Biofuel brews up higher German beer prices (corn instead of barley)

[underpants]

Source: MSNBC

AYING, Germany - Like most Germans, brewer Helmut Erdmann is all for the fight against global warming. Unless, that is, it drives up the price of his beer.

And that is exactly what is happening to Erdmann and other German brewers as farmers abandon barley — the raw material for the national beverage — to plant other, subsidized crops for sale as environmentally friendly biofuels.

"Beer prices are a very emotional issue in Germany — people expect it to be as inexpensive as other basic staples like eggs, bread and milk," said Erdmann, director of the family-owned Ayinger brewery in Aying, an idyllic village nestled between Bavaria's rolling hills and dark forests with the towering Alps on the far horizon.

In the last two years, the price of barley has doubled to $271 per ton as farmers plant more crops such as rapeseed and corn that can be turned into ethanol or biodiesel, a fuel made from vegetable oil.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18941618/

[Chemical Bill]

1. How about French wine? n/t

[trogdor]

4. They're distilling the not-so-fine stuff.

Some vintners are culling their lesser vintages for distilling into fuel, and propping up the price of the wine they do sell in the process.

[jakem]

2. You scared me.

I thought from the headline that Germans were turning to corn to make their beer.

Ugh.

When German beer is as nasty as their big Merican counterparts, we really are doomed!

[slackmaster]

3. Same here

In Germany if it's not made from barley, water, yeast, and hops, it can't legally be sold as bier.

Oops, I misspoke. They tweaked the law in 1993 but I believe corn is still not allowed.

http://www.jura.uni-sb.de/BGBl/TEIL1/1993/19931400.1.HTML