UPDATE: Haug posted again in the thread, clarifying that the change with the hops hasn’t happened yet.

UPDATE 2: In case you are wondering why a forthcoming recipe change is a story in our little world of beer geekery, as the brewery broadcasted on Thursday, Surly Furious was named the world’s #1 IPA last week on RateBeer.com. There are also other supply and demand issues noted below apart from the news about Furious.

(Brooklyn Center, MN) – There is some confusion going on around Surly Furious over the past 24 hours on Beer Advocate. Has the recipe changed or not? Surly Brewing Head Brewer, Todd Haug, says no though a December forum post from Surly Founder, Omar Ansari, mentions that a new hop is being will be blended in due to a shortage of two of the hops used in the beer.

Looking at the big picture, this is an issue facing many brewers in the industry. Just this past weekend, a brewer told Beernews.org that they a shortage of Amarillo hops may affect production of one of their beers. Given the number of new breweries coming into the fold and the growth in IPA production across the country, said brewer posed whether it is wise for brewers to build the recipes for their hoppy beers with a dominant hop as opposed to a blend of several different hops.

In general, your palate may be changing…and brewers may be also be changing the recipes to some of your favorite beers out of necessity. Ideally, those beers will come out with such a similar flavor profile, that you won’t be able to detect the difference.

In any case, here is Ansari’s full statement…

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We have a couple different items going on:

1) We don’t have enough beer to meet demand. Nothing new there. We still have a 400+ store waiting list for the stores in the area that we deliver to. I got a call from Mourado’s Liquors yesterday. He was disappointed that he could not get our beer even though he’s been waiting 2+ years. As I explained, that’s why we are building the new brewery.

2) Because we have a waiting list and our distributors do not, they have continued to add new accounts. For a long time we have been able to keep up with the growth of our distributors in Duluth, Monticello and Rochester. We have gotten to the point that we can no longer supply them the additional beer they need to keep newer accounts in beer. Because of that, they are pulling back distribution to some stores. Like above, that’s why we are building the new brewery.

3) Some of the hop contracts we had for this year did not get fulfilled. 2 of the hops we use for furious were cut by 70% and 30%. We will deal with the situation by blending in a 5th hop variety to keep up the production of furious. We will continue to brew Furious at its current rate, but the growth of the brand by our distributors is unsustainable and we have had to limit the amount of that beer that is available. In addition to limited hops, we are having challenges of not enough fermentation space. The good news is that we have contracted for a greater amount of hops in the future. That combined with the new brewery will allow us to make a lot more. Will it be enough? Who knows? Hope that helps a bit.

See you drinking,
Omar