Barley and wheat price hikes may boost brew's price
A worldwide shortage of one of the key ingredients in beer and rising prices for some others are tapping into small brewers' profits and, in some cases, could eventually lead to higher prices.
The price of hops has risen sharply in recent months, while malting companies are telling brewers to expect higher prices for malted barley in the coming year as well.
"It is absolutely amazing, the way this happened," said Dave Miller, brewmaster at Nashville's Blackstone Restaurant & Brewery on West End Avenue.
"I'm sure an economist who's studied the business could have predicted this was going to happen, but most of us aren't nearly that savvy about this stuff," he said.
Barley and wheat prices have skyrocketed as more farmers plant corn to meet increasing demand for ethanol, while others plant feed crops to replace acres lost to corn.
A decade-long oversupply of hops that had forced farmers to abandon the crop is finally gone and harvests were down this year. In the United States, where one-fourth of the world's hops are grown, acreage fell 30 percent between 1995 and 2006.
Brewers say barley prices have risen, too, in the past year.
Blackstone paid 23 cents a pound for barley a year ago, Miller said. "It's now up to about 33 cents on this order I got in July," he said.
"We're being told by the malting companies to anticipate perhaps as much as a 20 percent increase in the price" in the coming year.
So far, Blackstone hasn't increased its beer prices to customers. Some other beer outlets have passed along modest increases.
So far, retail price increases have been modest, less than a dollar a 12-pack, said Harry Schuhmacher, editor of the online trade publication Beer Business Daily.
Someone else can back track this. The war with islam causing our beer prices to go out. 
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