There is a disaster brewing for beer drinkers that is an ugly lesson in global interdependence.

For the last twenty years there has been a global glut of hops, the fragrant conical heads of the female hop plant that lend beer many of its distinctive aromas and bitterness. Flavours from floral to fruity can be coaxed from different varieties into beer during the brewing process. It had been a grim era to be a grower of this obscure agricultural commodity with prices falling to around $6 a kilo. Each hop vine yields up to a kilogram of hops. While the global production and thirst for beer was increasing, it barely dented the supply of the resinous flower.

In 2006, prior to anybody taking the forthcoming global food crisis seriously, a small fire started the conflagration of global hops. It began in October 4, 2006 with a fire in a warehouse in Yakima, Washington. That otherwise underreported event resulted in 4 percent of America's hops turning to ash in a single, unimaginably fragrant wall of smoke. The more resinous varieties of hops stored in the warehouse may have spontaneously combusted due to heat building up in the bales.

With the growing demand for corn ethanol for fuel and soaring food prices in early 2007, American farmers were easily lured away from hops and diverted their production into higher value (or more predictable) crops. In the older hops growing districts in New York State, hops farms had already been sold into housing tracts. Hailstorms in Germany and Slovenia dented hops production, along with lower rainfall in the rest of Europe and full scale drought in Australia.

The lack of hops from different regions disproportionately affects microbrewers for two reasons. Firstly, small breweries tend to use more hops to produce more aromatic and bitter beers. Where a gigantic brewer may be using a single variety of hops, smaller brewers might have recipes with several. It is not unusual for a beer recipe to rely on both a German and American variety of hops at the same time; to mix and match to achieve different qualities. The beer that we drink depends on the global hops market running smoothly.

Secondly, the giant breweries either lock in the prices to be paid for their hops on the futures exchange or had already sign longer term contracts with farmers to supply hops at the previous lower price. With hops prices now doubling or tripling their pre-2006 price, lacking the vital beer ingredient seems to have had unpredictable outcomes.

At no point have I seen word of not continuing to produce beer. The results:

Growing your own

A handful of brewers are growing their own

Sharing the contracts

Boston Beer Company, who brew mass market American ale Samuel Adams offered to share their hops bounty with smaller craft brewers to ensure that their small beers could continue.

For a couple of months now, we’ve all been facing the unprecedented hops shortage and it’s affected all craft brewers in various ways.  The impact is even worse on the small craft brewers--openings delayed, recipes changed, astronomical hops prices being paid and brewers who couldn’t make beer.

So we looked at our own hops supplies at Boston Beer and decided we could share some of our hops with other craft brewers who are struggling to get hops this year.  We’re offering 20,000 pounds at our cost to brewers who need them.

There is talk of gruit afoot.

Prior to the spread of the hops vine across Europe in the 11th century, there was gruit, a proto-beer made bitter with arcane swamp-dwelling herbs: bog myrtle, yarrow and marsh rosemary. No hops needed, perfect for global hops crisis. While gruit aficionados at GruitAle.com wax lyrical on the stimulating and inebriating potential of ye olde ale, the only record I can find of a nonbeliever drinking gruit suggests:

The taste was “herbal” and made me think of breakfast sausage