Beer Brewing Ingredients Shortages

Panic! Panic! Panic! Everyone in the homebrewing supplies industry is very concerned about two of the basic ingredients needed to brew beer: hops and malt.

My wholesaler has been in contact with me several times recently announcing the allocation of hops for the 2008 season and are attempting to spread the supply of hops among its retailers as fairly as possible.

But . . . there is panic buying going on at all levels of the hop industry with some elements trying to corner the market by purchasing large quantities of hops from retailers. BlueStem Winery's first step to regulate the panic buying of hops was to remove all hops from our website. We are gradually adding hops back to our site as the market stabilizes but will continue to limit hop purchases, especially to customers who have not purchased from us before and who want to jump in and buy only hops from our website. Our first loyalty will be to our prior customers!

On the malt side of the equation, the continued deterioration of the dollar has put an inflationary spin on the price of malts and malt extracts.

This all mean that brewers may need to alter their purchases of brewing supplies and move toward brewing less hoppy beers until the hop situation is corrected.

BlueStem Winery will do its best to maintain a good selection of home brewing ingredients, including malt and hops but we will not be able to control all aspects of this situation.

In addition to offering a complete line of homebrew supplies, BlueStem Winery also inventories a complete line of brewing equipment and beer brewing ingredients. On the wine side of the business, we stock wine making equipment, winemaking supplies and home wine making ingredients plus a super array of WinExpert wine ingredient kits and we have just recently added Cellar Craft kits to our wine making lineup. We have marketed WinExpert kits since our opening in 2004 and added the Cellar Craft ingredient kits in mid-2007.

Our beer brewing ingredients kits are headlined by our selection of BlueStems Best kits (about 80% of these are clones of the Brewers Best kit line while the other 20% are kits designed by BlueStem).

BlueStem has recently implemented a discount program on all home brewing supplies and winemaking equipment purchased on the website. All purchases accumulate towards larger discounts. BlueStem wants to be your regular source for home brew supplies and wine making ingredients.