The following is an extract from Hopsteiner’s  Crop & Market Update – June 2011, which popped up today in my Email Inbox. As much as I hate to say, it pretty much confirms what I said in my post last week “Flying Dog’s Raging Bitch and seeing a man about a hop!” about the availability of Amarillo, Citra and Simcoe hops. To that mix I think you can now also add Ahtanum.

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Last week I retweeted a couple of stories about Flying Dog Brewery.

The first – dated June 6^th concerned Flying Dog Brewery CEO, Jim Caruso, announcing that the company was halting distribution in five U.S.states. Caruso said they would re-consider these markets later in 2011 and in a letter to distributors wrote:

“As local demand for Flying Dog beers continues to soar, we are concentrating our distribution in our home markets and Flying Dog beers will not be available in your territory for some unknown period of time.

This is no doubt disappointing news, but it is a necessary decision and consistent with the new age of craft beer and the focus on local markets.” (more…)

Back in early September and late October respectively I wrote about the wonderful Citra and Apollo hops, the former under the post; On the Citra hops bandwagon! I mentioned that All Gates were on it and was pleased for a change to be a leader not a follower.

I have recently been completing our brew schedule for 2011 and wishing to remain a leader but still wanting to continue a partial theme of one hop beers I have now looked nearer to home than the U.S.A., this time East to Poland. Again we are not quite at the forefront as I know that in 2009 the excellent Acorn Brewery  mashed a series of twelve European single hop variety IPA’s to include a number of Polish hop varieties.

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