Great news in all the gloom and doom about the inevitability of higher beer prices for ever and ever amen - grain prices are dropping:

...speculators are getting out of the market and that prompted the heavy selling that pushed canola down sharply as it hit its lowest level in over 8 weeks. There was no fresh export business as buyers have backed away to see how far the market will fall. Western barley also slid, but, with much less speculative money in barley futures, the decline was much less than other markets. What was largely ignored in the collapse of canola and barley was the fact that the Canadian dollar dropped sharply.

Why? The market of course. All the naysayers and fear mongers and speculators who insist that there is a never ending incline up for prices forget that grain is seed, that the world is a big place with land out of production and that planting more is what farmers do when prices go up. As Andy points out, these are great times for farmers who haven't know great times for a while...as long as the rains come. New production is coming on line, too.

Excellent. The important thing to remember, in addition to the potential for other intervening factors, is that delays in the supply chain naturally occur as supply works to catch up to demand, as farmers seek to, you know, make hay while the sun shines. For grain production that lag is faster than hops but, as we have seen, hops as a price input are a small part of overall cost.

So, will I see a six of Arrogant Bastard drop from the $17.60 or so I saw last week? Will the retail market respond to the wholesale? Keep an eye out for it.