Monday, November 19, 2007

Hops Shortage - An Unfolding Story

Overheard last night on The Brewing Network. The production of Mike McDole's winning entry, a Double IPA, in this year's LongShot competition will be postponed until the 2009 variety pack. I suppose that makes him a default winner in next year's competition. Jim Koch at Boston Beer said that they were unable to fill the hop bill. Another casualty in the continuing hop saga. If the recipe called for Cascade, Adam and I would be more than happy to pitch in our 5.5 pounds from this past year's harvest. But, what they really need is 2,500 pounds each of Centennial, Columbus, Simcoe, and Warrior. It'll be interesting to see how many more stories like this we'll begin as the next couple of years go by.

5 comments:

Bryan Kolesar said...

So, I had no clue about the idiots-run-amok over at BA until I went to Monday Night Tasting tonight. When I mentioned what I'd heard about McDole's IPA and BBC, Wanderin' Joe said something about the BA thread. I had no clue. (I wished it'd stayed that way.)

So, I checked it out tonight. Bad on me. I'm so glad that I've been on a BA hiatus lately. (Save for a self-serving thread I started myself.)

I won't even link to the ridiculous thread that was started last night after the news made its way out from The Brewing Network.

Anyway, though, I will link to Todd Alstrom's follow-up, more accurately, Jim Koch's follow-up which so professionally responded to the shallow-minded boneheads. Rant over.

kmudrick said...

Yeah, threads like that make me really question the usefulness of the BA forums.

Anonymous said...

I had no idea that thread was started but just reading the first few posts it gets me annoyed. It is funny to step back sometimes and read some of these types of posts where people just pile on with absolutely no backing for what they are saying.

I guess it is just another opportunity to slam BBC which alot of people seem to like to do.

It is also interesting that some people think that if you throw enough money around, the hops will magically appear. Doesn't work that way.

If they brewed the beer now and raised the price a fair bit to cover some of the additional cost, I bet the same people that were slamming them for not brewing the think would then slam them for raising the price.

Travis said...

I use BA for homebrewing advice. The beer rating system is jacked up and all the opinion crap is unnecessary. My wife took a wine and spirits tasting class and the teacher started the class by saying

"the only thing that matters is if you like it, if Boones taste good to you, than that is good wine."

Same goes for beer in my opinion. If you like yellow fizz, have at it hoss. Different strokes for different folks. We do our selves a disservice when we turn our nose up at people. Beer isn't snobby, it's fun!

Adam said...

I'll take the tip and stay away from the forum for another couple months ;-) Check out the Realbeer forums for something with a bit less noise. Of course it is a bit home brew skewed.

Travis, you said it man! You like what you like :-)