The current situation on the global hop market as well as in USA, Germany and Poland were presented in the study. The global hop marked was influenced by the dynamic development of craft breweries. The dominant trend was the increase in hop growing area, especially of aroma cultivars. Currently, the area of aroma cultivars is more than twice as large as bitter ones. The largest producer of aromatic hop are USA (50% of the world production of aroma cultivars), while bitter – Germany (46,8% of the world production of bitter cultivars. Hop acreage in Poland increased and in 2016 it reached 1475 ha, which accounted for 2.7% of the global hop area. Acreage of bitter cultivars in Poland is bigger in comparison with aroma ones.
The hops base in Poland is presented in the paper. The agriculture area and its territorial and variety structure with the division for the aromatic and hitter varieties are discussed. The trends in the change of the variety structure and demand and production of alpha-acids in Poland are presented.