I apologize, because what follows is strictly American hop industry inside stuff. But I’ve reached the hops section of Miracle Brew: Hops, Barley, Water, Yeast, and the Nature of Beer, which has left me a bit giddy.
In the introduction, Pete Brown writes, “I’ve made it very easy for you to dip in and read first about the ingredient that interests you the most, which is probably hops, but I wouldn’t recommend that.” So I started with barley, read about water, and now I’m surrounded by hops. And page 245 a bigger-than-life character is introduced. Pete never gets around to using his name, but industry types will recognize who it is immediately. And the whole exchange makes me laugh.
If nobody adds the name in the comments I will in the next day or two.
While you are here, a reminder you might want to sign up for Hop Queries, a newsletter that should appear in your email box once a month. It will contain more useful information than the identity of Giant Moustache.
That is of course the unofficial mayor of Yakima himself, Jim Boyd.
Thanks, Andrew. Now I can link to this fun read. A bit from it:
“Jim Boyd is not a guy who can disappear in a crowd. Jim Boyd IS a crowd. He’s built like an oak tree and he’d probably seem pretty intimidating if his eyes didn’t perpetually sparkle with cheerful mischief. Sure, sometimes he’ll arch the quizzical eyebrow, and I may once have seen a trace of skepticism, but that’s only because your dumb-self proposed something that wasn’t fun or authentic or interesting. But he also knows that after a couple of pints you’ll come around or you’ll hit the road so he’s not sweating it.
“Jim’s arms are festooned with hop tattoos and he sports his trademark Buddy Holly glasses, but his defining feature is his beard. It’s a remarkable beard. Literally remarkable. We were walking down Yakima Ave and a woman who looked like she spent a lot of time on Yakima Ave yelled “Hey it’s ZZ Top!”. And that’s a fair commentary, but it really doesn’t do justice to the full ensemble that is Jim Boyd. More like Paul Bunyan got kicked out of Hogwarts and then founded a biker gang. Jim came relatively late in life to hops, as he had earlier stints in pharmaceuticals and aerospace – or as Jim says, in drugs and rocket science. He probably never imagined his degree in electrical engineering would one day lead him to what today is possibly the coolest job in the universe. His business card reads ‘Sr. Vice President of Hop Sales’ for Roy Farms, but he describes it as ‘sharing hop facts via sensory experience with Artisanal Brewers’. Part philosopher, part booze savant, the bottom line is there is not a more qualified man on the planet to curate a deep dive into the underbelly of beer culture.”
At the end you can even buy a “Filling the Boyd” T-shirt.