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Photo by John Wagner

Photo by John Wagner

FAIRBANKS — Beer connoisseurs, especially those who enjoy the brisk and strong flavor of a beer packed heavy with hops, could have cause to fear. Local breweries have confirmed the threat of an international shortage of the essential beer ingredient — hops — has in fact made a local impact.

“Oh yes, we’ve definitely been hit, but it is industry wide,” said Glenn Brady, owner of local microbrewery Silver Gulch in Fox.

The causes are varied, mostly related to poor weather conditions at peak times of the growing season in the world’s most notable hops growing regions as well as a fire in a warehouse in Washington, but the effect, Brady and others said, has been consistent for all specialty brewers.

“It is definitely an industry-wide problem. When the cost of one of your four key ingredients goes up 500 percent, while another, malt, goes up about 50 percent, you are going to be affected by it,” said Ashley Johnston, communications manager for Alaska Brewing Co.

Both representatives insisted, to the delight of beer lovers state-wide, the challenges will not prevent the production of quality brews; it merely requires some innovation and preparation.

“We’ve had to adjust some recipes, because some varieties of the more bitter hops (that are high in alfalfa acid) are not even available anymore,” Brady said. “We’re reading sentiments of desperation in brewing journals, and everyone is talking about new things we can do.”

New things, Brady said, like substituting hops for other bittering agents, such as coffee, are ideas brewers are exploring. He said Silver Gulch’s new Imperial Coffee Stout, which relies on coffee instead of hops for much of the flavor, has been received very well, and the brewery has harvested about 50 pounds of spruce tips, hoping to develop a new recipe using spruce for a bittering agent.

“Everyone is trying to a lot more innovative. It changes the earlier trend, where everyone was trying to go for more and more hops, but now they have to rethink their master plan,” he said.

And brewers like Silver Gulch can’t be blamed when faced with an increase from $4 per pound to $40 per pound in just nine months.

Johnston said, as a larger brewery, Alaska Brewing Co. still sees the demand for the strong imperial beers featuring high hops and high alcohol content from consumers who favor the “strong, extreme flavor.” Facing the situation, owners Marcy and Jeff Larson stated it has been necessary, “unfortunately,” to pass some of that price on to the consumers, with an average increase of 50 cents per six pack over the past year. The company strives to keep its prices “consistent with the industry average.”

“As in any industry, when prices spike and shortages occur, everyone is affected by it. It is comforting to note that an increasing percentage of the American public are reaching for high-quality craft beers this year,” Marcy Larson stated in an email.

Johnston concurred, adding “people are still willing to pay a higher price for a high quality product, and we are still seeing sales increases across the board.”

Brady said while Silver Gulch has, for the moment, stopped brewing its hoppiest beer, Old Girk IPA — Indian Pale Ale, a brew known to be high in hop content — which was a seasonal beer. A similar favorite, Old 55 Pale Ale, which is the closest to the hoppy IPA flavor, will remain. Prices, he said, will remain uniform.

“We try to avoid having any beers head and shoulders above the rest, so if we had to boost prices that much we would not be marketing that style,” Brady said.

News of the hop shortage disaster began surfacing last fall, around the time hop harvests should have been pouring into breweries and warehouses. According to news sources such as National Public Radio, the beer industry faced “a triple-whammy” in 2007: bad weather including a drought in Australia and hail storms in Germany and Slovenia killed many crops; the United States saw a decrease in hops production — the number of US producers dropped from 515 growers in 1975 to just 45 in 2000, agitated further by the nation-wide push for ethanol crops like corn and soybeans — and the loss of over 2 million pounds of stored hops in a warehouse fire in Washington’s Yakema Valley. Headlines such as “Craft brewers reformulating beer to cope with hop shortage” began appearing, and now, Brady said, brewers are keeping their fingers crossed for a better 2008 harvest.

“We expect to hear in about a month about this harvests and we’re hopeful. That is when we’ll find out if the sky is really falling,” he said.

Unfortunately, in combination of rising fuel and food prices — the cost of all grains, including barley, another key beer ingredient, have gone up substantially in recent months — the problem is not expected to magically disappear. Johnston noted the cost of fuel is a major concern for a brewery like Alaska Brewing Co. which has to pay to have ingredients shipped up through Seattle, then have the final product distributed, often back down to Seattle and beyond.

“If trends continue we are probably going to have continue with decisions like the ones made this year,” she said. “But for now we are maintaining.”

Contact Features Editor Erica Goff at 459-7523.