Beer & Me

Let me tell you about my day. I left the house at 7:45a which can be a jarring thing for someone who works at home. I had a 9a appoint with a local brewer just over an hour’s drive away.

Charleville not only brews beer but they have a vineyard and a nice selection of wines. With rising prices in every segment of the brewing industry they decided to try growing their own hops. Despite this being their first season for hops their results were impressive. I’ve been checking out their crop every few months and Jack, the owner, promised to call and let me know when they harvested. Today was the day.

So I packed up my camera and headed out. I’ve never seen hops harvested so I wanted to get a few shots and see if I could squeeze an article or two out of it. Even though they were learning the ropes themselves and the crop was remarkably smaller than bigger operations it was very interested and I had a great time.

As soon as I get them edited and picked through I’ll post some pictures from the day.

You may have already heard this one. There is a common wisdom out that - and one that happens to be supported by the facts - that beer is recession proof . That is to say sales of beer don’t fail while sales of other things like private jets and third homes start to slacken in a weak economy. There’s a fairly obvious reasoning to this line of thinking: when people are depressed or worried they sometimes like to drink and beer is often one of the cheaper options.

Its this last point that makes me wonder if we might see beer sales slip for the first time during these, as some have called them, economically tough times. There has been a perfect storm of circumstances hitting beer over the last couple of years. Every aspect of the brewing and distribution of beer has seen incredible price increase - two and three times in many cases. Beer might not be the cheapest alcoholic alternative on the liquor store shelves this time.

Now, I’m no econimist; I’m just a beer guy. So I might be entirely wrong on this one.