There will be hops, but climate change is real

Hop picker delivers

Hop harvest starts in the Pacific Northwest in about a month; earlier in Europe and on the continent.

Yesterday, seven representatives from Yakima Chief Hops provided an update on how things are looking on the 50-plus farms that grow the hops YCH sells, recording it and making it available on YouTube. Interested parties logged in from Belgium, Catalonia, Russia, England, Scotland, Sweden and elsewhere.

Call it hand holding. Brewers have heard enough about the heat dome that settled over the Northwest about a month ago they are worried about if they will be able to get the hops they want following the 2021 harvest, and about the quality of those hops.

Steve Carpenter, chief supply chain officer, figures this is the 59th harvest that he remembers (starting when he was a 5-year-old following his father around). He talked about 1980, when Mount St. Helens erupted in May, covering young plants with hot ash. “What I’ve discovered when these events happen, none are as bad as they seem initially,” he said. Given time, and there has been time, hop plants are resilient. “If you have a hop contract I wouldn’t worry at all. At least right now,” he said.

(Right now, he allowed, because much can happen in a month. Last year, it appeared there would be a bumper crop. Then late heat, a hundred-year blast of wind and smoke for nearby fires turned a boom harvest into a bust harvest. “In the USA, we really felt the effects of the climate crisis last year for the first time,” Alex Barth, CEO at John I. Haas, said in the BarthHaas annual report.)

If you subscribe to Hop Queries you already know the heat was hardest on Citra, Cashmere and Cascade, but most varieties were affected.

The weather has also be unkind on the continent. From the BarthHaas June report: “Growing conditions in Europe have been anything but ideal this year. A very cold spring period in April and May was followed by very warm temperatures since the middle of June with initially low levels of precipitation. Towards the end of June storms with heavy rains ensued with a very uneven distribution across the Hallertau and other growing regions.”

And, “On June 24th a hailstorm ran across parts of the Saaz growing region. A region of approx. 500 ha (1,250 acres) was damaged to varying degrees, in some cases severely (20 – 100%). Two days later, on June 26th, the Polish growing region around Wilków was hit by a hailstorm, also with heavy damage to some hop fields. We also learned of hail damage in the Austrian region of Mühlviertel, but do not know the extent.”