hops

beer. festival fun. hops.

A parade at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Yesterday, Jeff Alworth wrote, “One comment I hear a lot is that beer ‘isn’t fun’ anymore. I certainly have as much fun with beer as I used to, and indeed in these fallen times, sitting with a pint and a friend is about the funnest thing I do.”

I also had pints with a friend yesterday, but funnest thing, sort of, was the “cubes” for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival posted. Skip the rest of this paragraph and the next if you don’t care for this digression; I understand. One of the first things Daria and I did when we quit “real jobs” in 1992 was start “Music Festival News,” a guide to music festivals across the country. Eventually, we produced an annual guide they sold at Tower Records (RIP), and in the Jazz Fest bookstore (also RIP). That was a hoot.

The lineup for Jazz Fest, which we’ve been attending since 1990 (but not every year), arrives in pieces. First, the list of artists, followed by the weekend they will appear (that happened at the same time this year). Later, which days they will appear, and finally, what time they will be playing. Hence, the cubes. You know there will be painful conflicts. That you’ll have to choose between Rod Stewart, David Byrne, The Isley Brothers, Jon Batiste, Left Over Salmon (five of the nine closers April 26). But then there are the surprises. The Revivalists, Jason Isbell, Burning Speer, John Boutte, Sonny Landreth and Pine Leaf Boys are not closing, but they are all up against each other. Taking all of this into consideration and making a plan to maximize our music experience is part of the fun.

That’s the spirit with which I approach the Colorado Collaboration Fest. It’s a special event because talking to the brewers pouring their collaborations it is apparent how much fun they had making the beers. Also because there will be 130 beers none of the attendees has had before; these are one-offs. That they have not been perfected across multiple iterations adds to the appeal.

Take a little time to enjoy the list. Perhaps your eyes will pause each time you read the description of a beer in the weird category. Or you will be struck by some of the names: Naming Beers is HARD/Blending Beers is FUN, Buzzword, Liquid Thanksgiving-Get Basted, or Semicolon > Em Dash.

What also caught my attention is the presence of “Cold Pressed Hop Juice,” to be found in a New Image/Casey collab called Fresh Eyes and in American Ninja Keyboard Warrior from Milieu and Lady Justice.

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Hop object #3

Hops and barley farm outside of Bamberg, Germany

This is a stereo viewer card, a 19th century invention. Each card held two almost identical images that, when viewed through a stereoscope, created a realistic 3D scene. When viewed through the stereoscope’s lenses, each eye sees a slightly different perspective, and the brain merges these perspectives into a cohesive scene.

In this case, the scene is from a farm near Bamberg, Germany. Those are hop bines in the background.

Hop object #2

A hop worker's shoes, seen at Deutsches Hopfenmuseum in Wolnzach, Germany

Spotted in Deutsches Hopfenmuseum in Wolnzach, Germany. The shoes were worn by a worker processing hops. When a bag was filled, a worked would jump into it, stomping down the hops to make sure the bag was full. When I dug this out, I wondered if these could have been called Hopfenstopgen boots. That’s because in Hop Queries Vol. 4, No. 6, I wrote about dry hopping in Germany in the 19th century. That was called Hopfenstopfen, which can be translated at hop plug.

Simon Moosleitner, a subscriber in Germany, suggested there is more to think about, writing:

“I would give it a slightly different translation. You’re definitely right with translating Stopfen as plug or bung. However, in this case the word Stopfen is a nominalization of the verb to stopfen (you may notice the difference in capitalization, in German nouns are always written with a capital letter).

“The verb stopfen has a slightly different meaning. It is used when repairing clothes or to be more precise darning socks. But more importantly it’s the same word (potentially even etymologically) as to stuff. Whether you want to say one stuffs a pillow with feathers or food into oneself, the word stopfen can always be applied. Hopfenstopfen is therefore the act of stuffing beer with hops, which I guess is an even more fitting term now with all the hazy beers around.”

What does it mean to grow ‘more’ hops?

Roadkill -- as seen during hop harvest in Oregon

Hop harvest has begun in Oregon (where I’ll be in two weeks). This is roadkill from a previous harvest.

Perhaps I will try to make “fun with numbers” a semi-regular Friday feature. We’ll see.

When I received an email last week declaring “Oregon Retakes No. 2 Spot for U.S. Hop Crop” I was en route to Argentina, so wasn’t inclined to do some necessary math. Several sites have since posted the information.

It is a fact that Oregon farmers strung 5,421 acres for harvest and Idaho 5,109. But . . .

Last year, average yield per acre was 1,732 in Oregon and 2,273 in Idaho. If yields are identical this year (they won’t be) then Oregon farmers will harvest 9,389,172 pounds of hops and Idaho farmers 11,612,757. In my mind, more pounds of hops trumps more acres.

This is not to say that the difference in yield will be as large this year. Idaho farmers will harvest far fewer acres of Helios this year (the USDA has withheld the numbers to avoid disclosing data for individual operations) and last year the average yield for Helios was 3,092.

Expect ad update in December, when the USDA posts final results of harvest.

A noble point of order

It’s Monday, so what the heck . . .

– Last week, Jeff Alworth endeavored to shame 10 beer myths. He chose “noble hops” as one of them. I certainly prefer the term landrace hops and I agree that marketers amplified “noble” to sell their hops. However, the origins go back to the 19th century. I’ve written more extensively about this in print, but here is a short version of the story.

What bothered me more was the discussion of cohumulone. Arguments about co-eightch, as is known among both friends and foes, have centered on if hops with higher levels impart a harsher bitterness. Research at Oregon State University pretty much debunks that. And as far as “IPA hops” go, an average lot of Simcoe will have a lower level of COH than an average lot of Saaz.

A big difference between landrace varieties and modern bred varieties is the alpha to beta ratio. One reason that Coors stepped up to support Cascade hops more than 50 years ago was that Cascade had a ratio of about one to one, more like the landrace varieties large brewers were using at the time. It turned out that Cascade had other qualities (like plenty of geraniol) that didn’t quite fit in their beers. It’s not necessarily the a-to-b that makes the difference, but it serves as a marker for auxiliary bitter compounds.

Father Martin, Benedictine Brewery

– Father Martin has a new hat. We are traveling, so access to my photo archives is limited. Otherwise I would also post a photo of Father Martin wearing the Benedictine Brewery “dad hat” he was wearing the last time time I saw him almost two years ago. If you visit the brewery “our story” page and scroll dad hat you’ll see him with the old hat, which was black in its youth and gray in later years.

The story is about a 50-year partnership between the abbey at Mount Angel, Oregon, and Coleman Agriculture. Previously, the monks tended to hops grown on the land that Coleman Agriculture now leases. The beer to celebrate their partnership is brewed with Simcoe hops, grown in a field across from the the brewery tasting room.