“We do everything we can to not pass that on to the customer, but at the end of the day, we’re a small business,” said Heise. “Our profit margins become slim-to-none to actually losing money.”“People are really price sensitive on things like beer and groceries or gas prices,” said Heise. “It’s really noticeable and so we try to prevent that as much as possible. We’ve had to increase our prices just to keep the lights on. It’s not fun.
Matt Enns, founder of Maker’s Malt disagrees, saying that it’s more likely that large multinational maltsters will actually have less selection and may have to use lower quality supply as a result. “However, if there is a problem in multiple important countries that is when you can really see some fireworks in terms of prices,” said Enns.
While dry conditions are “stressful and disheartening,” Enns said that about 2.8 million acres of barley was seeded in Saskatchewan alone, nearly equivalent to the barley seeded in all of United States.