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

[Missing_dc]

and I believe Gordon Parsons summed it up with a song.....
  (though I'm not terribly sure it was origionally his)

Pub with no Beer

It's lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night where the wild dingos call
But there's nothin' so lonesome, so dull or so drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer

Now the publican's anxious for the quota to come
There's a faraway look on the face of the bum
The maid's gone all cranky and the cook's acting queer
What a terrible place is a pub with no beer

The stockman rides up with his dry, dusty throat
He breasts up to the bar, pulls a wad from his coat
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer
When the barman says suddenly: "The pub's got no beer!"

There's a dog on the verandah, for his master he waits
But the boss is inside drinking wine with his mates
He hurries for cover and he cringes in fear
It's no place for a dog round a pub with no beer

Then in comes the swagman, all covered with flies
He throws down his roll, wipes the sweat from his eyes
But when he is told he says, "What's this I hear?
I've trudged fifty flamin' miles to a pub with no beer!"

Old Billy, the blacksmith, the first time in his life
Has gone home cold sober to his darling wife
He walks in the kitchen; she says: "You're early, me dear"
Then he breaks down and he tells her that the pub's got no beer

It's lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night where the wild dingos call
But there's nothin' so lonesome, so dull or so drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer

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...

Now THATS a problem

[alexborges]

I told you the world wasnt going to end, i told you it would be MUCH worse.

Here we face a HOT future with NO BEER!

I vote for the government to start giving away suicide packs (but not legalize mariguana).

Hmmm...

[AndGodSed]

Now there's an inconvenient truth for you...

Uh, not due to climate change though...

[JRHelgeson]

The reductions in Malted Barley yields are a direct result of more farmers growing corn in place of barley in order to produce ethanol. The price of corn has gone up because demand has gone up, so therefore more farmers are producing/planting/harvesting corn.

Just once, why can't one of our poorly considered quick fixes work?

Re:Going on two years

[PoliTech]

Considering that 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop was converted into 5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, (and that amount replaced only 1 percent of U.S. oil consumption). The prices of food products containing barley and wheat are also on the rise because farmers are switching to growing subsidized corn crops instead of other less profitable grain crops. Dwindling barley feedstock supplies also currently coincide with a pretty large reduction in other crops used as livestock feed, prices of which are also climbing. Thus another unintended consequence is the increase in the price of meat and dairy products consumers are currently experiencing as well. We haven't even started to talk about how diesel fuel prices are simultaneously causing food, feedstock, and crop prices to skyrocket.

Re:Trying to regulate every little thing is stupid

[Sciros]

Your idea will totally work because humans don't actually have any desire to procreate!

This might be a difficult concept to grasp, but there is no objective "good environment" as far as the planet is concerned. There is only the question of how good the environment is for whatever particular life to thrive. Even if your "modest proposal" wasn't HIT-MY-HEAD-AGAINST-THE-WALL-TO-RESTART-MY-BRAIN-CRAZY, to say that in order to achieve a "good environment" we would have to lose 90% of the human population, means it's NOT a good environment for humanity.

Seriously, that line of reasoning will kill braincells of rational people trying to follow it. It's the same thing as saying that because the current global ecosystem is unable to sustain the current population of white rhinos, what we should do is "humanely" drop their population to 10% of today's so that they can each have plenty of resources.