How New US Tariffs May Impact Your Brewery

Seems like a minimal to no impact on US craft beer drinkers from my first pass reading. Perhaps Modelo goes up in price due to the tariff and loses their #1 consumer ranking? Doesn’t impact me at all.

 

If people in the US stopped consuming illicit drugs (fentanyl) then the demand would cease immediately. A trade war with two of this country’s biggest partners won’t change that.

 

•just like an adjunct-laden pastry stout or a gloriously opaque NEIPA, to keep this entirely focused on beer.

 

We Just need the Fentynal lobby to convince states that it is safe for home use like the Marijuana lobby did and can generate huge tax dollars if legalized for recreational use…

 

Thanks for posting. As much as I think about beer, I didn't relate these possible tariffs to my favorite beverage. Maybe it will be a non-issue, and will only be a bargaining chip for the incoming administration for him to make 'deals.'

 

There's no reasoning with a pusher trying to hook someone on this deadly stuff.
Especially youth.

 

Are we talking about pastry stouts or smoothie sours?

 

Ha Ha, yeah man funny.

 

With such broad talk of tariffs now becoming the norm, I'm guessing there are many, many industries, trade associations, etc. that are studying the ebb and flow of chaotic announcements with newfound anxiety.

 

I wonder what the import/export balance is for malt? Obviously, being able to pool canadian and American malts makes consistent supply more simple and convenient, but I find it hard to believe that the US isn't a net malt exporter

 

There has been some discussion on the topic of barley that is grown for beer brewing. The top four countries are:

1 China 40,882,921.36 2019

2 United States 21,463,541.98 2019

3 Brazil 15,259,259.96 2019

4 Mexico 12,063,345.28 2019

https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/barley-beer-production

The listed amounts above are in the unit of metric tons and as indicated it is for the year 2019.

In comparison Canada is a smaller producer:

Canada 2,174,397.00 2019

It would be interesting to know whether the US production number of 21 million metric tons in 2019 exceeded domestic brewery demand and some of that amount was exported.

Cheers!

 

I find it surprising that Canada is such a small producer. I had assumed that their numbers would be similar to ours.

 

Maybe Canada produces a lot of barley but the majority is for non-beer purposes (e.g., feed barley)?

Cheers!

 

Thousands of commercial breweries in this country, including ours, are heavily reliant on Canadian-grown malt. We contract over a million pounds a year of it.

 

Jeff, I have toured small(er) craft breweries and seen sacks from Canada Malting. Do you buy from Canada Malting Co. (CMC)? Is there a specific reason(s) you choose a Canadian produced malt vs. an American produced product? If the prices of the Canadian product increases due to tariffs would you choose to just pay the higher price or would you choose to purchase an American product instead?

Cheers!

P.S. I have never brewed using Canada Malting products so I have no personal experience here.

 

That link doesn't pass the sniff test. Mexico makes a lot of beer, but it is too hot for barley production. The wording "Barley Beer" production is awkward, barley based beer would be more accurate.China is the #1 beer producing nation, so that tracks.

If one searches for "malting barley by country" you get rankings of Russia as #1, Canada as #5, US as #12, China as #17, and Mexico is not on the list.

Production by country can increase or decrease depending on the crop year.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_barley_production#>1,000,000_tonnes