Saturday, October 27, 2007

Minor Corrections and Cleanup

I spent some time reworking and cleaning up these most recent posts from the JEC report, so if you've already read them once you might wish to glance over them again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Small brewers from Australia to Oregon face the daunting prospect of tweaking their recipes or experimenting less with new brews thanks to a worldwide shortage of one key beer ingredient and rising prices for others.

Oh, and one other thing: Beer prices are likely to climb. How high is anybody's guess. Craft brewers don't have the means to hedge against rising prices, like their industrial rivals.

"I'm guessing, at a minimum, at least a 10 percent jump in beer prices for the average consumer before the end of the year," said Terry Butler, brewmaster at central Washington's Snipes Mountain.

Sales have been relatively flat in recent years among the country's big three brewers -- Anheuser-Busch Cos., Molson Coors Brewing Co. and SABMiller PLC. unit Miller Brewing Co -- while small, independent brewers have experienced tremendous growth. The craft brewing industry experienced a 12 percent increase by volume in 2006, with 6.7 million barrels of beer. Sales among microbreweries, which produce less than 15,000 barrels per year, grew 16 percent in 2006.

Now the bright spot in the brewing industry is facing mounting costs on nearly every front. Fuel, aluminum and glass prices have been going up quickly over a period of several years. Barley and wheat prices have skyrocketed as more farmers plant corn to meet increasing demand for ethanol, while others plant feed crops to replace acres lost to corn.

http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=6358248&action=article

Getting more expensive to drown ones sorrows Mark but there might be a bull market in Ripple in the next year or so.

Kevin

Stagflationary Mark said...

Kevin,

I'm glad I stick to my long-term inflation mood when deciding how to invest, because my short-term inflation mood keeps waiting for a deflationary event that never seems to arrive. D'oh! ;)