Worldwide barley shortage affects German breweries

Due to a worldwide decline in malt barley crops, some German breweries are struggling to place orders for next years supply.

According to Michael Lerch, CEO of the DMB (Deutscher Mälzerbund), supply is running 800,000 to 1,000,000 tonnes short, an amount equal to half of the annual demand.

Inbev, EDIT: a Belgium-based brewery consortium, owner of Beck's, Franziskaner and Löwenbräu among others, confirms that this is the most serious shortage sind 1976. "Then we could compensate by ordering barley from Australia", says Hans-Georg Eils, Technical Director of Inbev. Australia, however, is suffering the worst drought in a century.

The harvest in Germany diminished by one third due to the long rainless period last summer followed by heavy rains. France and Denmark did not suffer as much and could provide some barley but not enough to compensate for the lack of domestic barley. Also, farmers have taken to growing alternative crops, such as rape/colza and corn that are in high demand by the biomass fuel industry, in preference to the high-maintenance summer barley.

The breweries can use other kinds of barley of lesser quality, rendering the brewing process itself more complex but not affecting the quality of the end product.

(If there are any huge howlers in this contribution I'm sure that lupo will correct me.)

Stock up now chaps, get hamstering!

Sorry, but Inbev is not Germany´s largest brewer, but an international corporation that bought up some of the best known german breweries, like Beck´s, Gilde (Hasseröder) and Diebels. They are actually based in Belgium and own over 200 breweries worldwide.

Oh bugger

yay Blegium!!!

Sounds like an excuse to increase beer prices. Wonder if they will drop the following year if there's a normal harvest.

Showem i agree with you there, up go the prices and stay up.Cannot really see te Bavarians going without their beer eh?Like the English would not go without their tea.

The breweries are not planning to increase prices due to the shortage. Instead, they increased prices this summer, naming higher energy prices as a reason. This was to compensate for the higher VAT starting 1 January 2007.
Inbev is a consortium of breweries, sloppy translation there, sorry.

Actually the barley from Australia is of top quality but expensive to ship.

@JN I am sure that it is, but not after the drought of the century.

I´ve been following this story with interest as well...excellent summary/translation by the way IMO (except for the Inbev part). Profit margins for malt have been very low for several years hence many farmers have switched to other crops. The thread starter pretty much says it all. It´s basically a combination of all the given causes. Another cause was the late start on the growing season (remember the late spring?)

I have mixed thoughts on this topic but for the most part I´m optimistic for now...This illustrates some of the many variables required in making our beloved beverage. Thank Ninkasi that the production of beer has not become a hermetically sealed automatic process. It is still an art and trade and as such this harvest´s problems show the connection to mother nature and the cause and effects of the modern market economy. I visited one Maltster last year who was complaining of the low prices, he´s probably not complaining this year. To me it seems like a basic supply and demand type issue. There will be winners and losers. As to the effect on beer, it will cause temporary headaches, but we should be able to tweak our parameters...ask me in 6 months time - or better yet head down to the local tavern and drink a toast and see for yourself!

Sorry for being a smartarse, but it´s a sore point with me (has to do with my hobby) that there are hardly any independent large breweries left in Germany. These multinationals don´t give a toss about the customers at a local level. There used to be a nice dark beer here - Wilkenburger, but they stopped producing it because those InBev buggers decided it was "too regional" . They only bought Gilde anyway because Gilde owned Hasseröder, a well-known name, often seen at sporting events.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/InBev

I notice they also own Spaten-Franziskaner and Löwenbräu !

@Lupo: you seem to know your way around the breweries in Karlsruhe, do you actually work for Br. Wolf?

'Inbev' is Antwerp slang for cunnilingus.

Welcome to a world where food production comes second to energy production! We'll be seeing a lot more of this in the future if the biomass industries have their way. It's good because it increases farmers' incomes and decreases subsidies from Brussels, but it could quite clearly lead to food shortages in the not too distant future. Argentina and its thousands of square miles of soybean fields is a good case in point.

Stella A. probably likes a bit of "Inbev" then