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A decline in beer sales has led to an excess supply of hops in the U.S.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Now a story about beer and the plant that gives some brews a frothy top and a unique taste and smell.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Americans actually drank less beer last year, and that has left farmers who grow hops with an oversupply.

MAGGIE ELLIOT: Part of this is because of leftover inventory from the COVID era, where there was a lot of beer that was not able to be consumed on premise areas in retail, in restaurants, in bars because of the pandemic.

FADEL: Maggie Elliot is with the Washington State Hop Commission. Her state has the country's biggest hop yield - more than $400 million. She says another challenge is that craft beer sales are down.

ELLIOT: Craft beer, on average, uses about five times the amount of hops than macro industrial-type brews do. And so in the past 10 years, we've doubled our acreage. This is a explosive era of the craft beer boom. And now we're starting to see market saturation.

MARTIN: Elliot says a drop in the demand for hops could strain the budgets of smaller, rural farm communities. She's hoping Americans will hop to it and give hop growers a boost.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALAN GOGLL'S "BUTTON ON BROWN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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