hops

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.

Hoppy connections, diversity, and flying suds

Steven Pauwels of Boulevard Brewing sniffing hops at Segel Hop Ranch
Click to view on Instagram.

If you looked at my Instagram feed the past month you would see photo after photo of American brewers visiting hop farms in the Northwest, assessing this year’s crop and interacting with the people who grow those hops. This is a good thing, communication that was much less common not long ago.

In some cases, those brewers may have a contract to buy a certain amount of a certain variety of hops from that farm. Or they may be thinking about it.

That may also be a good thing, but not always.

Such was obvious the past two years when smoke from fires in the Northwest tainted many harvested hops. For instance, last year smoke settled into Oregon’s Willamette Valley about the time Crystal hops were ready to harvest. One grower delayed harvest, waiting for the smoke to clear. It did not. The hops were harvested and a brewer who had a contract to buy them rejected them (the farmer agreed they smelled unpleasantly of smoke).

In this case, Indie Hops, a broker who would have processed those baled hops into pellets, was able to supply that customer (and others) with Crystal from previous crop inventory.

All that to explain why I paused when I read that English hop growers charting a new path could mean a new generation could be “dealing directly with breweries, bypassing the hop merchants who have been a key element of hop-buying in this country for generations. It’s a shift that has the potential to revolutionise the perception of English hops, in this country and further afield.”

Goodness gracious, these are not easy times for English hop growers. They deserve better. Stronger relationships with brewers, which may or may not include direct sales, would surely help. So will English-specific varieties that excite brewers, and drinkers, as much as New World hops from the United States and down under. And hop merchant Charles Faram has been the leader in breeding those sorts of varieties. The merchant-grower relationship can also be a valuable one.

I should add that “charting a new path” is a lovely story.

“Life changed when a neighbour invited (Will Kirby) to a hop harvest. ‘I just fell in love with the buzz, and the smell,” he says. “There’s something about hops that really grabs you.’”

My kind of guy.

A few other stories from last week you might want to read:

Diversity
Other voices, other rooms: “You can get lost in the amount of podcast content that is out there about beer. However, like the larger industry, voices of women, people of color, and LBGTQ folks are often underrepresented in the podcast universe.” 11 podcasts changing that.

You talkin’ to me? A second Black-owned brewery opened Saturday in Chicago. “Funkytown is a brand meant to reflect the perspective of its Black owners. The label on (the) flagship pale ale is a riff on an iconic ’90s-era hip-hop album. . . . Expect most everything else of Funkytown’s to follow the ethos. Beer names and labels will reflect the founders’ tastes in music (hip-hop and R&B), often with a 1990s vibe (‘the clothes, the music, the culture, the slang, the lack of digital technological pervasiveness,’ one owner said).”

Jamhal Johnson, co-owner of Moor’s Brewing, which opened earlier this year, said the theory he most often hears is that cost drives Black people from craft beer. He doesn’t buy it.

“I feel it’s never been marketed to that group in the right way. It’s always been marketed to, for lack of better term, beer nerds — a ‘You have to be part of the culture’ type thing. My idea is to create a craft beer brand and focus on marketing it to the people with imagery and messaging that resonates with that group.”

Outsider advantage
The “technical evolution of fine wine is being driven by those outside of the industry . . . Most of these people are wine outsiders – pioneers and agitators, passionate about wine but seeing it as an advantage that they are not part of the establishment. Between them, they have garnered hundreds of millions of investor dollars and venture-capital funding to turbocharge their growth.”

And the beer analogy would be?

Lead of the week
[Via New York Post]

LIVINGSTON MANOR, N.Y. — The suds are flying as a bitter battle brews between beermakers in this Catskills hamlet.

And . . .

But the yuppie imbibers have bumbled into an old-fashioned, small-town brew-haha, gossiped about at the barber and at bars, complete with alleged beer-trayals and backstabbing.

Always for pleasure (except when it’s not)

Ales Through the Ages V2.0, virtual edition

Change of plans. The second Ales Through the Ages conference Nov. 12-14 will be virtual, with a shorter, more focused agenda.

Blame Covid-19.

This will be a “taste” of an in-person conference planned for November of 2022, with the same lineup of international speakers who were to attend in November.

I hope that isn’t too confusing. Basically:

– The original plan for 2021.

– A recap of the 2016 conference.

– The amended agenda for November.
“Travis Rupp, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, explores the production of beer in Roman Britain, while esteemed food and drink historian Marc Meltonville will discuss the era of the Tudors. Forbes beer writer Tara Nurin joins renowned author Lee Graves and Colonial Williamsburg’s Frank Clark to discuss the Who, What & How of Brewing in 18th Century Virginia, and Kyle Spears and Dan Lauro from Carillon Brewing Co. will explore operating a historic brewery in the modern world, and more!”

The future of hops

Just a few things I have been seeing this week in Washington’s Yakima Valley.

Hop cones - sisters

Sisters. Cones taken from sister plants in one of Hopsteiner’s experimental yards. What can happen from just one generation to the next. In case you were wondering why breeders talk about phenotype and genotype.

Tissue culture room at Yakima chief propagation facility in Zilla, Washington.

The tissue culture room at the YCH Hops propagation center in Zillah. The high tech facility is strikingly different than the nostalgic Teapot Dome Service Station Zillah is better known for.

USDA-ARS breeding yard in Prosser, Washington

A breeding yard at the USDA ARS station in Prosser, Washington.

Hop harvest time in Floyds Knobs, Indiana

I am a sucker for a story about hops where the headline begins with “Thank a farmer.”

Growing hops in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, about 20 miles northwest of Louisville, Kentucky, is not something people intent on getting rich quick are likely to do. There was a learning curve in starting Knob View Hops:

“Tim (Byrne, one of two partners) said he initially used some steel to make a makeshift trellis about 10 feet tall, thinking that would be sufficient for the plants. However, hop plants can grow about 20 feet high.

“So about three, four weeks into the growing season, they were over the top of it, and we still had a long time to go, so we welded on to it to make it taller, and these plants just grew like crazy.”

To their credit, they bought a picking machine even though they have a modest 590 plants. That’s few enough you could give them all names. The average farm in the Northwest harvests about 750,000 plants. Knob Views Hops plants are pictured at the top, and plants on a typical farm in the Yakima Valley on the bottom.

Knob View Hops Hop Yard

Perrault Farms hops

Anyway, I really hope that Knob View Hops gets its online store up and running so I can order a t-shirt.