Featured News: Climate Change comes for Beer

Similar to what we’ve seen with the production of coffee, hops grown for brewing beer requires as specific temperature to come to fruition at the perfect time and with the perfect flavor profile. Climate change is steadily eating away are the areas of the world that will create the necessary cycle of long days and then cool months needed to pamper this fragile plant into maturity. Hops growers are already seeing a reduction in the areas usable for this crop. As the demand for hops climbs, the areas of the earth where is can be fully supported shrink.

Growers are attempting to partially mitigate some of the challenges of climate change by moving their plants to higher elevations but even with these measures, the crop yields are falling. A recent study in the Journal of Nature Communications, researchers predicted that by 2050 the yield will be down by as much as 12% with the acidic, “hoppy” quality of the beer produced down by as much as 31%. Read the full study  here.