http://tinyurl.com/58y3b4

"Craft beer prices will climb:
Now there’s a shortage of hops and malts

A combination of some bad farming weather paired with a changing market has left the supply of hops, a key beer-brewing ingredient, drastically low. Craft breweries across the United States are starting to suffer from the shortage.

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The shortage of hops and malts can be attributed to the forces of nature and a growing demand for ethanol. In 2006, Australia endured its worst drought to record, killing a large portion of their hops fields. Europe suffered the opposite problem and watched as their crops were destroyed by excess rain and hail storms.

The market changed as many crop farmers were enticed to abandon their hop crops (which often sold for less than production costs) and began growing corn to meet the large demand for ethanol. There was also more pressure on farmers to use their malt crops as a feed supply for livestock since all the corn was being used for other purposes.

All of these factors have severely reduced the availability of hops and other beer ingredients like malts.

Craft breweries, which depend on varied amounts of unique malts and hops for their brew, have to pay drastically inflated prices (an average of 400 percent more for hops) for their ingredients. As a result, they have to take actions such as using fewer hops in their beers, discontinuing types of beers and raising prices of beers to cover inflation costs."

Budweiser, using only rice and "corn-adjuncts" will remain unaffected...