Dated 7/8/08
Brewing News For You!!
Wine making time has started, I have heard that Door County is having a problem with there tart cherry's this year. I believe it has to do with the dry summer last year and the cold winter we had this year, I think we all know about that one. I have alot of people coming in for yeast in making rhubarb all the way to spring time dandelion wine, it's great to see the people enjoying this great hobby.
I would like to let you know that the wine yeast sherry will not be avalable this year. I have no information on why, but I would think it is due to a bad strain, who knows. In store we have a variety of wine presses, crushers and destemers, on hand. If your looking into the purchase of one we have them on hand.
Brewing beer with the hop shortage this year has been just fine as long as you can make adjustments to a different hop. Most brewers come in knowing this and have no troubles changing there hops, in fact alot have it changed before they even get here. So a thanks to all of you for the understanding. We have just been allocated more hops for this year, with a bigger quanity and bigger assortment our fridge is well stocked.
We now have a new dry yeast for all you brewers. We brought in the Safbrew line of yeast that consist of six diffrent varieties. They shall arrive around July 17th, if you brew with this strains they will now be avalable at our store.
Now that we've been speaking to our distributers in preparation for the upcoming hop harvest, we exspect 2009 to be pretty similar to this year. Every increase in supply that we've received this year has come in at higher prices.
It's impossible to predict exactly what any agricultural crop will be like until that crop has been harvest. But, we can make some assumptions. In Europe, it's unlikely that 50% of Slovenia's harvest will be wiped out again by hail. This will ease demand somewhat from Europe but Slovenia represents only a percentage of the global supply.
So, what we have is an increase in supply from Europe, a slight decrease in the U.S. The net will probably be a slight increase in total production but we are still a long ways from equilibrium.
Also, the variety mix has begun to change substantially. New hop acreage went in but that won't help until next year. To make matters worse, aroma acreage was taken out to be replaced with alpha varieties. This decreased the total yield for this year in anticipation of the higher prices alpa varieties will command.
In short, we can exspect next year to be a progression of this year in which supply could be found but always at higher prices then we like.