hops

The Cluster hop, landraces, and breeding

Alan McLeod asked a question a while back that, to be honest, points to a liberty I probably should not have taken in For the Love of Hops.

A question about “landrace” however. I understand it represents as a word the division between husbandry and wild. A word of the 1700s perhaps. When you looked at Cluster and described it as a landrace, would you only use the word if the hybridization occurred in the wild as Dutch plantings met their New York forest cousins? Or does it include the potential for intentional 1600 Dutch hop breeding in the Hudson?

His question resulted from a) others he has related to Albany Ale and the Dutch settlement of the Hudson Valley, and b) a headline I wrote on a sidebar in FTLOH: “Cluster: America’s Landrace Variety?” Bad headline, because who notices the question mark? It was a mistake to go beyond what I wrote in the body: “in a sense selection was much like the landrace varieties on the Continent and in England.”

A mistake because there’s enough lack of clarity looking backward, trying to sort out the origins of hop varieties, that mucking with the definition of landrace only makes it worse. Obviously, there’s more detail in the book, but here are the basics in short order:

Breeding and landrace hops

From the time hops were first cultivated more than a thousand years ago farmers chose to grow varieties, first found growing in the wild, based on their brewing and agronomic qualities. They were simply clonal selections, but different varieties emerged as plants naturally cross-pollinated. The best endured and are called landrace varieties by hop geneticists. The short list includes Saazer types, Hallertau Mittelfrüh, Fuggle and Golding. An argument could be made for others like Hersbrucker and Strisselspalt, but that is tangential.

What’s important for clarity is that these are all hops of European origin. The plant has been around at least six million years, likely originating in Mongolia. European types diverged from the Chinese varieties more than a million years ago, American types more like a half million years ago. American varieties contain compounds that may create odors that result in aromas and flavors once considered undesirable but now highly sought after.

Modern hop breeding, that is hybridization, did not begin being until the twentieth century. Research by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century (which went unrecognized until about 1900) established that, contrary to Charles Darwin’s theories, certain traits may occur in offspring without any blending of parental characteristics. His principles laid the foundation for plant breeding programs that created entirely new varieties, including hops.

Perhaps it would have happened anyway, but we can point to a time when hop breeding changed and therefore hops themselves. Not long after E.S. Salmon took charge of the program at Wye College in England in 1906 he set out to combine the high resin content of American hops, including some found growing wild, with the aroma of European hops. This eventually resulted in hops with more than 20 percent alpha acids, compared to four percent common at the beginning of the century, and a much wider range of aromas.

Clearly the Dutch and others growing hops in America in the 1600s were not breeding in the modern sense. But they were doing just what farmers were in England and on the Continent — always trying to identify the best plants and further propagate them. These likely were a mixture of imported European varieties and wild American types. None persevered, however, unless as part of the Cluster variety.

Cluster hops

Here’s what Steiner’s Guide to American Hops had to say about Late Cluster in 1973:

“The Late Cluster is the oldest American variety grown continuously in the Northwest. Known as the Pacific Coast Cluster, it was widely grown at the turn of the century and was the leading cultivar, until the decline of acreage in California and Oregon was counter-balanced with the growth of the hop industry in Washington, where the Early Cluster became dominant. The origin of the Late is obscure, but it was probably originally derived from the native North American hop.1 It may have been a selection from these, or resulted from a cross with introduced varieties brought over by colonists, or from a cross of native western varieties with stock brought by settlers who established hop growing in the Pacific Northwest. The Late Cluster was similar to but more vigorous than the Milltown, and other strains of Cluster grown in New York State, after the Prohibition Era.”

One other important note from Steiner: “Any cultivar grown widely and continuously over a long interval of time, will, if not occasionally reselected, accumulate a large number of mutations. … Thus the Late Cluster is actually a collection of similar clones rather than a distinct homogeneous cultivar.” Early Cluster, given that name because it matures earlier, likely was a mutation of Late Cluster, and more widely grown. Together the accounted for almost 80 percent of American hop acreage forty years ago.

I suggested calling it an “American landrace” variety because it resulted from clonal selections and remains around today (amounting to less than 2 percent of the American crop). In that way it is much like Fuggle, itself shrouded in some mystery, or Saaz. However, genetically, it is much different. And that’s a difference to pay attention to.

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1 Genetic studies since proved that Cluster is a cross between European and American varieties.

Bell’s Hopslam described (catty alert)

Bell's Hopslam

Bell’s Hopslam is in the house, meaning our house. This is a good thing. It’s 10% alcohol by volume and plenty of hops were used to make this beer. We will drink some this evening, but there will be no taking or posting of notes.

Instead, the arrival of Hopslam in St. Louis — 50 cases at The Wine and Cheese Place that may already be gone (or spoken for) — is an excuse to post the perfect description of the beer. From John Mallett, who is the production manager at Bell’s.

Mallett1 is also president of the Hop Quality Group, a non-profit organization of brewers who recognize the need to communicate their interest in hop aroma to hop farmers. The tagline on the the HQG logo reads “oils over alpha,” although any particular member is as likely to say “aroma over alpha” when talking about the short history of the group.

At the 2012 Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego, Mallett and other members of the group explained just why the group was formed and described their goals. Mallett talked about the importance of communicating to growers that brewers’ needs have changed because drinkers’ tastes have changed. Aromas considered undesirable, literally for centuries, are now desirable. He used a Bell’s beer, rather obviously Hopslam, as an example.

Twenty years ago — a time, by the way, that hops such as Simcoe and Citra were already being developed, but weren’t about to find immediate popularity — there wasn’t a brewer on earth who would have gone to the annual Hop Growers of American convention and said, as he did, “I’m going to have a beer that we make 4,000 barrels of, one time a year. It flies off the shelf at damn near $20 a six-pack, and you know what it smells like? It smells like your cat ate your weed and then pissed in the Christmas tree.”

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1 Mallett is also the author of what will be the fourth book in Brewers Publications ingredients series, this one containing everything you could want to know about malt.

Who will write the ‘local hops’ success story?

Hops, in a water soaked field that must be harvestedEarlier today, Win Bassett pointed to a story about interest in hop growing in North Carolina (which led to a lengthy Twitter exchange of which I was a part and should have done a better job of keeping educational).

To its credit, the story examined the challenges of growing hops in North Carolina, including that the state is closer to the equator than major hop producing regions, so the days are shorter than ideal for hop growing.

This bit, however, is a little troubling. North Carolina State University Horticulturist Jeanine Davis, who has prodded along some excellent research, might reconsider the idea that growers are going to tell brewers what hops to use, and by extension drinkers what hops to drink.

Davis points out there are now some hops varieties that are more daylight neutral and require less daylight than varieties grown in most areas of the world.

“These day-length neutral varieties, bred in South Africa, are the ones we need to use in North Carolina,” she says.

“Brewers will likely ask for more commonly known aromatic hops, but any new grower should grow hops varieties suited for production in North Carolina, and then convince the brewer to use these varieties,” she adds.

“There are some indications that growing day-length sensitive varieties here in North Carolina is severely limiting our yields. In some cases, we may be losing up to 85 percent of potential yield, just because we are trying to grow the wrong varieties.”

Within a few years, Sierra Nevada Brewing and New Belgium Brewing will be making a lot of beer in North Carolina. Right now, they make a lot of beer in California and Colorado, respectively, and they use only a little bit of California- or Colorado-grown hops, respectively. There’s a lesson there.

In 2011 (removing all numbers related to China because it is relatively insular) farmers in Germany and the American Northwest produced 85 percent of the world’s alpha/bitter hops and 67 percent of the aroma. The Czech Republic sold another 16 percent of the aroma. Scores of other countries grow hops, often just for their home market, but the Northwest and Germany set expectations for price, quality, and variety.

This doesn’t mean that farmers in North Carolina, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, even southern California can’t succeed in selling a certain amount of local hops. But success won’t come overnight. Breeding new hop varieties, perhaps some more suited to local environments and day length, takes time. Goofy as it sounds, that organic hops naturally result in lower yields and are more expensive to produce sort of levels the playing field — or at least reduces the advantage farmers have in the dominant hop growing regions. So maybe organic hops, grown on low trellises, will be part of the equation.

It will take time, patience, education, luck, all that stuff, and then we will see what happens.

Gorst Valley Hops in Wisconsin has been out front of all of this, working directly with growers, supporting them throughout the process that starts with planning a yard and continues through building their own version of an oast house.

“Some people perceive local as having value. Local’s great, but it can’t be the only part of our plan,” said James Altweis of Gorst Valley. “If a brewer doesn’t see the improvement, then he’s not going to pay the higher price.”

And higher prices must be part of the equation. “We have to look for what we can do on process that adds value, that creates differences apparent in the final beer,” Altweis said.

I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon, although I suppose I am, who points out the challenges every time a local hops story appears, but growing hops is hard and that chance for a bad ending shouldn’t be overlooked. For farmers or brewers (how would you like to contract for a chunk of hops with a single farmer and have the crop go kaput?). Nearly one-third of Polish hop farmers quit growing hops in 2010 and 2011. There were several reasons, including that Polish breweries apparently quit buying as much Polish hops, but one-third, and in an environment well-suited for hops.