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Kirin brings beer hops indoors
Japanese brewer Kirin Holdings is experimenting with indoor hop cultivation as climate change drives down yields.
Farmers growing hops, one of the four ingredients used to make beer, are having to find new strategies to produce their crops.
Climate change and global warming are impacting water access and weather patterns which in turn have a negative impact on hop growing worldwide.
Some hops and barley growers across the US have already seen crops impacted by extreme heat, drought and unpredictable growing seasons.
In a study from the Czech Academy of Sciences, researchers recently warned that, unless swift adaptations are developed, European hops will also be increasingly difficult to grow due to climate change affecting yields and alpha acid content. Yields in Europe are predicted to decrease between 4% to 18% by 2050.
In the face of these challenges producers are looking to innovate in order to mitigate the impact on their harvests and their businesses.
In 2023 a Spanish business called Ekonoke said it had figured out how to grow hops indoors, according to South China Morning Post.
Following this, Japanese brewer Kirin began experimenting with indoor cultivation. The Kirin Beverage Research Institute for the Future and the University of Tokyo’s Culta began last year to research ways to grow hops indoors.
Harvesting indoors poses challenges for hop farmers, due to the spread of the plant’s roots and its requirement of plenty of water and light.
However, the company has now announced some success. “With this indoor cultivation technology, Culta has succeeded in harvesting hops in other seasons, whereas outdoors they could only be harvested in the summer,” Kirin Holdings announced.
“In the future, we will accelerate our research on the adaptation of hops to climate change by increasing the number of harvests and harvest evaluations per year,” Kirin Holdings said.
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