Comments on: Hops: Ugh, the saga continues

By: Jeff Alworth

Jeff Alworth — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:03:32 +0000

Lew, yeah, two kinds of homemade. The homemade you’re talking about comes from the pre-deregulation period, when all companies in India had to be owned by Indian firms. That meant all the hooch was made by Indians for Indians who knew bupkis about hooch. So you ended up with very strange facsimiles of the original liquors. In 1989, I bought a bottle of Johnny Walker on a regional flight back into India from Nepal and sold it on the black market to a dubious-looking fellow in a back alley. It was after a 7-month stint in South Asia, and I’d risked my last $20 on the chance I could get enough to pay for a hotel room and dinner for a few nights. It worked!

The other homemade hooch is what people really drink in numbers because it’s cheap and strong.

I haven’t followed the tax issue, but that’s definitely the main barrier. I have no doubt Vijay “Wish I Would Have Bought Full Sail” Mallya’s on that. Big bucks to be made if he can get the price down.

By: Lew Bryson

Lew Bryson — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:13:32 +0000

OH, wait: by “home-made” I meant domestic production, the manufactured and bottled stuff, not what’s referred to as “Mekong whisky” in other parts of Asia, the kind you get in cloudy plastic bottles.

The Indian distillers keep bugging the EU to let them sell it in Europe as “whisky.” My opinion: they can sell all they want in the EU, so long as they call it what the rest of the world calls molasses-based distillate: rum.

By: Lew Bryson

Lew Bryson — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:10:29 +0000

Hey, Jeff, you won’t get an argument from me on Indian “whisky.” I’m already on record in Malt Advocate on that: it ain’t whisky. Period. And the taxes are heading down, according to what I”m reading, anyway. Our boy Vijay “I bought Mendocino” Mallya is in the catbird seat.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:39:26 +0000

Lew, whisky and beer are very different bags. Whisky is a big value in terms of booze per ounce. Beer is downscale and big bucks. I don’t have stats, but my guess is that a sizeable percentage of it is sold to visitors. (A single bottle–usually a large one–often costs more than an entire meal at a restaurant.)

And that moonshine should not be refered to as “whisky.” Periodically a bad batch blinds an entire village. That’s strictly low-income, off-grid stuff. I have had a nice tipple of it in the foothills of the Himalayas, though. Clean and strong.

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:01:16 +0000

Todd, We should discuss.

I’ve mailed you two an e-mail introduction so you can carry on the conversation. (Not that I mind if it persists here; up to you guys.)

By: Swordboarder

Swordboarder — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:35:14 +0000

Todd,
We should discuss. As craft brewers we are very interested in varieties of flavors. Percent alpha means nothing to us when we’re looking for flavor.

Are you familiar with the concept of dry hopping? We get little to no bitterness from the process, but can use 1-3 pounds of hops per barrel in order to get the flavors we’re looking for.

By: Lew Bryson

Lew Bryson — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:05:57 +0000

Jeff,
Don’t bet on Indians not buying booze. India is an immense market for whisky — home-made (made from stuff like molasses, fergodssake) and imported (which just got a huge boost from a drop in ridiculously high import duties) — and as the economy booms they are expected to buy a lot more to enjoy the fruits of their labors. We talk about this a lot in the whisky biz.

By: Jay Brooks

Jay Brooks — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:16:42 +0000

Late to the party, as usual, but I heard a good news/bad news stat regarding acreage and high alphas (and I’ve confirmed it from two reliable sources). At the annual hop conference in late January, it was announced that between 5-7,000 new acres will be planted in the Pacific NW this year, around 6,000 in and around Yakima, and the rest split between Oregon and Idaho. That’s the good news, obviously. The bad? Almost all of it will be high alpha varieties.

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 22:49:37 +0000

Jeff – You should have waited a week for the Arizona Strong Ale Festival. Too bad.

I haven’t heard too much concern – a little, particularly smaller breweries/pub who have had shipments delayed but been promised “it won’t be a problem” – about 2008 contracts not being honored.

But a lot about availability and prices in 2009. And about what’s been discussed here – the rush to plant high alpha hops that have high yields, are disease resistant and don’t catch fire in the warehouse.

By: Jeff Alworth

Jeff Alworth — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 22:09:59 +0000

Hey Stan, I’m sorta in your neck of the woods today–in Arizona. Okay, not exactly, but a lot closer than Oregon. And right on cue, my Mom asked about the hop crisis, and I had no new news–but now I do.

You hint that breweries with contracts may not be sitting pretty, and this is something I’ve wondered about. Remember that famous scene in Seinfeld when Jerry turns up at the car rental place, but they haven’t held his reservation? I wonder if that’s going to be the reality once the summer brewing season kicks in. I should poke around and see what Oregon brewers are reporting.

On the India-China thing, it’s an interesting development. Indian beers are uniformly crap, and designed to be that way. Alcohol is frowned upon in India, so mainly drinking beer is for getting drunk, so common labels are “He Man” and “Knock Out.” Also, they’re prohibitively expensive thanks to massive local taxes. So I wouldn’t expect that market to grow too fast. But I have a special talent for bad predictions.