hops

Good news, Saaz hops lovers

Saaz hops

When June and July hailstorms hammered about 20 percent of the hop fields in the Czech Republic, and 750 acres of 12,278 planted were described as a total loss, nobody could have expected that the 2021 harvest would turn out to be the best in 25 years.

That’s what can result from a proper amount of rain and mild temperatures in July and August. Repeat after me: Beer is still an agricultural product.

Farmers in Czechia harvested 18.2 million pounds of hops (for perspective, that’s about as much as Americans grow of Citra alone), 40 percent more than 2020 and 34 percent more than the 10-year average. Average yield of 1,467 pounds per acre (American farmers average 1,900) was an all-time high.

The Saaz variety accounts for 80 percent of per cent of production, and the 14.7 million pounds harvested easily exceeded the 10-year average of 10.9 million pounds. In addition, alpha averaged 4 percent, compared to the 10-year average of 3.1 percent.

As a result, Bohemia Hop reports that as well as fulfilling all contracts for Saaz this year it will be possible to fulfill postponed volumes from previous crops, and satisfy additional demand.

More hops
– Latest Hop Queries. Subscribe here.
– Even small breweries may benefit from a hop sensory program. (Subscription required)

Monday beer & weed links: Gangier?

Landmark Tavern, Milwaukee

A quick bit of background. The genus Humulus (hops) belongs to the family Cannabaceae, which also includes cannabis (hemp and marijuana). Scientists long ago documented that hops and weed share some of the same terpenes — such a limonene, myrcene and pinene — that produce fruity, sometimes pungent, aromas and flavors.

But while it has been suspected that like hops, marijuana has sulfur-containing compounds it was not scientifically confirmed. Sulfur-containing compounds, that is thiols, are the “shiny new thing with regard to beer flavor.”

Earlier this year, a research team concluded that the compound 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol (MBT) is the primary source of “skunky” aroma in cannabis. MBT, of course, is responsible for skunkiness in light-struck beer.

Friday, Avery Gilbert reported in his always illuminating newsletter that a research team in Southern California has “identified a family of seven different sulfur-containing molecules that are the likely basis for the funkadelic ganja note of weed.” They included MBT.

The team also discovered that the concentration of sulfur-containing compounds ramped up dramatically in the final weeks before harvest and more during a week of curing. Probably not coincidentally, researchers have found that the amount of desirable thiols (and perhaps some less than desirable) also may increase exponentially as cones mature.

(I wrote about hop maturity for Brewing Industry Guide this month, and will have a bit more in this month’s Hop Queries, likely hitting email boxes tomorrow.)

SOMMELIER, CICERONE . . . GANGIER?
The initial stage of the Ganjier program, which costs $2,997, is just graduating its first round of experts from around the world. The training prepares them to assess ganja, or cannabis, products and make recommendations for customers, pairing products with activities and desired experiences. “We’re creating an entirely new class of cannabis professional. Something that doesn’t exist in the industry today, to be a voice for true quality.”

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Citra? Mosaic? Saaz? (Or Cascade?)

Saaz hops

Jeff Alworth posted a question yesterday from Atlanta (hey! we used to live there); more than one, in fact. So here are two I am thinking about: a) Is Citra/Mosaic becoming a marker of style in the way Saaz is in Czech pilsners or EKG in bitters? and b) Do [brewers] feel like the pairing has become so successful it’s constraining the style?

As my wife may occasionally point out when we are out in public and somebody asks me about hops, starting a conversation with me about hops can be a mistake. I often have a lot to say. Thoughts in my head already started vying for a position at the front of the line after I read Alworth’s tweet. Showing unusual restraint, I’m going to take a little time to organize them and include the result in the next Hop Queries [subscription free, sign up here].

Meanwhile, for homework:
– Because of the way Twitter threads threads you might have to click around to find all the responses.
– Read about Stone Brewing’s history with Cascade.
– Also, take some time for Evan Rail’s historical perspective of Saaz.

Monday beer links, courtesy (in part) of the Town Crier

Thinking about Monday beer links

True? Not true? Has hard seltzer brought us to this?

In his substack newsletter Fingers, Dave Infante reaches this conclusion:

“[Flavored Malted Beverages] aren’t just changing drinking habits. They (will) also swing beer business’ collective center of gravity away from brewers (“all about the liquid”) and back towards marketers. Or, to put it another way: from craft back to commodity.”

OK, collective center of gravity leaves room for beers left of the dial, but how much?

Also last week, I pointed to a podcast/transcript about “How Hops Got Sommified.” In it, there is some discussion about brewers prominently listing hop varieties.

“That is done under the guise of giving the drinker more information. In fact, you’re kind of making people feel dumb because they don’t know what to do with that information,” says Zach Geballe. “To me, it is analogous to this thing in wine that I find incredibly frustrating, when you go to a winery or event and all the person talking to you about the wine can do is recite the technical data of the wine.”

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Could an obsession with hops be bad for beer?

Hops in Hopsteiner experimental field

Talking about the “wine-ifcation” of beer isn’t new at all. But I don’t think I’d seen “sommify” before Monday, and certainly not in connection to beer or hops.

“How hops got sommified” doesn’t dwell much on the how and instead focuses on if and why.

This is a fair question: “A lot of brewers have taken to labeling their beers with the hop varieties. I tend to wonder if this is actually more polarizing and intimidating for beer drinkers, especially as there are more and more varieties of hops . . . I’ll see a big beer list that’ll say, ‘This is our IPA with Cascade and some other random hop you have never heard of.’ I don’t know what to choose. Is beer going to, unfortunately, make a mistake with this obsession with hops? Or is this a good thing for beer?”

As a person who sometimes gets handed a beer and asked “Can you name the hops?” I understand what it feels like to, well, feel stupid. And I know it may not be healthy to be able to recite the parentage of Citra (50% Hallertau Mittelfrüh, 25% Fuggle, 20% Brewer’s Gold, 5% East Kent Golding and 3% unknown).

However, I am a fan of being informed. Listing all the raw materials that go into a particular beer — including varieties of barley, other grains, herbs, whatever — gives an interested drinker a better idea what to expect when they order a beer. And that list of ingredients may set any particular beer apart from a generic one (i.e. a commodity).

In the second part of the podcast, Ryan Hopkins, CEO at Yakima Chief Hops, talks about the business of growing and selling hops.

There are hundreds of varieties now, but what was true 150 years ago is true today; some cultivars are valued more highly than others. In the last part of the 19th century, hops grown on the European continent could be classified into 10 categories. Those from the towns of Saaz (in what is now the Czech Republic) and Spalt (Germany) constituted Class I and commanded the highest prices. Class IV included those from the regions of Hallertau, Auscha, Styria and portions of Wurtemmberg and Baden. Class IX (northern France, Belgium and Holland) and Class X (Russia) hops sold for between 10 and 15 percent of the most coveted cultivars. What a hop was called and where it was from was most often the same.

Less than 20 years ago many hop varieties sold for less than they cost to grow. In contrast, the hop business, and the IPA business, is booming today because when drinkers know the names of hops those hops are not a commodity.