(Frederick, MD) – It has been a busy week of Flying Dog Brewery news.

Update: Unrelated to this Raging Bitch story, the brewery is halting distribution of all its products in what is now 13 states.

First things first, it appears as though Monday’s report about Flying Dog withdrawing from a handful of states was incomplete. Nebraska Beer Blog reported over the weekend that the brewery is pulling out of Nebraska as well. That would make the actual withdrawal count a total of six states, not just five.

There is yet another change to report for the brewery and it has to do with Flying Dog Raging Bitch.

According to a second letter sent out from President, Jim Caruso, “Raging Bitch Belgian IPA is Flying Dog’s #1 selling beer but, for the next 18 months, the amount we can produce is limited by the availability of a proprietary hop variety that is one of the beer’s ingredients. As local demand for Raging Bitch continues to soar, we are concentrating our distribution of Raging Bitch in our home markets and Raging Bitch will not be available in your territory for some unknown period of time.”

The beer uses Warrior, Amarillo and Columbus hops per the brewery’s website.

This past harvest’s hop shortage has received much less attention than it did a few years ago despite the USDA estimating that the most recent harvest was down by 31%. According to Beer Business Daily back in January, “Especially screwed now are those brewers relying on smaller-yield, aroma-centric American hops to make mainstream-barreling IPAs, since Simcoe, Citra and Amarillo are largely (if not totally) sold for the year.” Bandwagon Brew Pub posted in February that they were unable to get Amarillo hops for some of their beers. The USDA report also identified Columbus and Warrior production being way down.

Flying Dog is also currently waging a legal battle against the Michigan Liquor Control Commission, which is currently banning the brewery from selling Raging Bitch there.