Liberal Talk Radio

. . . this should succeed:

High beer prices are on tap, and global warming could be to blame.

The environmental crisis has hit suds-lovers where it hurts most — at the bar and in the wallet — as prices of grains and hops soar, activists said yesterday.

“When we’re trying to deal with young people, you have to define issues that are attractive to them, and this is something that’s caught their attention,” said Matthew Silverstein, president of the Queens County Young Democrats, which was set to host a “Save the Ales” forum last night on the impact of global warming on beer prices.

As global temperatures rise, radical shifts in weather and more parched lands are making it harder to grow grains and hops, activists and beer makers agreed.

Kelly Taylor, brewmaster for Kelso of Brooklyn beers, said his customers have paid between 10 and 15 percent more in the past year. He warned that more hikes are inevitable.

“I think prices are going to be going up every year — steep price increases,” Taylor said. “My malt prices went up by 50 percent in one year.”

Taylor, whose brewery is in Clinton Hill, said hops and grains were in short supply worldwide.

“We saw a drought in Australia, a bad harvest in Europe, flooding in Germany and hailstorms in the Pacific Northwest. Across the board, we saw significant rises in the price of grains and hops,” he said.

The beer man chalked up the wild weather to global warming but said many of his customers don’t take the issue seriously enough.

“Some people are just calling it a bad year,” he said.