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Trouble Brewing

By Mark

I'm going to depart slightly from sports for a minute to touch on a problem close to most every sports fan's heart: beer. If you are like an ever increasing number of discerning drinkers who have chose to drink small craft beers, lately you may have had trouble finding your favorite beer. If you drink beer made by larger brewers, either regional or the giants like Anheuser Busch or Miller, then you probably have noticed price increases ranging from modest in the case of the big boys to significant for the smaller brewers. The culprit has been the rising cost of energy. It seems that the hops growers in the Pacific Northwest realized that with the dramatic rise in the price of corn for use in biofuels, they can make more money plowing under their hops fields and growing corn. The same is becoming true for barley farmers. So, as America wrongly places its alternative fuels bets on corn based ethanol instead of other biofuels that are more environmentally friendly and economical to produce, beer drinkers are collateral damage.

HT The Big Picture

Full post as published by Sports Biz on December 23, 2007 (boomark / email).