Climate Change Finally Impacts Important Industry

Socguy writes "According to a New Zealand scientist, Jim Salinger, the price of beer in and around Australia is going to be under increasing upward pressure as reductions in malting barley yields are experienced as a side effect of our ongoing climate shift. "It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up," Mr. Salinger told the Institute of Brewing and Distilling convention."

Comments

home brewers

[Missing_dc]

Those of us who home brew have already seen the hit on both barley and hops.

Re:home brewers

[electrictroy]

According to the History Channel, this is not the first time climate change has destroyed an industry.

The "Mini Ice Age" of 1400-1800 destroyed the Wine Industry in Britannia. For 1400 years Romans and their descendents had been growing vineyards and producing wine in the warm England climate. Then suddenly the earth grew cold, and the vines stopped growing.

England seemed to survive this catastrope, and I'm sure Australia will too.

Re:home brewers

[Missing_dc]

I can't check the link at work, and I am not an expert on the subject though I have been making beer and Meade for about 2 years now. I start a 5 gallon batch every 1-2 weeks. That having been said:

I get my barley for about $2 a pound, regardless of the variety/malt.
I get my hops for about $2.5/ounce, in pellet form. It's available as cones, but they are more expensive.
it takes between 5-10 pounds of barley for a 5-gallon batch of beer and about 2 ounces of hops (more or less to taste, the hops have 3 functions, they add a spicy flavor, a bitter flavor, and they help preserve the beer. some beers I have seen take 4 OZ of hops, some only require .5 OZ)

The yeast sachets are about $2 each for beer yeast and about $.60 each for wine yeast.

These are local prices in Stafford, VA. northern brewers tends to be cheaper.

So, we are looking at $17 minimum for a batch of beer, more if you add the malt extracts (barley sugar) as it tends to be about $4/pound or you can use more grain. It is technically possible to use corn sugar (about $1/pound) to increase the alcohol content, but that tends to give a thin-feeling beer.

Pure beer (accourding to the germans) cannot contain anything but barley, hops, water and yeast.

A 5-gallon batch of imperial stout uses about 10 pounds of grain and 3 ounces of hops.

The cost of barley has gone up for me in the last 2 years, I used to get it for $1.30 /pound
and the hops has drastically jumped from $1.30 to $2.50/ OZ.

A minor note on hop growing, it takes 2-3 years for your hops to reach production levels. It's best to leave them alone while they attain that stage of growth. The hop farmers have noticed the high demand and planted more acres, that does not help now, but will in a few years.

Just my 2 cents or so...

Re:home brewers

[jc42]

Corn is ideal because we already had the infrastructure in place to integrate corn-based ethanol plants into the supply chain with virtually no cost (money or energy).

That depends on where you live. It may be true in the US's Midwest or other farming areas with well-established grain crops. In other parts of the world, there are already commercial crops of Jatropha curcas, a dryland shrub whose seeds contain oil that can be burned directly by diesel engines without refining. There's also a tropical tree, Copaifera langsdorffii, which is tapped much like sugar maples, and whose sap also qualifies as diesel fuel. Google finds lots of info on both of them.

These two plants have only recently been domesticated, so there's a lot of research and breeding going on in the areas where they grow. J. curcas has potential to be a major crop the American southwest and southern Europe, as it's cold tolerant and needs only around 250 mm of rain per year to keep it happy. But the cultivation is rather different from corn, so you wouldn't expect corn farmers to immediately succeed with it, and it may not be a competitive crop for areas with more rainfall. C. langsdorffii isn't feasible outside the tropics, and is a medium-sized tree, so it has only been used for small-scale local fuel production so far, and will probably take some time to become a practical crop plant.

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) has gotten some attention in the US, where it's a native plant with a lot of potential. Even President Bush has heard of it. But its cultivation, harvesting, and processing into fuel would be something new for corn farmers. Sugar cane growers would probably be better prospects, as the process would be familiar to them -- except for the final fermentation stage, which you'd want to hand over to the rum producers ;-). A problem here is that sugar cane (and rum) is a (sub)tropical crop, while switchgrass is better suited to temperate zones, so we'll either need to educate some farmers (and brewers), or persuade the sugar-cage people to move to places where it gets cold.

There are a number of other plants undergoing serious research for fuel production. Of course, each species will require educating farmers and development of infrastructure for its use. That's part of why so many people have been suggesting that we should be doing the R&D now, rather than wait until our fuel-supply problems grow even more serious.

Re:Going on two years

[NorbrookC]

However, there are many other crops from which alcohol can be derived.

Which have also jumped markedly in price. Corn, wheat, and rice are all running at record or near-record highs in their prices. So your other libations will also jump in price.

Re:Uh, not due to climate change though...

[Abcd1234]

Yup [startribune.com] and it's really hurting everyone from large pizza chains [news-press.com] right down to the local Asian restaurant my wife and I frequent at least three times a month.

Just thank god you don't live in, say, Haiti or Egypt, where there've been food riots due to skyrocketing prices (like, 40% increases since January type skyrocketing).

The use of food as a fuel source is, without a doubt, the most idiotic, selfish, short-sighted thing the developed world has ever dreamed up...

Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid

[Original Replica]

Sorry, but the Heartland Institute has the is an dedicated to unregulated, free markets. They are a policy organization masquerading as a research group, one which has been accused of being funded heavily by Exxon. Now I usually view GreenPeace's "facts" with quite a bit of skepticism, but I do the same with anything coming out of the Heartland Institute. Both organizations are so hell bent on political influence, that they can't maintain the objective view needed to supply useful facts. At some point science-with-a-political-slant becomes political-rhetoric-with-a-scientific-slant. Both of these organizations are well over that line.