Contracts

There’s a hop surplus now and a flush spot market, but that won’t always be true. What do hop merchants say brewers should be asking, to ensure quality and spend wisely?

Tough times are ahead for hop merchants and farmers coping with surplus stocks and stalling demand. After enjoying wider selection and lower prices in the short term, are brewers ready for what comes next?

There are hops in abundance, but beer sales are unpredictable—it’s no mystery why many small breweries are relying on the spot market. Yet many suppliers are aiming to lure brewers back to more flexible contracts that better suit today’s market.

Breaking up, as they say, is hard to do. When a brewery and its cofounder or head brewer part ways, planning ahead goes a long way toward helping to prevent acrimony.

Growers have reduced acreage, but that’s only part of a complex story. As the 2023 harvest approaches, balancing the market means reducing surpluses and figuring out how to do a better job of measuring true demand.

Many hop growers are cutting back on acreage this year, aiming to re-balance supply and demand while a large surplus sits in inventory. Here is some context on the situation and what it will mean for brewers.

From packaging mix to vendor contracts, here are areas that deserve breweries’ attention when margins are shrinking and every dollar counts.

Hop growers face a tough decision every year: What do we plant? Claire Desmarais, sales and marketing manager for CLS Farms in Washington, explains how growers navigate the tricky supply and demand driven by brewers and drinkers.

In this first installment of a series focusing on the long-term outlook for hops—and issues likely to affect brewers beyond 2022—Stan Hieronymus considers hop stunt viroid, as well as the future of the hop upon which American craft was built.

In this ongoing series that looks at hop-related issues that will matter to brewers in the years to come, Stan Hieronymus spotlights the need to think ahead when it comes to securing the future of some valued hops from the past.

How much should you lock in on a hops contract, and for how long? How much should you rely on the spot market? Here are three perspectives on how to make sure your brewery has the hops it needs.