I just finished contracting for my hops for the Fall of 2008 and the Fall of 2009, and I thought that you might be interested in seeing what's happening to the cost of ingredients.
Just to give you the scope of this, I use about a pound of hops to make a barrel (31 gallons) of beer. Brewers making hoppier beer might use as much as 6 or 7 pounds of hops per barrel. For hops from the 2006 harvest, I paid around $5.00/pound for hops. For 2007, I paid $5.65/pounds for hops - a 10% increase. For 2008, I will pay $12.55/ pounds for hops, a 110% increase over the previous year. In 2009, my cost will drop to around $11.60/pound - double what I paid two years earlier.
In addition, my average cost of malt in the last year has gone from $30/sack (55 pounds) to $44/sack. The increase in malt prices is actually more important to me because I use about a sack per barrel. For big hops users, hop prices are more of an issue. Yeast prices seem to be holding steady, while energy cost are increasing as well.
Will prices go up? Well, my cost of the ingredients in a six pack, excluding labor, is around $1.75, up from $1.20 six months ago. Big hop users will have higher costs than that, with a larger increase. Given all that, I wouldn't be surprised to see the price of a six pack go up a dollar.