A live report from Yakima station KIMA29 from the hop harvest in September. This reporter seems REALLY into hops. But hey, we probably would be pretty excited to be there too, hop-heads that we are.
And this news story, featuring Chris Miller, head brewer of Snipes Mountain Brewing, explaining why brewers are paying through the nose for hops again this year despite the hop surplus:
(Thanks to Snipes Mountain Brewing for linking to these stories on Facebook.)
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I liked the first video… it’s always exciting seeing the hop harvest. The second video seemed somewhat one-sided – like the reporter didn’t do their due diligence and just bothered to call up one brewery. I guess TV reporting often isn’t intended to cover the full story so maybe that was intentional.
I think some breweries aren’t locked into contract prices, and some have better contract prices than Snipes. And I’m not sure which Seattle brewery he claimed went out of business because of high hop prices (anyone know?) but it seems hard to believe that solely the hop prices made them go out of business. There are plenty of breweries that thrived and grew during 2007-2008 so it’s more about quality of beer and marketing of it that will determine a brewery’s fate.
Hey, that’s my stuttering self in that video too! Whee!