"...the [USA] federal government recently reported that global warming may affect the taste and cost of beer..."
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/01/27/noaa-globa... Quote:NOAA: Global warming may affect your beer and its price
POLITICS NOW
As if the prospects of coastal flooding, hotter summers and species extinction were not enough to get your attention, the federal government recently reported that global warming may affect the taste and cost of beer.
No, we're not talking about warm beer.
Heat and drought threaten to increase the cost of hops, which give beer much of its flavor, reported the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate.gov website, and brewers in California have been scrambling to deal with water shortages that may or may not be related to global warming.
An article posted on Climate.gov earlier this month says almost all of the United States' hop production occurs in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, which saw a hotter and drier growing season in 2015 that threatened the size of the hops crop. June temperatures in the three states were the highest since the 1890s.
Hops production ultimately rose 11 percent last year over 2014 and the value of the crop jumped by a third, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. That doesn't sound so bad for growers until you notice that acreage planted in hops increased 14.8 percent, meaning growers had to work harder to produce the same amount of hops. USDA attributed the increase in value to a switch to varieties that are higher in value and increased demand from craft brewers.
Hops growers apparently came through 2015 in reasonably good shape, but it is not clear whether that will always be the case. Scientists at the University of Washington say the likelihood of dry summers with temperatures greater than some hops like will rise as global warming increases. The impact varies with the variety of hops.
CNBC reported in July that growers incurred additional expenses because of water shortages and quoted an investment banker as saying the long-term trend will be for higher hops prices.
"You have a shortage of water. You're going to have more demand from the craft breweries, and so you kind of pass the inflection point where the demand is greater for hops than the supply," said Michael Butler, chairman and CEO of Seattle-based Cascadia Capital. "The consumer will pay a higher price for beer. That is without question."
Ceres, a sustainability advocacy organization, said last March that hop prices had risen more than 250 percent over the previous decade because of increased demand and lower yields.
The future effects of warming on hops production are not completely known. Increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere boosts some plant growth, and it's possible hops growing could shift further north as temperatures rise, although the transition could create extra costs for growers.
Farther south in California, falling river levels related to a historic drought have pressured some brewers, Climate.gov reported.
National Public Radio said in 2014 that some were concerned by the prospect of having to switch to groundwater, which often has high mineral content.
NPR quoted Jeremy Marshall, head brewer at Lagunitas Brewing Co. in Petaluma, as saying brewing with groundwater there "would be like brewing with Alka-Seltzer."
These worries help explain support for action on global warming from a number of brewers, including at least a couple with breweries in the Asheville area, New Belgium Brewery and Sierra Nevada Brewing.
More than 42 signed a "Brewery Climate Declaration" last March to bring attention to climate change issues and many have taken steps to decrease their environmental impact. It will be interesting to see how many push for government action on warming as well.
LInks to some of the coverage of the issue are below:
The Climate.gov story: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-and/climate-beer
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