Quantity and quality are declining: climate change is endangering European beer

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It doesn’t look good for European beer. Beer production is threatened due to climate change. Both the quantity and quality of hops are decreasing, according to the results of a recent study. This is due to rising temperatures and drier summers – in short: climate change.

Immediate adjustment measures are needed to stabilize the beer sector, the study authors from Switzerland, Britain and the Czech Republic wrote in the study published Tuesday in the journal ‘Nature Communications’.

The hop yield fell by 200 kilos

For the study, researchers evaluated data on the yield and alpha content of beer hops between 1971 and 2018, from the main growing areas in Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.

In the approximately fifty years from 1970 to the present, the annual hop yield per hectare has decreased by an average of 200 kilograms. The alpha content of the hops, which was used in the study to measure quality, decreased by 0.6 percent. This is responsible for the bitter taste of the beer.

By 2050, the researchers in the study expect a further decline in yield of about 4 to 18 percent and a decline in alpha content of 20 to 31 percent. The researchers expect that the largest declines will occur in the southern cultivation areas. These include those in southern Germany, which extend to the Swiss border, and those in Slovenia.

More frequent droughts

The reason for this is rising temperatures and more frequent periods of drought, as Ulf Büntgen, co-author and researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), explained when requested by the Keystone-SDA News. desk.

According to Büntgen, the temperature changes have pushed back the start of the hop growing period by an average of 20 days. These so-called phenological changes have shifted the critical ripening time to the warmer part of the season, negatively impacting alpha levels.

“The interesting thing is that we were able to observe this effect in all regions,” says the scientist. “If a trend is observable nationally, you know that it can hardly be explained other than by climate changes.”

Traditional agricultural methods need to be adapted

Beer is the third most consumed beverage in the world after water and tea, as the researchers highlighted in the study: “It will be necessary to expand the area under aromatic hops by 20 percent compared to the current growing area to achieve a future purchase of alfa hops, to compensate for salary and/or hop production.”

To continue producing high-quality beer, traditional beer hop cultivation methods must be adapted to mitigate the negative effects of climate change in Europe, the authors say.

Büntgen makes it clear that hops are just one of many examples: “We are trying to find out how different ecosystems and ultimately agriculture respond to changing environmental conditions.” (SDA)

Source: Blick