Bloggers, take note: Climate change is about to put a bitter twist in your favorite beverage. A new study published in Nature warns that the quality of hops, a key ingredient in beer, is set to change due to climate change, altering the flavor of the beloved alcoholic drink. The projection is that European beer-producing regions could see a reduction of up to 18% in their yield of traditional aroma hops by 2050, with up to a 31% decrease in hop acids responsible for the bitter taste.

Beer has proudly held the title of the world’s most popular alcoholic drink, ranking third in terms of overall consumption, behind water and tea. Alongside water, malting barley, and yeast, hops play a crucial role in crafting the unique taste of beer. These cone-shaped flowers contain alpha acids that give beer its distinctive aroma and contribute to its overall quality. However, the cultivation of high-quality aroma hops is limited to specific regions with specific climate and environmental conditions, leaving them vulnerable to the impacts of global warming.

Mirek Trnka, a bio climatologist at the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and one of the authors of the study, explains that hops are a model crop in these regions, making it challenging to grow them elsewhere. The researchers collected data on beer hop yields and alpha content from 1971 to 2018, covering 90% of European beer hop growing regions in Germany, Czechia, and Slovenia. The study reveals a significant association between rising temperatures and variations in hop quality, with warmer years coinciding with a downward trend in the data.

The findings are concerning, indeed. Compared to the period before 1994, hops ripen 20 days earlier, resulting in an annual decline of around 0.2 tonnes per hectare. The hop’s bitter content has also decreased by approximately 0.6%. Combining these trends with climate models, researchers estimate that by 2050, beer hop yields could decrease by 4% to 18%, and alpha fold content could diminish by 20% to 31%. The most substantial declines are expected to hit the southern hop growing regions, such as Tettnang in southern Germany and Celje, Slovenia.

While the quality of spring barley is also deteriorating in these regions, Trnka suggests that farmers can compensate by moving spring barley crops to higher elevations. Winter hops, on the other hand, depend on a specific period of shortening days and cannot escape the intensifying summer heat. This poses a challenge for beer makers, who already grapple with varying qualities of harvest for barley and malt by blending hops from different regions to achieve consistent taste profiles year after year.

However, if the overall quality of ingredients plummets, adjusting the recipe to account for fluctuating harvest yields could become incredibly difficult. Farmers may be able to adapt, but it will require significant capital and investment. The wider implications of this study serve as a reminder that climate change has the potential to impact myriad aspects of our lives. Europe, in particular, is witnessing unprecedented temperature increases, with Copernicus, Europe’s climate change service, projecting that 2023 could be the warmest year on record.

In the face of these challenges, the study’s authors argue that traditional beer hops farming practices should adapt to combat the negative effects of climate change and continue producing high-quality beer. It remains to be seen how the brewing industry will rise to this bitter climate change challenge, but the prospect of a world without a cold pint of beer loses some of its refreshing charm.