‘We are a cask ale brewery and we do see seasonality in our trade…’

Vernon talks about seasonality in the trade. Warm weather, for example, is good for cider makers. Vernon talks about the pressures that dry conditions put on cask ale ingredients, such as hops, which can suffer reduced yields. This can also increase prices the following year.

We’re Cask Ale Brewery. So, you know, the kind of beer that’s served through traditional hand pumps on bars. And we do see seasonality in our trade. We normally see increases in demand in late spring, early summer. So often, April, May and June can be busy months here. If it gets really warm – like it is today – this is when cask ale drinkers tend to switch to cold lager and cold cider. So actually this sort of weather we experience. Today is really good for cider makers and they seem really big spikes in consumption for their products. So actually, if we get really hot weather, everyone assumes that as a cask ale brewer, we must be busy, but actually it can end up being a kind of an okay trading period but actually demand doesn’t actually rise that high because people switch to other products.

The other ingredients in beer, other than water, are malted barley, or malt for short and hops. Now, I’m not a malted barley grower, but I don’t think they use irrigation. They rely on natural precipitation, for that. Hop growing is slightly different. Hops are quite thirsty plants and they are susceptible to dry conditions and so more and more so these days, hop Growers do require irrigation, otherwise they can suffer from reduced yields and that sort of thing.

Yeah, so water, certainly is important to hop growers and we know without hops, we can’t make beer and so indirectly when it’s very, very hot summer, it has adversely affected, local hop growers, which has resulted in lower yields or some of them, you know, completely have you not anything at all and then you get a shortage, a scarcity of hops. So the price goes up. So there if there’s a drought in July, when the hops are really growing at their fastest and they suffer a low yield as a result, then we normally experience that early the next calendar year when those hops start to become used by brewers and then you find that the price increases quite dramatically.