The quality of our beers is at stake. Climate change is a serious threat to hops. Beer lovers may soon be disappointed.
It's getting harder to grow coffee, tea and grapes on a hotter planet - and now researchers say climate change could affect your beer too.
A new study released Tuesday finds that drought and higher temperatures will lead to a decline in the quality and quantity of hops, the aromatic plant that gives beer its flavor.
By 2050, according to the study, yields for traditional aromatic hops in Europe will decline by 4 to 18 percent. The production of hop acids, which are crucial for aromatization, will decrease by 20 to 31 percent.
Hop farmers are already feeling the effects.
“In recent decades we have noticed a decline in hop quality,” says Miroslav Trnka of the Czech Academy of Sciences, one of the researchers on the new study published in the journal Nature Communications.
“I’m sure we can find a way to breed hops that can withstand these conditions in the future,” he said. But, he added, “you can’t wait until the industry collapses.”
Hops: A delicate flower
Hops present a greater challenge to adapt than wheat or barley because they are a more difficult crop.
“If you look at the map and see where the hop growing regions are, you can see that they are in a pretty narrow band of latitude,” says Chuck Skypeck of the Brewers Association in the United States. “They are very sensitive to light.
Hops need long days of sunlight during the growing season. It then takes a few months of colder temperatures and shorter days to flower and produce the part of the plant used in brewing beer. For this reason, hops are typically grown in a narrow range of higher latitudes, such as Central Europe and the Pacific Northwest.
As climate change makes cultivation more difficult in Europe, demand for hops has exploded from breweries adapting to changing tastes. In recent years, the booming craft beer industry has led to increasing demand for high-quality hops to make IPAs and hoppy lagers.
“Craft brewers love hops in their IPAs,” says Skypeck. “As a result, we have seen that emerging hop growing areas are really struggling because they do not meet these conditions.
In the United States, hops are grown primarily in the Yakima Valley, where humidity is low and conditions are optimal for the delicate plant. These are different conditions than in Europe – and there is more infrastructure for irrigation as this region is used to low rainfall. But US hop farmers have also had some tough summers.
Adapting to a new normal
For the Carlsberg Group in Copenhagen, experimentation and adaptation are not new - but there is a new sense of urgency. Although the brewing company gave up hop farming shortly after World War II, it has reinvested in this research in recent years. Part of the project was to sequence the entire hop genome to better understand how the plant could be adapted to be more resilient in new climate conditions.
“It will be difficult,” says Birgitte Skadhauge, head of the Carlsberg Research Laboratory and professor at the University of Copenhagen. “It's really science and innovation that needs to help us develop some of the new major breakthroughs and revolutions to deal with this very extreme weather.
She suggests it might be possible to breed hops to be heat or drought tolerant. “Genes can help us breed even more robust plants,” she said.
It's hard to say exactly how these challenges for hop farmers will impact consumers. The changing quality and quantity of hops could affect the taste of your favorite beer - or simply make it more expensive if brewers have to use more hops to achieve the same taste.
“I would be surprised if we found a silver bullet solution because the changes are really complex,” says Trnka. Nevertheless, he is optimistic about the prospects for adjustments in European hop cultivation.
Perhaps the trickier part of the equation is limiting global warming.
“Adaptation is possible, but only if warming is limited to a reasonable level,” said Trnka.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on October 10, 2023 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.