Up in smoke: 4% of America's hops. Cry in your beer.

About 4 percent of all hops in the USA went up in flames yesterday. Most of the country’s crop is grown in Washington’s Yakima Valley, where a 40,000-foot warehouse fire consumed rather a lot of the essential beer-brewing ingredient on Monday. AP says: “By mid-afternoon, flames engulfed most of the building, sending up plumes of smoke and a pungent aroma.” On NPR.org, my colleague JJ Sutherland blogs, “The cause of the fire is not known. Nor is the effect on beer and beer prices. The world mourns. Start hoarding now.” Link (thanks, Cyrus)

Reader comment: Simon Sizer says,

I live just down the freeway from Yakima, and am all over
national (international?) media references to it. Unfortunately, I
don’t have much to add to the sorry tale. I work in agriculture (and
at the local newspaper), but not in hops-related fields. (Apples and
obituaries, specifically.) But, anyway, here’s what the local paper
has to say about it so far: Link.

Our local Fresh Hop Ale Festival is coming up this weekend, and I aim
to go. I’ll have to see what the general mood is like. There’s
actually more talk about wine than beer in the area, since, while we

grow an awful lot of hops, we don’t do much local brewing, while there
are many local wineries.

Anyway, I’m just excited to see us show up somewhere, even though it
always seems to involve fires, or volcanic events, or mysterious
data-gathering.

Michael Rasmussen says,

Don’t worry about the effect on beer prices. The bottle cap costs more. Hops
are a spice. In a strong IPA there is the equivelant of one ounce in a six
pack. In a typical industrial lager, PBR, Coors, Bud, there is less than a
quarter ounce.

Ben says,

Recent comments on the hop fire may be slightly off the mark. In this particular case, the 4% were restricted to Zeus and Columbus/Tomahwk hops (33% of the American hop harvest in 2005). Had the fire been among a less popular variety such as Centennial or Chinook it may have destroyed the entire crop and thus made it impossible to brew certain brewers’ beers. Different hop varieties impart different flavors/aromas/characteristics. PDF Link