A friend sent me an article from National Public Radio (NPR) titled - Hops Shortage Likely to Boost Price of Beer.
To sum it up - due to really bad weather in Europe; decreased hops production here, in the US; and an increase in the price of barley, due to farmers switching to raising corn crops for ethanol production (more money to be made with that) we could be looking to have a price increase anywhere between 20 to 80 percent for hops. How wild is that?
This will hit fellow homebrewers hard and the microbrewers even harder, due to the quantity of specialty hops they use. Soooo long double and triple IPAs.
