British beer could taste like the American stuff in the next 10 years due to climate change

As it stands traditional British hop-growing won't be viable in a matter of years if temperatures continue to rise.

Transcript

00:00 The cost of living crisis has been a real big one, not just for brewers, but for the hospitality

00:05 industry as a whole. So particularly the pub industry as well, pubs and restaurants, as

00:11 you'll have seen. I think it's driven a lot of those input costs have gone up. So we're seeing

00:19 across the board really, normally you get one or two things going up, but this is everything going

00:26 up at the same time, which has been driven by the macro environment with what's happened in

00:31 the Ukraine. All these things rolled together have forced really big price increases through

00:37 on our supply chains. Black Sheep supply their products to businesses across the UK and the rest

00:43 of the world too, and have noticed a difference in who's buying, suggesting a change in customer

00:47 habits. If you go back 10 years or more, it was traditionally maybe 70% of alcohol drunk was in

00:55 the pubs and the on trade and only 20, 25% in supermarkets. About six or eight years ago,

01:01 that swung to 50/50. And now that's swung across towards more. I think COVID had an enormous

01:08 effect on that as you can expect that all of the pubs shut down. So that swung to 100%

01:14 during COVID. And I think, you know, that post COVID that's not come back,

01:19 you know, as much as it was before. Further pressures for brewers come from the environment,

01:25 experts warn the taste of British beer could change as climate change means traditional hops

01:29 can't thrive as they once did. We grow a lot of British hops here in the UK, which are very,

01:36 very specific to English beers and English style ales. They do like a particularly English climate.

01:43 So if that's going to change radically, then that may put them under threat. There are hops

01:50 grown all over the world. And we use a lot of American hops, for example, in the UK here as

01:55 well. So we already use a lot of those. So we may see more of them.