Brewers find hoppy solutions

Early this year, brewers and beer drinkers and writers fretted about a shortage of hops, a key ingredient in beer.

Prices went up $1 per six-pack and higher. Brewers talked of experimenting with alternative flavorings. Some wondered whether they would have to eliminate hoppy beers.

But now shelves are filled with aggressive fall seasonals -- ales and marzens and Pils-ners boasting impressive hoppiness.

What happened? Community.

Craft brewers are trading hops, letting smaller brewers piggyback on their hops contracts and just helping a fellow brewer out.

"It's a pretty small industry, and just about everybody out there knows each other," said Brian Dunn, owner of Denver's Great Divide Brewing and maker of Fresh Hop Pale Ale, one of the fall's hottest brews. "A lot of people were put in a jam."

Hops-- pinecone-shaped flowers that give beer its flavor and bitterness -- are especially prominent in robust beers such as India Pale Ales and porters. But a drought in Australia and excessive rains in Europe dramatically thinned the worldwide supply.

One of the industry's biggest craft brewers, Samuel Adams, set the helpful tone this spring by releasing 20,000 pounds of hops in a sharing program with small brewers.

At the Great American Beer Festival last month, brewers compared inventories and made hops exchanges, said John Lyda, brewmaster of Asheville's Highland Brewing, who found 8,000 pounds of Chinook hops from an old friend who is a supplier. He returned the favor by letting a small brewer piggyback on a Highland hops contracts.

Said Great Divide's Dunn: "It's good for everybody to have good beer out there."