I read about this in several places on the web including a blog calle "Fabrichorse" where I nicked the above photo...
Apart from their Double Bock and Scotch Ale what is so good about Jim Koch and Samuel Adam's? Lot's apparently. For quite some time now people have brewed beer using barley, yeast, water and hops. These ingredients were happily plentiful and many made merry with modestly priced beer. Then, sports fans the hop regions suffered a drought and the hop vines that did not dry up and die outright fell victim to disease. The harvest was small. The brewers took comfort and solace in the old saw, "Well, one year won't kill us." With so many hops in the bank (warehouses), they might get a little more expensive.... " Did I say warehouse ... you all recall reading about a tragic fire in a major hops warehouse?? It even made it to the local papers. That fire consumed much of the nation's strategic hop reserve. Hops, that noble vine and key ingrdient in American craft beer-making (think IPA, Double IPA, Imperial IPA yada yada) became scarce. A scramble to find Hops was on, at least among the America's craft brewers. Distributors began to raise their prices, from $3 a pound to upwards of $30 a pound, and brewers began to worry. Just as a signficant diversity in American beer was settling in, marking a new "Golden Age of Brewing" on this side of the ocean, the microbrew industry faced an uncertain hopless future ... spruce tips anyone??? Ouch!!!
Most of the market's remaining hops were already contracted to huge breweries who could afford to finance a producer's entire hop crop. Craft brewries were calling their suppliers to no avail... Add to this the cost of Barley going up as more acres switched over to corn for ethanol and the future looked bleak indeed.
As this story sounds like something from the "Perils of Pauline" we need a white knight. And so it we have one in the unlikely form of Jim Koch and his Boston Brewing Company ("BBC") BBC has become part of the major leagues, if they brew craft brewed beers its clearly on a macro brew scale. They are a major national brewery whose beers are almost everywhere, but they still cling to the spirit of craft brewing. They brew some edgy beers such as their"Imperial Pilsner" and "Utopias". Every year in advance of the Great American Beer festival, they sponsor a homebrew competition and produce a mix-six of the top three brews (called "Longshot"). These practices keep them on the craft side of the Macro vs. Micro American Beer divide. When Koch heard about the impact of the hop shortage on small brewers, he set aside 20,000 pounds of BBC's own hops for small brewers to purchase at cost their cost which was-- far below market prices (apparently $6 a pound). Apparently a brewery could request up to 528 pounds each and brewers were asked to apply only if they really needed hops and not because they'd merely save money. Nearly 350 microbreweries applied for them, which is nearly a quarter of American brewers and the the lot of them were raffled off in a lottery. Way to go Mr. Koch.
In the meantime, beerlovers are hoping the next two harvests will be than the last. Hats off to BBC and their fine example. This is also fairly shrewd on BBC's part. Keeping the craft beer movement vibrant will only serve to strengthen BBC's standing with todays discriminating beer drinkers.
Most of the market's remaining hops were already contracted to huge breweries who could afford to finance a producer's entire hop crop. Craft brewries were calling their suppliers to no avail... Add to this the cost of Barley going up as more acres switched over to corn for ethanol and the future looked bleak indeed.
As this story sounds like something from the "Perils of Pauline" we need a white knight. And so it we have one in the unlikely form of Jim Koch and his Boston Brewing Company ("BBC") BBC has become part of the major leagues, if they brew craft brewed beers its clearly on a macro brew scale. They are a major national brewery whose beers are almost everywhere, but they still cling to the spirit of craft brewing. They brew some edgy beers such as their"Imperial Pilsner" and "Utopias". Every year in advance of the Great American Beer festival, they sponsor a homebrew competition and produce a mix-six of the top three brews (called "Longshot"). These practices keep them on the craft side of the Macro vs. Micro American Beer divide. When Koch heard about the impact of the hop shortage on small brewers, he set aside 20,000 pounds of BBC's own hops for small brewers to purchase at cost their cost which was-- far below market prices (apparently $6 a pound). Apparently a brewery could request up to 528 pounds each and brewers were asked to apply only if they really needed hops and not because they'd merely save money. Nearly 350 microbreweries applied for them, which is nearly a quarter of American brewers and the the lot of them were raffled off in a lottery. Way to go Mr. Koch.
In the meantime, beerlovers are hoping the next two harvests will be than the last. Hats off to BBC and their fine example. This is also fairly shrewd on BBC's part. Keeping the craft beer movement vibrant will only serve to strengthen BBC's standing with todays discriminating beer drinkers.
