It comes as Atsushi Katsuki, the global CEO of Asahi Group, warned of the threat posed to global beer supply from climate change.
In an interview with the FT, Katsuki said Asahi analysis showed global warming would significantly reduce barley yields and the quality of hops over the next three decades.
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