HOP QUERIES

* What Strata tells us
* Hop quiz
* The Terra family
* Random observation
* Mac Hops turns to brewing

Welcome to Volume 10, No. 4. Hop harvest has begun in the Northwest. Fresh hop ales are already being poured. How could that be? I wrote about why there are questions about when “wet hop” season should begin and why those beers can still taste really good in October for Brewing Industry Guide.

STORAGE STABILITY AND VINTAGE DEPENDENCE

Last month I recommended listening to one of two podcasts with Tom Shellhamm and Cecile Chenot at Oregon State University. They featured information from two studies. One examined the aging of Citra, Cascade, and Centennial under commercial storage and the discrepancies between sensory quality and HSI classification. The other evaluated Strata across multiple harvest years, farms, and fields, focusing on terpene and polyfunctional thiol profiles. I already summarized the key takeaways from the first for Brewing Industry Guide in March. Here are the highlights from the Strata study:

– Strata is particularly rich in 3S4MP, with levels up there with Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Thora and Hallertau Blanc.

– However, concentrations varied by about five-to-seven-fold between certain harvest years and field combinations. It does not work to simply plug 150 parts per trillion into a formula to calculate the possible level of 3S4MP your Strata addition is contributing to a beer.

– From a chemical standpoint Strata displayed notable stability from year to year when stored properly (cold and in low-oxygen packaging).

– Oxygen is a bitter enemy of hop aroma. As expected, the most pronounced losses were observed in the monoterpene fraction when high-oxygen samples were compared to low-oxygen one, while sesquiterpene hydrocarbons remained comparatively stable. Among free thiols, 4SMP was the most sensitive, with concentrations deceasing by about 50 percent, while 3SH and 3S4MP lost 15 to 20 percent.

HOP QUIZ

What is the year exed out in this statement refer to? Taken from the annual BarthHaas Hop Report.

Starting with the harvest of [xxxx] the shift a buyer’s market could no longer be overlooked. Hop production again exceeded consumption. Further factors contributed to the situation:

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Welcome to Volume 10, No. 3 (such that it is). My apologies. Tomorrow is the final day of July and we’re still unpacking. Regular transmissions of Hop Queries will resume in August, including the Hop Quiz.

In the interim, where are a few things to listen to and read about:

FRIENDSHIP FORGED THROUGH HOPS

A two hour-plus edition of the No Dirt No Flowers podcast packed with inside baseball hops, so maybe not for the casual enthusiast. Here’s the synopsis:

“Mike and Drew welcomed good friends Leslie Roy and Mike Smith of Loftus Ranches for a long, fun conversation. Filled with stories, history, and insights from their decades in the hop industry as we look back on memorable moments like the 1970s ‘Think Tank’ meetings, hauling refrigerators and generators to Idaho for hop cuttings, and the legendary ‘midnight roll’ during the Marketing Order era. We also discuss the industry’s evolution—from drip irrigation, direct brewer contracts, and the creation of Yakima Chief through the Hopunion merger to the rise of craft brewing, the fall of the Yakima Co-op, and navigating major market corrections—before exploring today’s challenges around breeding programs, quality, branding, contracting, and grower-brewer relationships. Above all, Mike and Leslie reflect on the friendships and partnerships that have defined an industry they are grateful to have been part of for generations.”

LOZA FARMS: HOPS, WATER, IMMIGRATION & THE FUGURE OF YAKIMA VALLEY AGRICULTURE

Junior Loza talks about “real challenges facing Central Washington agriculture, including drought, water restrictions, rising fertilizer, diesel and production costs, workforce shortages, the H-2A guest-worker program, immigration enforcement, and the need for a fair path to citizenship for hardworking people who have built their lives here.”

BREWING SCIENTISTS TOM SHELLHAMMER AND CECILE CHENOT ARE CHANGING HOW WE THINK ABOUT OLDER HOPS
AROMA SHELF LIFE

Shellhammer and Chenot discuss two different studies in Beer & Brewing and MBAA podcasts. One involves Citra, Cascade, and Centennial; the other Strata. Some interesting takeaways beyond shelf life from the podcasts as well as papers that resulted from their research. I plan to write about them next month.

BARTHHAAS REPORT 2025/2026

This link that summarizes much of what has already been reported here, but more important includes a link to the annual report that serves as Christmas in July for hop geeks. Beyond the numbers, I always look forward to seeing what is featured at the end of the report. This year it is non-alcoholic beers.

“From Wallflower to International Star” begins, “Hardly any other trend can be said to have had such a profound impact on the brewing industry in recent years as the boom in non-alcoholic beers, also known as NABs. Market researchers and industry associations from numerous countries report unanimously of consistently high growth rates. Sales are growing at a rate of 85% in the USA and 8 % in Germany. In Ireland, growth has increased by as much as 150% over the past five years.”

And it concludes, “Hops and hop products thus continue to play a leading role, as the message for brewers and hop merchants alike is this: Non-alcoholic beverages are not just add-ons; they are a global growth market—with surprisingly big flavors and an even bigger future.”

THE SPORTS CENTER IN DOWNTOWN YAKIMA HAS CLOSED

The “iconic pub known for their bright neon lights and spinning duck hunter marquee has been a mainstay in the heart of Washington’s apple, marijuana, and hop growing region. While The Sports Center was a dive bar through and through, you could always count on a great craft beer selection, especially during hop harvest when brewers and local hop farms wanted to see their experimental hops and seasonal brews on draft at everyone’s go-to watering hole.”

This story reports the owners hope to make changes to the business, find new management, and eventually reopen The Sports Center under a more sustainable business model. It is not clear what the new model might look like and the chances that the pub will be open by the time (only weeks off) harvest begins.

* 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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