Global Warming Effects on Wineries

The effects of global warming have been felt for many years and businesses are slowly begins to take notice of the potential adverse impacts, a changing climate may have on their industries. Particularly, the noticeable changes in weather patterns have drastically affect the winery industry. Climate change has had a marked impacted on global weather patterns and led to growing concerns among wineries about their multi-billion dollar industry. A similar fate may befall beer brewers if the earth's climate continues to warm.

The recent articles said that, the price of beer is likely to rise in coming decades because of the global climatic change. Beer-making is a delicate business which prepared with a dataset of weather patterns, crop yield and hop quality. Hops are the flowers of the Humulus lupulus, or hop used as a flavor and stability agent in beer. The quality of hops which are required to make beer has been decreasing because of the warmer temperatures caused by the climate change greatly hurting the quality of hopes.

The change in climate will de-promote the production of a key grains needed for the formulation of alcoholic beverages and alcohol fuel through fermentation especially in Australia. A climate scientist at New Zealand's national institute of water and atmospheric research said that, climate change likely will cause a decline in the production of malting barley in parts of New Zealand and Australia. Malting barley is one of the key ingredient of beer.

Brewers use only hops, barley, water, and yeast in their beers in order to guarantee that they are "good and healthy." This means that brewers are legally unable to substitute barley with rice or corn, which both provide the same component in the brewing process. Most brewers will only accept the highest quality of barley for their malt. The vast amounts of rain that fell just prior to harvest can result in damages to the barley These effects reduce the ability or rate of germination during malting. Most brewers will not accept the inferior barley because these damages can lead to lower malt extract, reduced processing performance, most importantly it will off the flavors. The bad weather has cut the usable yield high quality barley from 1.6 million tons to 1.2 million tons in one year.

Similar effects could be expected worldwide, climate change could cause a drop in beer production within 30 years, especially in parts of Australia, as dry areas become drier and water shortages worsen.

It will provide a lot of challenges for the brewing industry," even forcing breweries to look at new varieties of malt barley as a direct result of climate change