HOP QUERIES

* 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.

Read more

* US harvest report
* Worldwide production
* On the research front
* Funding future varieties
* Additional reading

Welcome to Vol. 9, No. 8. I love this paragraph in The New Brewer (more about the current issue at the end): “The hops, however, were unfazed by the economics. Nourished by abundant summer sunshine inherent to long summer days in a growing season largely absent from extreme heat events or pest pressure, the Pacific Northwest boasted a crop estimated by USDA-NASS at 82 million pounds — a crop with distinctly high oil content and exceptional aromatic quality.”

Economics are important. The Brewers Association anticipates that craft beer sales in 2025 will be down 5 percent, or maybe a bit more, when the final numbers are toted up. That’s not good for hop growers. Based on the global alpha production in 2025, a theoretical brewing potential of 2.1 billion hectoliters beer can be derived (without even dipping into existing inventory). Estimates suggest 2025 production was less than 1.9 billion hectoliters in 2024. That imbalance also is not good for hop growers.

But the paragraph at the top is a reminder hops are going to be hops; that they’ll stretch to the sky when they can and produce cones full of the compounds that help make beer beer.

US CONTINUES TO WORK OFF INVENTORY

Farmers in the Northwest reduced acreage 7% in 2025 and harvested 5% percent fewer hops, according to the USDA National Hop Report. Average yield per acre was the highest since 2011, when higher yielding hops appreciated more for their alpha made up a larger percentage of acres planted. The 2025 value of production was $447 million, up slightly from 2024, but significantly less than $662 million in 2021. That shouldn’t be a surprise, given that acreage has shrunk 31% since 2021 and production 28%.

Perhaps as important, in September the USDA reported that the inventory of hops held by growers, dealers and brewers was 116 million pounds, down 15 percent from the previous year. That’s the largest contraction in 15 years and suggests the market is getting closer to being in balance. Still, it is a significant amount, and almost 40 percent higher than it was through much of the teens.

Overall production in the Northwest states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington came in a little higher than the August estimate because of the improved yields. Still, the 83.1 million pounds (37,723 metric tons) harvested were fewest since 2015 (78.8 million pounds). Breweries classified as craft (BA definition) produced 24.3 million barrels in 2016, when most of those hops were to be used. Estimated production in 2025 is less than 23 million barrels, and 2026 obviously is unknown.

Make of all those numbers what you will. A few more of note:

Read more

* Cross-continental Karma
* Blending Bliss
* More fresh hop winners
* Hop profile: Columbus
* Read and listen

Welcome to Vol. 9, No. 7. Brewing Industry Guide has posted a story I wrote about recent research related to hop maturity and picking windows (yes, it is behind a paywall; I’ve explained why in the past). It will be in print in a couple of months. As happens, some things I learned did not end up in the story. In this case, it was how Freestyle Hops in New Zealand uses its knowledge about how Nelson Sauvin matures to create Nelson Bliss, a blend of intense tropical character with wine-like complexity. The process intrigues me, so I am passing it along here.

KARMA

Yes, new hop varieties with names ending in “a” keep coming. Last month, Hops Direct announced the availability of Karma, which is grown only at Puterbaugh Farms in the Yakima Valley. She is also available from Charles Faram in the UK.

Charles Faram and Puterbaugh Farms/Hops Direct began working together in 1998, cross trading American, UK and European hops. Planting a seedling from the Charles Faram breeding program at Puterbaugh Farms in 2015 was a logical next step. Karma is a daughter of Mystic and a disease resistant UK male. Her grandmother is Jester and great grandmother is Cascade.

In an Instagram post welcoming Karma, Hops Direct wrote she brings a punch of Orange Creamsicle, with bright notes of beer and mint. Other descriptors include soft lemon, blackcurrant, pine and peach.

The basics: 7-9% alpha acids, 3-4% beta acids, 0.5-0.9 mL/100 grams total oil.

NELSON BLISS

When I wrote Dave Dunbar at Freestyle Hops to learn more about Nelson Bliss, he provided this information:

“With our Nelson Sauvin lots we have quite a few breweries chasing maximum tropical intensity. This tends to be expressed as heaps of sweet exotic fruit (I think of it as mango, papaya, yellow nectarine types of notes) in finished beer when used as post-ferm dry hop. Getting that maximum tropical intensity isn’t a free lunch though; we are losing yield and some of the bright, wine-y character to achieve it. Ideally, many breweries would like that super tropical character to still retain a good degree of wine-y complexity and have some bright citrus-y notes.

“For bigger breweries with lot selection and great attention to process, this is easily solve-able by selecting a little bit of a very bright, citrus-forward lot of Nelson Sauvin along with their super tropical lot and blending to get the desired outcome. Our ‘Bliss Process’ does that blending at the farm (pellet mill) in ratios that we think are going to do a great job of achieving that super tropical but with brighter complexity result. In most years we think that blend is roughly ~70% super tropical with ~30% bright and wine-y, but it will vary somewhat to account for season-to-season variation.”

The process is not simple:

Read more

* Thora
* Hop harvest estimates
* Vera hopped beers honored at GABF
* Fresh hop winners
* Alpha King winners
* Read and listen to this

Welcome to Vol. 9, No. 6. There are plenty of hop varieties out there whose names end in a, but I’m not sure if three have been put forward in the same year. But here we are: Vera, Dolcita and Thora. Getting a name may seem like the end of a journey — after all, Vera resulted from a cross made in 2011, Dolcita one in 2016, and Thora one in 2015 — but, really, this is just the beginning for all of them.

THORA

The Hop Quality Group and the USDA-ARS have revealed the name of the newest hop variety, Thora, and announced that the plant material (that doesn’t sound sexy, but you get the idea) is, like other public varieties, available “for commercial production, research purposes, and the breeding and development and commercialization of new cultivars.”

The name Thora is of Scandinavian origin, derived from the Old Norse name Þóra, which is a feminine form of Þórr, the name of the Norse god of thunder, Thor. (In its native language, Thora is pronounced Thawr-ah, with the emphasis on the first syllable.) Brewers will surely see the potential for incorporating Thora and/or its meaning in new beer names.

Thora is the first variety to emerge from the collaboration between the Hop Quality Group and the USDA public breeding program that began in 2015. The HQG provided funding, its members gave direction to John Henning and Angela Randazzo at the USDA, conducted brewing trials and otherwise participated in every part of the process that led to the release.

Backing up a bit, Henning made 38 crosses for the HQG, that is cross-pollinated females and males of interest, in 2015, producing 30,000 seeds. Those were sprouted in pots in a greenhouse in 2016. Only 600 of those proved to be disease resistant enough to planted in a field in 2017. Following another season, samples from 60 contenders that remained were sent to HQG members to rub and sniff.

Read more

* John I. Haas & Hop Head Farms
* Advanced forms and functions
* Fresh hops: The science
* Fresh hops: The controversy (?)
* Hop profile: Over/underrated

Welcome to Vol. 9, No. 5. In the introduction to “For the Love of Hops,” sixth-generation hop farmer Alex Feiner told me, “They say whoever is scratched by the hops cannot escape them.” That was apparent, once again, earlier this month when Daria and I visited farms in Oregon and Washington. Harvest signals an end, but also that a new brewing season is ahead. It might not make sense – after three years of acreage reduction and looking at a beer market that is not flashing green – but it seemed as if you could smell optimism as well as fresh hops in the kilns.

Of course, industry change is also always in the air. Today, John I. Haas and Hop Head Farms in Michigan announced that beginning Nov. 1 Haas will take over fulfillment of Hop Head’s existing contracts and customer relationships for non-Michigan grown hops. Hop Head will continue to farm and sell direct to market Michigan grown hops. Haas also announced a partnership with warehouse and logistics provider Lineage to operate a dedicated East Coast distribution hub in Pennsylvania.

What hasn’t changed is witnessing how exciting harvest is for brewers, particularly those experiencing it for the first time. We were gone by the time Michael James Jackson Foundation awardees arrived in the Yakima Valley, but Breeze Galindo captured a bit of it. And a story in the Yakima Herald-Republic adds perspective. (This version, with photos, appeared in the Seattle Times, and fortunately does not reside behind a paywall.)

BACK TO BASICS

Established in 2012, Hop Head Farms began selling hops grown elsewhere as well as its own almost from the beginning. It contracted with four German hop growers in 2013 to deliver bales of newly released varieties, such as Huell Melon and Mandarina Bavaria. As its own acreage expanded, so did relationships with growers elsewhere. Their spot hops catalog, including varieties supplied by Haas, illustrates how wide the range of what they offered became. That is changing.

“The future is growing our Michigan varieties, producing great hops,” Hop Head CEO Perry Veith said last week while visiting company farms. Yields this season were outstanding across the board, and he sounded optimistic. “I think the cycle is close to turning,” he said. Hop Head harvested “a couple of hundred acres” in 2025, and has room to expand.

“We’ve been partnering with Hop Head for close to a decade now, and I think this is just that natural next step,” said Haas CEO Tom Davis. “The market’s dictating a lot of it. Everyone’s feeling the pinch, whether it’s the brewer side, and certainly the grower side, and the distributors in between. The natural next step . . . is to do what you do best, and I think Hop Head does an excellent job. They’re the best in Michigan hops.”

The changes give Haas a larger footprint east of the Mississippi. “We’re going to be working more closely with these new customers, these new brewers,” Davis said. “Utilizing our East Coast distribution center will help because we’ll be able to get those hops out to those customers, as well as other brewers, much faster. Further penetration into the smaller craft brewers is an excellent part of the story from the Haas side.”

Read more