Newsletters

* 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.”

Read more

* 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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* 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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