Newsletters

* Market outlook
* Oil check
* Weather updates
* Hop profile: Simcoe
* Additional reading

Welcome to Vol. 7, No. 10. First, if you are reading this, then the transition to EmailOctupus is a success. The newsletter itself may look a little different the next few issues as I learn my way around the software. Second, Best of Craft Beer Awards has signed up to sponsor Hop Queries, helping subsidize getting this in your emailbox. I appreciate that and would welcome another sponsor.

Third, if you wish to contribute as well, you may do that here. What does not go to EmailOctupus will be used to find information hiding behind paywalls. Finally, I have given Hop Queries their own website, to house the archives and occasionally provide new information. Among other additions, I have included a list of resources. Feel free to suggest additions.

WE’LL KNOW MORE IN JUNE . . . OR LATER

My story about why farmers in the Northwest are ready to remove 10,000 acres (about 18 percent of what was harvested last year) from production in 2024 has posted at Brewing Industry Guide (subscription required). Short term, this means there are plenty of hops out there, often at bargain prices.

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* Still too many hops
* Let it snow, let it snow
* Eclipse for an eclipse
* Zumo meets lager
* Cascade, Chinook cup winners

Welcome to Vol. 7, No. 9. Thanks to everybody who reached out last month with thoughts about the future of Hop Queries. There is a plan, and next month you should receive Hop Queries via a different service. What you need to know right now is that no action will be required on your part . . . I hope. To be sure, the day after I send the February issue, I will drop you a note via Tiny Letter to alert you Vol. 7, No. 10 has been published. If you did not receive it, we will figure out what happened. Now, back to Humulus lupulus.

THERE ARE STILL TOO MANY HOPS

A surplus of hops continues to hang like a dark cloud over producers and suppliers in the Northwest. Last week at the American Hop Convention, John I. Haas CEO Tom Davis told growers that as a group they need to remove an additional 9,000 to 10,000 acres of aroma hops from of production. Idling about 6,000 acres (including approximately 9,000 acres of aroma hops) in 2023 had no meaningful impact on inventory reduction. The estimated 35-to-40-million-pound aroma hop surplus has not changed.

For perspective, farmers in Washington, Idaho and Oregon harvested 60,113 acres in 2022 and 54,318 in 2023. In the Czech Republic, the third largest hop producing country in the world, growers harvest about 12,000 acres, almost all of them planted with aroma varieties.

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