How expensive are hops? They’re on eBay

Samuel Adams hops sampleWe should have seen this coming. The “hops crisis” has reached the point that hops are up for sale on eBay.

Forget the bottles of Stone Epic Vertical and Lost Abbey Angel’s Share. Now you can buy the pure stuff. Just rip open the package and stick your nose in (somewhat like the drawing on the package).

Dump the hops into your beer. OK, that might not be such a good idea.

Granted, these promotional packages from Boston Beer won’t take you far. One weighs about 4 grams (and that includes the packaging). But think of it like gold &#151 the price is only going up.

Don Russell (Joe Sixpack) had a terrific column last week in which Dan Weirback of Weyerbacher Brewing in Pennsylvania talked specifically about how much more he is paying for hops and what it means for prices. Double Simcoe IPA (the No. 2 rated beer in the NY Times “extreme” tasting) will cost $15-$18 per case more.

It’s scary out there right now.

I got a look at latest prices on a one-page price sheet from GW Kent (dated Dec. 20) when I stopped in at a local brewery. A 44-pound box of German Hallertau Select is selling for $440, or $11 a pound. Not bad, until you notice the alpha acids on this delicate hop are just 1.5%. That’s not going to add much bitterness.

This provides a graphic illustration that it’s really a worldwide alpha shortage driving up hop prices. Not alpha that is going into niche beers like Double Imperial IPAs but into the millions of gallons of industrial pale lagers with just enough bitterness to balance any malt sweetness.

The giant brewing companies making those beers shop for “kilograms of alpha.” In November the going price was about 600 euros per kg of alpha. If my math is correct, the prices on this sheet are more like 870 euros per kg. Doesn’t seem we’re headed in the right direction.

Hallertau Mittelfrueh (which is in the Samuel Adams package) costs $1,144 for a 44-pound box (4.5% alpha), while Hallertau Tradition has a little more pop (5.5% alpha) and costs $1,276.

Disclaimer: I received one of these packages in a press kit. Words on the back support the notion “Hops are to beer what grapes are to wine,” discuss the hopping levels of Boston Lager versus industrial beers and promote “noble” hops.

But I particularly like a warning on the front that hops “are NOT intended for ingestion. So please smell, do not eat.”

The package is going on a shelf with Daria’s collection of Prohibition-era hop boxes, many of which still contain hops about three quarters of a century old (none of which we are tempted to sample).

Thursday morning musing: Take the quiz

One quick link this morning if you want to see just where your priorities lie.

Matt Van Wyk of Flossmoor Station Restaurant & Brewery assembled a quick quiz. A couple of his questions:

4) Did you lose a friend this year because you said SNPA was so yesterday?

5) Do you only drink a beer once and then move on to the next one?

Plenty to read if you follow the link to brewvana that provoked his post and a similar conversation at The Beer Mapping Project (be sure to scroll down to Matt’s comments for another giggle).

Perhaps I’ll have some thoughtful musing about this later, but I’ve already used up my thinking-about-beer time for the morning. Priorities are priorities, right Matt?

I’d rather have a beer with Dennis Kucinich

Clinton vs. ObamaNot only do I not care if my beer is hip, but I also will not cast my vote for president (in the primary or general election) based upon which candidate I would rather have a beer with.

That’s just a dumb idea.

Obviously the National Beer Wholesalers Association leadership wasn’t thinking of me when they came up with an online poll that lets you vote on who you would most like to have a beer with.

Apparently George Bush was that guy in 2000. Don’t people know he doesn’t drink?

So today we’ve got this story in the San Francisco Chronicle about how Barack Obama needs a good turnout among wine drinkers to have a chance of winning the California Democratic primary.

The big showdown between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could come down to California’s “beer-drinking Democrats” versus its “wine and cheese” liberals – with the Bay Area playing a pivotal role in the outcome.

Pollster Mark DiCamillo, who has been taking the state’s political pulse for 30 years, describes the beer vote as mostly blue-collar workers, the elderly and ethnic Democrats, especially Latinos, in the Los Angeles area and rural parts of the state.

The more liberal, more educated, wine-and-cheese crowd congregates here in the Bay Area, where more than a quarter of the ballots will be cast in the Democratic primary Feb. 5, he says.

And as DiCamillo sees it, the blue-collar group likes Clinton and the wine-and-cheesers go more for Obama.

“If Obama has any chance of winning California, we should see it here in the Bay Area,” DiCamillo said. “And he’ll have to be winning here by double digits” – no easy task, considering the Clintons’ long popularity in the area.

So who’s leading the beer NBWA’s poll?

Obama.

Isn’t he supposed to be the wine guy?

But what about high-priced water?

Monday’s post about wine prices and perception caused Josh Mishell of Flying Dog Ales and BeerDinners.com to drop me a note about an episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! (Showtime) featuring a “water steward” hawking high-priced bottled water — in bottles being filled from a garden hose out back.

Thanks, Josh.

Took all of 15 seconds to find it on YouTube.

The “beer steward” stuff starts about two minutes in.

So now we know beer drinkers are smarter than wine drinkers and water drinkers.

Barrels II: What’s the point?

Continuing last week’s discourse about barrel-aged beers the thought occurred to me I hadn’t bothered to mention why we even care. It’s not the the story behind any of these beers that matters first, but what’s in the glass. Some you would call spectacular, but there’s good reason to appreciate beers that gain extra complexity, nuance, structure, texture, etc. from wood without romping directly to spectacular.

You can’t polish a turd

If you’re not familiar with this term from my Midwestern youth you can probably figure out the meaning. Barrel-aging does not make a bad beer good. It does not necessarily make a good beer better, and may even make it worse.

Case in point: A few months after Goose Island introduced Bourbon County Stout in 1995 we were at Abita’s brewpub in Abita Springs, La., and they had Dickel Dog on tap (a draft-only experiment). It was something akin to a regular-strength brown ale aged in George Dickel bourbon barrels. Bourbon flavors totally overwhelmed the base beer. A beer that was likely perfectly good going into the barrel was, to my taste, no longer enjoyable.

And then there are the beers that were not particularly good going into wood . . .

So start with good beer

Think it’s chance that the two versions of Lost Abbey Angel’s Share (one from bourbon barrels, the other from brandy barrels) are the top two rated barley wines at Rate Beer? Or perhaps that the beers that went into the barrels were pretty exceptional.

BrewDog ParadoxAnother example would be Paradox from Scottish micro BrewDog. First shipments of BrewDog beers are due in the U.S. at the end of the month.

In less than a year BrewDog has grabbed attention for beers across the spectrum — both malt- and hop-centric &#151 and a certain attitude. “They’d be comfortable in San Diego,” one British judge at the Great American Beer Festival said.

For instance, the label for Punk IPA reads, “It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to appreciate the depth, character and quality of this premium craft brewed beer.” And, “Just back back to drinking your mass marketed, bland, cheaply made watered down lager, and close the door behind you.”

To create Paradox, founders James Watt and Martin Dickie age a strong stout (Rip Tide, not quite a strong at 8% abv, won “Best Imperial Stout” in the Beers of the World competition) in whisky casks from Duncan Taylor.

The beers spend four to six months in wood. “Some types of casks instill the flavors quicker than others, we constantly monitor them and decide when they are ready,” Watt explained via e-mail. The version I had was aged in Islay casks, and some drinkers may find the intense blast of smoke, peat and even a bit of iodine startling when compared to beer from bourbon barrels.

But if you like distinctive Scotch whisky such as Laphroaig or Ardbeg then you’ll find that the stout rounds the whisky flavors left in the barrels and vice versa, creating something altogether new.

Finding balance (with wood)

So you see it can take a beer of some heft to stand up to the intensity of barrels that once held spirits. That’s not the direction every brewer chooses to go. For instance, Will Meyers of Cambridge Brewing near Boston lets barrels that once held bourbon dry out, then dehydrates them to avoid an impression of “heat” that can come with spirits.

Anyway, the DRAFT and Imbibe stories were about how brewers are finding flavors never previously associated with beer and there’s no need to repeat all of that here.

Instead a little more from Matt Trevisan, the winemaker at Linne Calodo Winery who helped set the blends for Firestone 10 and Firestone 11, because it’s a chance to look down another road available to brewers.

Trevisan was discussing how tannins from wood add to mouthfeel and the decisions that go into choosing a level of toast (that’s barrel talk) when he explained the idea of “dressing up the wine.”

Three months in wood will do that. “It jumps out of the mouth, the aromatics at the start and the impression at the finish,” he said. “It’s shorter in structure, but it jumps.”

That changes after six months in a barrel. “You’ll think that you’ve over-oaked it,” he said. “Then by 12 to 15 months it will integrate and soften. The impression of wood won’t be as strong.”

A lot to learn.