HOP QUERIES

* Strung for harvest
* Hop quiz
* Widening the gene pool

Welcome to Volume 10, No. 2. And we’re on the move . . .

The next Hop Queries dispatch will come to you from our house in Seattle, Washington, 170 miles from the Teapot Dome Historical site in Zillah (photo above was taken during a 2008 trip). I mention that location because there’s a lot of Yakima Valley beyond Yakima. It’s one thing to be located only 151 miles from Single Hill Brewing in Yakima itself, which has become a gathering spot for brewers in town to select hops they will brew with the next year.

It’s a bit farther to many of the farms throughout the Valley and I look forward to the drive(s). (On a day-to-day basis it probably matters more to us that it will be only a 25-minute walk to Single Hill Commons and not much farther to the Ballard Brewing District.)

Meanwhile, hops do not care that we are busy packing. Most of the news can wait, but the USDA’s annual report about how many acres were strung for harvest in the Northwest and a similar survey from Germany should not. Nor should a paper in Nature Communications about advancements in the application of contemporary genomic tools in hop research. In both cases, I must be brief.

STRUNG FOR HARVEST

(A quick note. The USDA survey includes hops grown in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Farmers elsewhere produce less than one percent of what is grown in the country. I spent a few days this past winter hanging out with growers in Michigan and New York and am a fan of what they are doing, so I do not mean to demean their work. But it is easier to use the shorthand everybody else does and refer to the USDA numbers as “American production.”)

After reducing acreage from 60,872 acres in 2021 to 41,654 in 2025 (that’s 19,218 acres), American farmers indicate that total acreage will remain basically the same in 2026 (at 41,642; 12 fewer acres than in 2025, less than three-tenths of one percent lost). The German Hop Growers Association reports that farmers will harvest 5.8% fewer acres in 2026 after slicing 6.5% in 2025 — leaving 44,117 in 2026, compared to 50,136 in 2024.

More about the numbers inside those numbers:

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* Hop quiz
* Australian harvest report
* New Zealand harvest report
* A message from Michigan
* UK-grown Hersbrucker?
* Nebraska gets a hop of its own

Welcome to Volume 10, No. 1. There was a time when all hops were lager hops. But then along came Cascade and Simcoe and Thora that didn’t quite fit. Now, because recently minted styles such as West Coast Pilsner and Hoppy Lager may include new wave hops such as Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin once again all hops are lager hops. But is this what brewers are talking about when they say “lager hops?”

“When we look at craft lager, we started with more European inspiration,” Jack Hendler, co-author of “Modern Lager Beer” said a while back. “And the question is, where are we going now? I think you’re starting to see changes as to how Americans on the craft side are brewing lager, where they’re getting inspiration from, and how we’re trying to create our own new American lager styles in the U.S.”

Hops will play a part, rather obviously in some beers and not so much in others. I don’t have a short answer for how, and honestly two stories I wrote for Brewing Industry Guide may raise as many questions for brewers as they answer. I’ll probably have more to write here, maybe after the next harvest. Meanwhile, those stories have posted online (behind a paywall) and soon will be in print.

The links:

– American brewers are “incredibly articulate” when it comes to IPA hops. What do they have to learn about lager hops?

– As craft lager matures, many brewers are coloring outside the lines of classic European styles by embracing American hops

HOP QUIZ

What are counter culture hops?

AUSTRALIA TRIMS PRODUCTION

Reacting to diminishing worldwide demand for hops, Hop Products Australia continued to reduce acreage for 2026. Farmers strung 8.3% fewer acres and produced 11.7% fewer hops. They harvested almost 2.9 million pounds. For perspective, that’s equal to 3.4% of the US crop or to the amount of Mosaic farmers in the Yakima Valley harvested.

“We’ve continued to right size production, which has positioned us well as the market begins to find its balance” HPA CEO Owen Johnston said for a press release. “But Luna is the standout story of the year. It exceeded our expectations with unprecedented demand in its debut season. Most of crop 2026 is already contracted, and with the strength of future interest we’re moving quickly to significantly increase supply from crop 2027 onwards.”

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* Celeste and . . . Teorem?
* Hop quiz
* Shellhammer honored
* Velvet Cake hop blend

Welcome to Volume 9, No. 12. Hop Queries Central is moving to Washington state. Soon. Hard to say how soon, because you may have read that recent events are keeping the disrupted housing market disrupted. Meanwhile, these dispatches may at times be brief. But I promise to get to the matter of discussing the quality brewers most in Cascade before long.

CELESTE AND . . . WHAT?

West Coast Hop Breeding announced the release of Celeste, formerly known by experimental names WCHB-102 and 2B. She is named for heavenly beauty, and features bright, sweet, and clean notes of passion fruit, honeydew, and pine.

The news is noteworthy enough to merit a post of its own. If you didn’t read it and don’t want to click over, here are the basics. Celeste (10-12.8 alpha acids, 6-7% beta acids, 1.5-2.3 mL/100 grams total oil) is the second hop from WCHB, established by five Oregon hop farming families in 2016 to ensure that Oregon hop growers have a sustainable future by developing excellent aroma varieties. She is available through The Hop Guild, Charles Faram Canada and US, and direct from West Coast Hop Breeding.

Chris Holden at The Hop Guild describes Celeste as a small but mighty bulldog. She “has the potency to brew fun beers and sit at the big boy table with the big sexy hops,” he said. “My favorite is the lime and passion fruit combo that hits you in the face and carries through to the finished product.”

You can expect to find Celeste and other newcomers like Luna and Rhapzody on the International Hop Growers Convention list of 342 varieties “grown on Earth with an economic purpose” next year, unlike a hop like Monohon, which will not be widely grown. Looking over the 2025 list, I was surprised to see newcomer Teorem from France. She is grown pretty much exclusively for Brasserie Meteor (yes, you are seeing the same letters in both), France’s oldest brewery. However, Hop France must string a few extra plants to ensure against a shortfall, and a small sample recently made it to the Colorado. She is the most American-like variety to emerge from the Comptoir Agricole private breeding program and showed up in a beer from Milieu Fermentation Aurora. Will that be the only sighting?

HOP QUIZ

What hop variety shares her name with a hop disease?

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* What’s new?
* Wet hop loving cattle
* Cryo him a River
* For your reading & listening pleasure

Welcome to Volume 9, No. 11. When I started writing about varieties that are likely new to you I realized how much space they would take up. That’s why my plan to look more closely at the qualities in Cascade hops that brewers prize most highly will have to wait until April. As will a report on what I learned last week at the New York State Brewers Conference.

NEW FLAVORS, FAMILIAR FLAVORS

In alphabetical order . . .

– Huell Classic (5.7-8% alpha acids, 3.7-6.4% beta acids, 1.3 mL/100 grams total oil) has “the same herbal-grass, slightly spicy, and fruity aromas as traditional German hops, as well as the same gentle bittering quality.” Bred at the German Hop Research Center, Huell Classic is a daughter of Hallertau Tradition and an experimental Hüll male. Stepping back more generations, the male and female ancestors are genetically related to Hallertau Mittelfrüh and several also have Saaz genes in their background.

In advance of a commercial release of the hop this year, beers were brewed with her in both Germany and the U.S. The results were posted in The New Brewer (Nov-Dec 2025). In Germany, test batches were hopped with Herkules for bittering and finished with either Mittelfrüh or Classic for aroma. Although lab analyses indicated small differences, sensory panels did not detect any.

– Luna (13.2-15% alpha acids, 7.5-8.2% beta acids, 1.9-2.5 mL/100 grams total oil) comes with a nifty video. A press release states, “Luna seemed like the obvious choice for a hop that is distinguished by lush mango, dark berry and spicy citrus characters, alongside a high polyphenol content that elevates the flavour profile and mouthfeel.”

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