Supply Chain

[The Epworth Brewer]

I know there's already a thread on malt stocks but I'm thinking more long term after things get back to normality, whatever that will look like. At some point in the not too distant future the brewers that don't fold will strike up again. There will inevitably be problems with raw materials somewhere along the line. Bread will be deemed more important than ale (a frightening thought I know). Shortage of hops maybe? On the flip side it's going to finish a lot of the small scale commercial brewers so will the home brew market escape largely unscathed?
Just wondering where we may fit in the supply chain?

[Rookie]

Not much bread is made with barley so there shouldn't be any conflict there. No hops? Brew gruit beer.

[The Epworth Brewer]

Not much concern apparently.

[Hudson1984]

Not too much to worry about just yet I don't believe.

Crisp Malt have just reduced their minimum order to 500kg rather than a tonne, so there's clearly some demand issue rather than supply.

[Northern Brewer]

Hops are a perennial crop so the underlying crop will be there regardless, unless the growers take the big decision to grub them up they they will stick it out at current levels. If things get cataclysmically bad then it's possible that it might not be worth employing people to harvest them this year, but that's really unlikely. They're a labour-intensive crop to harvest, so it's possible that may be affected, but in general I think that agriculture will be just about the last sector to get locked down.

Barley is already in the ground, so the harvest is pretty much fixed for this year - and as others have said, it's not used for bread, in general the high-quality stuff goes to malting and the lower-quality stuff goes to animal feed.

The effect of the pubs being shut will be much greater than a bit of extra demand from homebrewing and home-delivery cans.