Shrinking harvests of hops are making beer more expensive, but researchers are raising hopes that this indispensable ingredient in brewing could be grown indoors to make it cheaper.
Earlier this year, a Spanish business called Ekonoke also said it had figured out how to grow hops indoors. Now, Japan’s Kirin, which makes the beer of the same name, appears to be on the cusp of a breakthrough in increasing hop yields through indoor cultivation.
The Kirin Beverage Research Institute for the Future and the University of Tokyo’s CULTA Inc began last year to research ways to grow hops indoors, something long been regarded as difficult due to the spread of the plant’s roots and the need of much water and light.
For beer lovers, any such breakthrough could not only mean an easing in price hikes, but potentially greater variety in flavour, much of which comes down to increasingly expensive regional hop varieties.
“With this indoor cultivation technology, CULTA Inc has succeeded in harvesting hops in other seasons, whereas outdoors they could only be harvested in the summer,” Kirin Holdings announced recently.
In late 2023, a team of Czech scientists warned that the production of hops in Europe could be set to fall sharply. The price of beer has increased in most countries in recent years, in part due to increased competition for shrinking supplies of hops, which are used more heavily in so-called craft beers.
The smaller harvests have been attributed to climate change and the surging costs of farming and crop-growing, in particular for items such as fertilizer and fuel for machinery.
And while industry representatives in other beer-drinking nations such as England say their countries could easily grow more hops, the prospect of all-year indoor crops and harvests could add more fizz to what could become a flat industry if a hops shortage takes hold.
“In the future, we will accelerate our research on the adaptation of hops to climate change by increasing the number of harvests and harvest evaluations per year,” Kirin Holdings said.
