The Oktoberfest is an annual beer festival held in Munich, Germany held over a two week period and ending on the 1st Sunday in October. It started on Oct 12, 1810 in celebration of the marriage of the crown prince of Bavaria who later went on to become King Louis I with Princess Therese von Sachsen Hildburghausen.
During the festival, each brewery in Munich, sets up temporary stands with seating capacity of 6000 each to accommodate visitors and tourists in the pubs who come to experience some quality time drinking the best beers on offer in the country. Total beer consumption during Oktoberfest is upwards of 75800 hectolitres or about 2 million gallons on average.
Climate Change affecting the Oktoberfest
According to reports, the quality of European hops is being affected by the rise in temperatures and global warming is to blame. Climate scientists are blaming this on climate change due to the rise in greenhouse gases like the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.
The beer industry is being severely affected as the longer, drier and extreme summers are going to increase in the mid and long term. The natural phenomenon could make beer expensive, giving some serious headaches to the industry stakeholders in the country.
Beer is a staple of European culture with 8.5 billion pints sold in the UK alone according to the British Beer and Pub Association. Hops is a primary ingredient of the beer manufacturing process, others being malt, water and yeast. The components are mixed together before the boiling process so as to add the bitterness in the drink’s flavour.
The prices of the staple drink have already seen a hike of nearly 13% since the pandemic due to increasing energy costs driven by inflation and the gas crisis due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces.
To add to the worrying factor for breweries is besides the increase in expense of manufacturing beer, the average yield of aroma hops have declined by a striking 20% in output if compared between the yield growths between 1971 and 1994 and between 1995 and 2018. This is quite a significant development and studies forecasts that the aroma hops would decrease in yield to 31% in total by 2050.
