I was chatting with Brett Dodd awhile back. He runs Speedway Brewing right down the street from Saint Martin’s University, a prime bar location.



But he has a problem that all other brewers of all things beer also worry about. He is running out of hops and has to alter his production line to less hop-intensive brews since he doesn’t know when the supply of the beer-making plant will be available.



See, although the brewing process is getting increasingly local as a way to improve the quality of beer by keeping it fresh, the growing of the ingredients that go into the brew is increasingly going global. The world supply of hops has all but disappeared. Droughts in New Zealand and Australia killed harvests there early last year. European crops were flooded months later. Then there was a fire in Yakima that burned thousands of pounds of the beer-making ingredient. The rising price of gas has even played a role in what you are drinking at your local watering holes since many hops and barley farmers have shifted in recent years away from those crops to rising corn as a way to tap into the ethanol-frenzy. Demand for hops is dire.



“It’s not just that prices are up,” Dodd says. “It’s that hops just isn’t available at any price. It’s not a matter of supply and demand as much, since there just is no supply. There is nothing ... not anywhere.”



Hops that once cost $8 a pound now costs $50, if he can get it at all. The standard 11-pound bag of hops that is about the size of a throw pillow now costs Dodd $550.



“I’m going to have to get an armed guard to watch this stuff,” he jokes. “I can’t afford to lose it since when it’s gone, it’s gone. There has never been a world shortage like this. You can’t buy a pound of it anywhere.”



That price spike and the dive in supply means tough decisions face brewers. Dodd needs two of bags of hops to make a 310-gallon barrel of his signature India Pale Ale. The IPA is his best seller. But he has stopped making it and shifted his brewing operations to lighter beers to conserve his stash of hops since he doesn’t know when more will be available.



Since every brewer faces similar shortages, distributors have started lotteries to determine which brewer gets whatever supply comes from the farms. The shortage could change in a few months when harvest time comes, but Dodd predicts he won’t be making another IPA for another year.



“Nobody saw this coming,” he says. “When we saw what was happening, it was too late. Either you had hops or you didn’t. Pretty soon you are going to be buying hops out of the back of a van in downtown Olympia. There will be some guy in a trench coat selling it in bags.”



Big brewers aren’t immune to hit in supply either. Fish Brewing Co. in Olympia faces the same problem, but it faces the crisis on a much larger scale.



Fish brews 14,000 barrels of beer split between three label lines. There are the Fish Tale beers, the Leavenworth beers and the Spire ciders. All are made in Olympia. All rely on raw materials — including hops, but also barley, wheat and malt — gathered from around the globe. Those ingredients are all getting harder to come by to the point that world beer prices are set to go up about 50 cents to $1 per six pack later this summer. That’s about a 12 percent hike.



Fish Brewing Vice President Scott Hansen says the increases in all beer-related ingredients haven’t been this high in the past 15 years. And the higher prices are likely here to stay for a few years at least since hops and barley take three years or so to grow.



The list of budget increases associated with beer making continues with everything from fuel and labor costs to higher health care and rising glass prices. The rising costs are forcing some brewers to fold or merge. Others struggle to cover the higher costs in much the same way brewers saw in the 1990s.



“Now we are seeing that shakeout again,” Hansen says.



[Speedway Brewing Company, 1225 Ruddell Road S.E., Lacey, 360.493.1616]

[Fish Brewing Company, 514 Jefferson St. S.E., Olympia, 360.943.6480]