What prices mean for your beer – it doesn’t matter where it is stirred

You may be tempted to cry in your beer on all recent problems with the economy and the rise in prices of … well, everything.

Unfortunately, your beer will also be more expensive. No matter what you think of the American prices imposed on most nations in the world, they will have an impact on us all and on the beer industry. If you think: “Please no, I just want to relax with my favorite beer and not think of politics”, I would have liked to have better news.

Related: coffee roasts in the bay region have struck prices in “Perfect Storm”

As experts noted like Bart Watson, president of the Brewers Association, a commercial group representing thousands of small American brewers, the industry is faced with several “challenges of uncertainty” at the moment.

Here’s how prices could affect beer consumers like you.

Stir up locally

Even if your favorite beer is infiltrated locally, many ingredients and packaging come from far away – in some cases, very far. While many varieties of hops grow on the west coast, especially in Oregon and Washington, there are some that can only be cultivated in distant places such as New Zealand, the Hallertau region of Germany or Kent, England. For example, to make many authentic styles of blond beers, you need a specific hop group called “noble hop”, which can only be cultivated in Europe.

But perhaps even more disturbing, it is that a large part of barley and wheat made your beer from Canada, Europe and Australia. Similar to hops, specific strains of barley and wheat are used to produce specific tastes in different styles of beer. It is the combination of these ingredients that gives beer its variety of apparently infinite flavors.

For example, it is not uncommon to see a beer based on barley of Canada, a little specialized malt of Germany and varieties of hop New Zealand, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. These ingredients from the whole map meet in your local brewery and, when they are skillfully combined by the brewer, create the unique flavors of the beer you like.

There is really no other way that it can be done, and many breweries do not know how to solve this problem other than by increasing prices.

Aluminum and steel

It will also become more expensive to bring beer home or pick it up to the grocery store. Over the past decade, canned beer has dominated craft beer. But the imposition of a 25% rate on aluminum will wreak havoc with the price of a six -year pack – especially since the rates affecting aluminum and steel have not been interrupted.

Another related problem is metallic barrels: around 99% of all barrels come from the European Union or China. Unfortunately, the more expensive barrels will also mean higher prices for your pint.

Then there are the costs to maintain or upgrade the brewing equipment with stainless steel components. Although there are manufacturers of American brewing equipment, many manufacturers of leading and respected equipment are from Europe and China. Buying them could become almost impossible for new breweries looking to open their first brewery.

Many speculate that the price of a six pack could reach $ 20, with pints up to $ 12.

In other words, breweries will have to pay more – much more in many cases – to buy the ingredients they need to do their beer. Even if you could find a local substitute, and even if you could convince farmers to move completely what they push to meet the needs of brewers, it would still take years to change. The hops, for example, takes three years to generate a full return.

What to do?

This could not have happened at a worst time for a beer industry which is not completely recovered from the ravages of COVVI-19 locking.

In the short term, it cannot hurt to call or write your Congress member and express your concerns. But with chaos and uncertainty surrounding how and when the prices are applied, most breweries wait to see exactly where they land when dust settles.