Another day, another manufactured climate scare! This time it features a popular (in the UK and Ireland at least) style of beer, but before crying bitter tears, note the last sentence of the article: ‘Brewers can also try to modify their methods to adapt to the reduced bitterness in hops’.
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Climate change threatens the cultivation in Europe of aromatic hops which gives beer its bitterness, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.
European varieties of hops are prized and used by brewers around the world, but rising temperatures and less rain are reducing yields and the concentration of the compounds that provide beer its refreshing tartness, says Phys.org.
The researchers observed this trend by analyzing data from five sites in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Slovakia, which along with Poland are the primary hops growers in Europe, study co-author Miroslav Trnka said.
Yields fell between 9.5 and 19.4 percent at four sites and were stable at a fifth when data from 1995-2018 was compared with 1971-1994.
Meanwhile the concentration of the bitter compounds, alpha acids, decreased.
Extrapolating from the data, the researchers predicted a drop in yield of between four and 18 percent, compared with 1989-2019 while the concentration of alpha acids could drop between 20 and 31 percent as temperatures rise and rainfall is impacted.
Full article here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
October 11, 2023 at 09:33AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 