UK: British hop growers in for a bumper year

A dry spell in Germany and a rising thirst for craft beer look set to provide a bumper year for British hop growers, The Times reported on August 1.

While German growers, which normally produce about a third of global supply, have been hit by a drought, British hop farms have enjoyed more benign weather and stand to benefit from any shortages and consequent price rises.

In addition, they are perfectly positioned to benefit from the craft beer boom because they chiefly grow aroma hops, which are used more intensively in fruity craft beers, as opposed to the alpha or bittering hops used to give standard beers their flavour. Merchants have suggested that a surplus of alpha hops that arose out of a bumper harvest in 2011 may finally be exhausted this year.

Ali Capper, a hop grower in Kent and a director of the British Hop Association, said: “On the whole we’ve had rain when we needed it and a lot of nice warm weather. There’s no crop shortfall here.

“All continental Europe has had the same hot, dry conditions and it does sound like there will be a crop shortfall in Germany, which is significant because it’s somewhere between 30 per cent and 35 per cent of the world acreage. It will have an effect on the world market.”

However, she added: “Any shortage and price spike will ultimately benefit British hop growers, but I’m not sure that there’s a shortage yet. The increase in acreage in the United States is something like 6 per cent of world acreage in the past 12 or 18 months, a massive increase. There would have to be a really significant shortfall on the Continent, otherwise there may well be balance.”

Hop acreage in the US has nearly doubled in the past five years, according to Hop Growers of America, although growers are devoting more land to higher-value aroma hops at the expense of the more homogeneous alpha hops that are the basis of mass-market lagers.

As well as drought, the German crop is also under coming pressure from a soil-borne disease called verticillium wilt, which affected British growers badly a few years ago.

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