Roger is a lawyer. His partner, Jim, is a former Nike executive whose great-great grandparents farmed hops in Norway.
They are starting a company called Indie Hops to supply Oregon-grown aroma hops to craft brewers.
The Willamette Valley’s rich alluvial soils, long summer days, family operated century farms, and pioneering spirit all combine to create the environment where world-class aroma hops thrive, in a culture that naturally supports craft brewing.
We have invested in the necessary infrastructure and partnered with leading farms to provide 100% Oregon-grown aroma varieties, some familiar and some unique, to craft brewers. Our intent is to earn the honor of being the preferred aroma hop resource for brewers across North America. Please join us in the pursuit of aroma varieties that inspire brew masters to create sensational beer for all to enjoy.
OK, we recently learned the world may be a little long hops right now, but these guys obviously have a long term plan.
And in Oregon, beer makes everything seem possible. The Portland Business Journal has a story about a soon-to-open brewpub, Coalition, one of “15 breweries or brewpubs — which sell beer made on the premises and food — that will have started operating in Portland between summer 2009 and early 2010.” Fifteen new breweries in richest brewery region in the world.
That’s agriculture or you. As I wrote in 2007 there’s nothing new about wild swings in the price of hops. But now I have a new source (Hop Culture in California from 1900) to quote:
The price of hops on the Pacific Coast has ranged all the way from 5 cents to $1.10 per pound, which amply illustrates the extreme variability and uncertainty on the business side of hop culture.
At 12 cents or less per pound, hop production involves a loss. At 15 to 20 cents, the grower can make a fair living and may get something ahead. it is the wide fluctuations in price that have caused so many failures in the business of hop culture. The price of $1.10 per pound in 1882 proved a calamity to the legitimate grower. It led many to embrace in the business with dreams of sudden wealth. Disaster to nearly all was the natural result.
Back to the present in Washington:
Brenton Roy, president of Oasis Farms northeast of Prosser, said this year’s crop was “100 percent contract,” which meant any surplus hops would be left in the field. Roy estimated he left about 4 percent of his crop on the vine.
“For us it’s not going to have a large impact, but I’m sure for some growers it will,” he said.
Roy expects this year’s overabundant crop to enlarge the hops surplus, which he said will lead to a decrease in contracts.
Roy said he thinks Washington’s hops acreage will have to decrease by about 5,000 acres for supply and demand to balance.
And in Oregon:
“The only time I’ve heard of hops left hanging was back when powdery mildew hit so hard that some yards weren’t worth picking,” says John Annen of Annen Brothers Farms and chairman of the Oregon Hop Commission. “But never industrywide — these are perfectly good hops unpicked because there’s no warehouse space and no spot market for uncontracted hops.”
Barley prices, for malt, also have come off their highs, but declining costs prices for two key beer ingredients won’t translate into prices on the shelves. “Pubs and breweries face all sorts of increased costs, from stainless steel brewing vessels to employee health care, freight and fuel costs, and hops are perhaps the smallest part,” John Foyston writes at OregonLive. “Plus, most brewers contracted for their hops for years ahead during the shortage, and those contract prices will be higher than 2009 spot-market prices.”
For a bit of perspective, the $1.10 peak in hops prices in 1882 would amount to a little over $24 today. In 1900, pickers made 60 cents to $1.10 pounds of green hops, the average being about 75 cents ($19 today). A hop drier earned $2.50 to $5 (almost $128) per day and board. Field foremen were paid $1.50 to $2 per day and board, so hop drying was a premium skill.
These days “Hop Culture in California” means bitter beers, beers with lots of hop flavors and aromas, and this time of year beers brewed with fresh hops. But in 1900 it was the title of Farmer’s Bulletin No. 115 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Just a couple of excerpts (for now):
In New York States several varieties are cultivated, while in England and on the continent of Europe there are numerous varieties. But on the Pacific Coast there is practically but one variety of hops grown, called the “Large gray Americans.” There is a variety known as the “San Jose root,” but it is destroyed wherever found. It is darker in color, has a smaller vine and more leaves, and is poorer in yield.
The variety used was not native to California, but brought from Vermont. And place made a difference. “. . . regardless of the kinds planted, great variations in hops result from difference in soil, climate, and and methods of culture. This is clearly shown by the fact that in California from roots having a common origin different growers in different localities are now producing green, medium, and golden hops.”
Hop growing in California began in 1855 in Alameda County. Prior to that the only hops used in California were brought “around the Horn.” When brewers in Sacramento began using fresh, strong California hops “they used the same quantity, with the result that the beer was too bitter for use. Consequently they began to reduce the quantity used for a brew and to mix them with the old imported hops.”
On July 9 Luke Nicholas put two casks of Armageddon IPA on a New Zealand ferry, sending them on a journey that would last six weeks, 126 trips back and forth across the Cook Strait.
Colin Mallon, manager of Wellington specialist beer bar The Malthouse, and Nicholas, owner and brewer of Epic Beer, hit upon the idea during a trip to England. They named the casks Melissa and Pete, for beer writers Melissa Cole and Pete Brown, the latter author of Hops and Glory: One Man’s Search for the Beer That Built the British Empire.
“The idea is to see what effect changes in temperature and constant movement have on beer stored in wood,” Nicholas said. “Most pundits believe India Pale Ales benefited from the conditioning they received during their sea voyages.”
When they tapped the casks a couple of weeks ago they found the beer quite tasty, but then you go to that much trouble you’re likely to be predisposed to feel that way.
Likewise, when 410 pages into an epic journey Brown finally tastes the IPA he’s given up a good chunk of his life to haul from England to India would you expect anything other than love? It might have made a better story had he spit out the beer in disgust. That would have been a hoot, wouldn’t it? However, even though he attempted to “create a buffer of skepticism” he found perfection.
It pours a rich, deep copper colour, slightly hazy from the sheer weight of the hops. The nose was an absolute delight: and initial sharp citrus tang, followed by a deep tropical salad of mangos and papaya. And when I tasted it, my tongue exploded with rich, ripe fruit, seasoned with a hint of pepper. That bitter, hoppy spike had receded, the malt reasserting itself now against the hop attack. As well as the rich summer fruit, there was a delicate tracery of caramel, not thick and obvious, but more the golden, gloopy kind you get in Cadbury’s Caramel bars, light and not too cloying. The elements of the beer ran into each other, harmonizing. The finish was smooth and dry, clean and tingling. And by God it was damned drinkable for its hefty 7 per cent alcohol.
He also writes, “In the global family of IPAs, it combined the weighty hop character of the American beers I loved with the balance of the more restrained English brews, the best of both worlds.”
You’d expect no less enthusiasm from an author who proved in both A Man Walks into a Pub and Three Sheets to the Wind an unrelenting appreciation for what he refers to as the “best long drink in the world.” In Hops and Glory we get considerably more, some of which we might not have bargained for.
Well into his journey Brown steps aboard the tall ship Europa, one of several water vehicles central to the story:
A tanned blonde woman in her mid-twenties, Scandinavian looking, pretty yet overwhelmingly practical, direct from central casting for an advertisement for healthy living on the ocean waves, appeared and said, “Hi, I’m Val.”
“Pete.”
“Ah, you’re English Pete, yes?”
“Yes!”
This was great. Already I had a pirate name. English Pete — it suited me.
This was it. The full impact of what I was doing finally hit home. I was an adventurer, an explorer, embarking on something few wordinary people would every dare. Wasn’t I?
“‘You’ll be sharing your cabin with a couple of men in their late fifties.”
OK, maybe not as adventurous as I thought.
But it is an adventure. One that starts with what turned out to be a crazy idea: “. . . something that would make people stop and ask, are you sure? Something that might even make them worry for my safety.” In fact I remember when the first stories appeared, announcing that Brown would haul a cask of traditional IPA from Burton-on-Trent to India. Didn’t sound all that tough. Put some beer on a boat, actually a few boats in succession, sail to India. Get off. Tap. Enjoy.
That would be a magazine article rather than this book of considerable heft. Like in any good travel yarn, Brown uses his geographical journey to frame a story in which he and the rest of us move from illusion to understanding. Unlike in many the author — beer is not the central character in this book; Pete Brown is — also takes a long, honest at himself. He invites us to do the same, to perhaps consider similar questions about ourselves. How sane is he? Are we? How competent?
To the credit of his wit, and perhaps beer, what could have turned dark doesn’t.
Curiously, this book has not yet been printed for sale in the U.S. market, although it is available in Canada (where they spell flavor with a “u”). Curiously because of (some) Americans love affair with hops. It really should be sold in the U.S. Certainly it has a BBC feel to it — a well done travelogue with social history and liberal remorse — but Brown writes in a language the American beer drinker can understand and in a way hip readers of AFAR would likewise appreciate.
He’s not the first to get the IPA story right (Martyn Cornell did that quite nicely), but since history gets mangled in different ways on the two sides of the Atlantic there’s work to be done. He’ll also admits this is not the compleat history of IPA, because modern history took a turn since Bert Grant reintroduced India Pale Ale to the American market in 1983.
Writing a bit for Grant’s biography, Michael Jackson recalled the first time he tasted Grant’s IPA: “I was just stunned by the bitterness of it. I just loved the bitterness of it. I thought, ‘christ, he’s really going to do this. Bert really expects people to buy this?’
“It was like hearing Charlie Parker for the first time, and wondering, ‘Are people really going to buy these records?’ I have sampled Grant’s IPA many time since, and always found it very hoppy. But nothing could match the shock of that first encounter.”
American IPAs since evolved, heading in a variety of directions so let’s not start a debate about style definitions, keeping bitterness as a hallmark but with many putting equal premium on hop flavor. They are not beers designed to be put on a boat for months. Whether somebody else thinks they could do with mellowing brewers want them served fresh.
“This idea of keeping the hoppy beers fresh is what will keep us from ever growing too large,” said Russian River Brewing co-founder Vinnie Cilurzo, who is credited with brewing the first commercial Double (or Imperial) IPA ever. He said that he and his wife and partner, Natalie, take freshness of Pliny the Elder and Blind Pig IPA personally. “In Northern California, we have 100 percent coverage regarding these beers being kept cold (in store coolers). Now we are working to get at least 90 percent of the accounts outside of Northern California to keep them cold. Our next step will be to survey every market and note on our list of accounts on our web site who keeps our beer cold and who does not.”
There’s still more to explore about IPA, but you get a sense reading the book and his blog that Brown will not be the one making the trip or performing various experiments.
Too bad, because it’s hard to imagine anybody else writing about it in as engaging a manner.
Matt Van Wyk at Oakshire Brewing in Eugene, Oregon, has a new standard answer when he’s asked how many IBU (International Bitterness Units) are in one of his beers. “About one hundred.”
How many in the Perfect Storm Imperial IPA? “About one hundred.”
How many in the Oakshire Wheat? “About one hundred.”
He’s not trying to be rude, just having a little fun at festivals with a question brewers hear all the time. I think the answer is brilliant because it naturally moves the conversation from a number with questionable meaning to one about aroma and flavor.
Make no mistake. Hops are about more than bitterness, about more than being macho. They are about aroma and flavor.
That said, next week Stone Brewing releases its 13th Anniversary Ale and it’s been measured at 100 IBU. I emphasize the word measured because breweries and their fans sometimes toss around crazy claims about beers with 120 IBU and more. Next time somebody tells you a beer clocks 100-plus ask whoever tells that if he or she had seen a proper lab analysis. I know of a couple of beers that have topped 100, but only a couple.
Brewers should know better and what they say should reflect that. First because education has been an important part of craft brewing since the get-go. Second because when it comes to perceived bitterness the big numbers may not be that important. There’s some question if us mere mortals can actually detect any additional bitterness above 60 or 70 IBU.
Why do brewers fall into this trap? Everybody, and that includes me, asks about IBU. The number is a shorthand for telling us the volume of hops added to a recipe, which may well impact aroma and flavor. It’s unfortunate that a number sounds so precise, but is usually based on a formula a heck of a lot more accurate for beers of something sane like 40 IBU. Adjectives would be so much better, although it can be a challenge to describe the difference between piney and in-your-face-big-ass piney.
Turn up the volume another notch or two from big-ass and you have Stone 13. That was the impression out of the tank when I tasted it, before it was dry-hopped for the second time. For the record Stone calls this a 90-plus IBU beer, but the first batch in the bottle measured dead-on one hundred. The lads in the brewery added four and a half pounds of hops per barrel, more than any Stone beer ever.
They did a quick check on the wort prior to fermentation and it measured about 130 IBU. A pretty impressive number, don’t you think? But . . . “IBUs drop during fermentation because the pH of the liquid drops from about 5.3 to about 4.5,” Stone brewmaster Mitch Steele explained via email. “This reduces the solubility of the iso-alpha-acids, the bittering component of hops, so some bitterness solidifies and drops out, and/or gets absorbed by yeast.”
So now you know what it’s best to say “about” when talking about the IBU in beers brewed with bunches of hops.
I’m a sucker for a story that begins . . . 
The OregonLive headline tells you pretty much all you need to know: 
On July 9 Luke Nicholas put two casks of Armageddon IPA on a New Zealand ferry, sending them on a journey that would last six weeks, 126 trips back and forth across the Cook Strait.
Matt Van Wyk at 
Turn up the volume another notch or two from big-ass and you have Stone 13. That was the impression out of the tank when I tasted it, before it was dry-hopped for the second time. For the record Stone calls this a 90-plus IBU beer, but the first batch in the bottle measured dead-on one hundred. The lads in the brewery added four and a half pounds of hops per barrel, more than any Stone beer ever.