HOP QUERIES

* 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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* Hop quiz
* Cascade Cup
* Cascade Agenda
* Hop quiz answer

Welcome to Volume 9, No. 10. Wonder what happened at the 2026 American Hop Convention? I filed a report for Brewing Industry Guide. One takeaway is that although acreage may or may not shrink again in 2026, hop growers are focused on ensuring a healthy future. Elsewhere, Clayton Hops in New Zealand announced that experimental hop CIP 014 now has a proper name: Rhapzody. Beyond that, as the subject line states, this is an all-Cascade edition. Regular transmissions will resume in March.

HOP QUIZ

Which one of these hops is not an offspring of Cascade?
a) Crystal
b) Taiheke
c) Mandarina Bavaria
d) Mistral

CASCADE CUP WINNERS

Ethan Smith of Smith Valley Farms in Oregon won the 2025 Cascade Cup, B&D Farms in Oregon was second, and Perrault Farms in the Yakima Valley was third. Should you have forgotten, the Hop Quality Group created the competition in 2013, and its members judge the entries.

B&D Farms has won the cup three times, and (now) finished second twice. On Aug. 8, Ben Smith, the B in B&D, posted an Instagram photo with a comment that, “This is the probably the best Cascade field I’ve ever seen, and it will be my entry into the Cascade Cup.” It wasn’t. Smith changed his choice of what to enter after brewers made post-harvest selections. “The brewers know more than I do,” he said.

The competition wrapped up a great month for one of Smith’s sons, Ethan. He rents land for Smith Valley Farms from a neighbor and from B&D, he grows Crystal for Sierra Nevada Brewing, and Citra and Cascade for John I. Haas. Before the convention, he received a gold award from Haas for the quality of his Citra.

CASCADE AGENDA

I’m not gonna lie. It makes me smile to share these texts from Robert Young III, Mr. Everything at Tapped 33 Craft Brewhouse in Augusta, Georgia. He was briefly in Colorado and at the time drinking a draft beer called Cascade Agenda at Bierstadt Lagerhaus. It wasn’t actually a collaboration with Bierstadt, but we will get to that.

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* Hop quiz
* What I learned in Michigan
* Shifting acreage
* Dank outtake
* Hop quiz answer

Welcome to Volume 9, No. 9. I am just back from Michigan’s Great Beer State Conference & Trade Show and headed out tomorrow for Tucson and the American Hop Convention. First, however, I get the pleasure of typing, “Now, a word from our sponsor:”

Registration for the 2026 Best of Craft Beer Awards is now open, closing Jan. 31. Use promo code HOPQUERIES at checkout for 20% off entry fees. Competition details and registration link at bestofcraftbeerawards.com

HOP QUIZ

What do Cascade, Halltertau Mittelfrüh, US Tettnanger (really Fuggle), Willamette, and Bullion have in common? Granted, there’s more than one right answer, but I have a specific one in mind. (Answer at the bottom.)

WHAT I LEARNED IN MICHIGAN

– The Michigan Craft Beverage Council has awarded a grant to study the difference between T-90 pellets and Blue Lake Process flash frozen whole cone wet hops. The plan is to compare the aroma and chemical profiles of several cultivars grown in Michigan.

BLP flash frozen hops? I wrote about the process for Brewing Industry Guide last year. The idea began with hop farmer Jim Schlichting, who upon retiring bought 40 acres of land next to his home and began growing hops. When he discovered he could not make money with a traditional approach he began looking for an alternative, working with the Michigan State University Food Processing Innovation Center.

Basically, he freezes the hops fresh off the bines and ships them in vacuum sealed packages along with reusable ice packs. The cones should remain frozen until brew day. After thawing them, brewers may use them as they would unkilned hops, replacing each pound of pellets in a recipe with four pounds of cones. Blue Lake markets the hops to both homebrewers and commercial breweries.

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