* 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.
Eliminating 10,000 acres would be much like eliminating all Czech production. It would reduce acreage to not much more than farmers strung in 2015 (43,633). This is a complicated story, with many implications. I will be busy the next week reporting and writing about the “big picture” for Brewing Industry Guide. (This is my occasional reminder about the value of subscribing.)
Short term, one thing has been obvious for a while. Just a few searches at Lupulin Exchange indicate there are plenty of popular varieties available at attractively low prices, and not just those grown in the Northwest. In contrast, there are few options for less buzzy cultivars, such as Glacier or Sterling.
Speaking of Lupulin Exchange, John Bryce’s survey of brewer sentiment does not include enough responses (152 out of thousands possible) to be consider statistically significant overall, but probably reflects the mood of those who shop on the exchange. And, to the “My brewery pays more attention to hop prices and shops around more than we used to,” if anything I would say the 60.5 percent “yes” response is low. Almost every supplier I have talked in the last three years mentions how much more price sensitive brewers are now compared to a few years ago.
BUT NEVER TOO MUCH SNOW
This month in #beerisagriculture, the blast of winter weather that hammered the Northwest was good for hops. The region relies on that snowpack to store water until it is needed in the summer months. Before the recent storm, levels were alarmingly low.
Oregon received between 40 and 70 inches of snow in the Cascade Range and went from an anemic level of snowpack to 105 percent of normal. Matt Warbritton with the USDA warned Northwest News Network that conditions could change. “Just because we have near-normal snowpack right now doesn’t mean it will last, especially if we have warmer temperatures.”
The reigning El Niño system has kept temperatures warmer than average, and there are already concerns about its impact through the rest of the year. The memory of wildfires and their impact on the 2020 and 2021 hop crops is still fresh.
In Washington, many regions were reporting below 50 percent snowpack before the recent blast. Now, snowpack in the state is 73 percent of normal. “People should continue to pray for snow. While things are starting to look better, we still need a significant amount of snow,” said Caroline Mellor with the Washington State Department of Ecology.
SHOULD IT BE A BLACK IPA?
Quick tangent: The next Queries you receive will have a sponsor, but not one that would be considered a member of the hop industry. I worked for advertising-supported newspapers for more than 25 years, so I appreciate those companies. I also know the wall that needs to exist between advertising and editorial well. It is not always simple. When I delivered the Beer Bloggers Conference keynote several years ago, I told attendees that every time they use a press release that a PR person gets their wings.
It may be that I am a skeptic at heart. I understand readers could be as well. Given that much of what I post here is about new hop varieties and new products, I sometimes feel like a salesman. So, were BarthHaas to sponsor this newsletter, you sure as shootin’ could wonder about my intentions as I riff on the idea of brewing a beer with Australian Eclipse hops for the upcoming total eclipse. In fact, this information comes from a sales pitch to brewers. But it is fun. Guilt free, here it goes.
The “Path of Totality” on April 8 — the narrow geographic band where the total eclipse is clearly visible — will stretch from Mexico through San Antonio to Detroit and into Canada. That seems like a good reason for Daria and I to visit relatives in Texas. And now to look for beers brewed with Eclipse, a newish variety (named in 2020) from Hop Products Australia, a BH subsidiary.
The team at Haas Innovations in Yakima offers this recipe for Eclipse Hazy IPA.
Grain bill:
50% Great Western 2 row Malt
50% Great Western Pale High Color Malt
Water treatment:
1:1 sulfate to chloride ratio
Mashing:
Step mash at 50º C (122º F), 62º C (144º F) and 72º C (162º F). 20 minutes at each rest temperature. Mash off at 78º (172º F) C.
Hops:
10 IBU target first wort bittering with Eclipse hops
10 IBU target 45-minute addition with Eclipse hops
15 IBU whirlpool addition Eclipse hops
Yeast:
Imperial A38 Juice
Fermentation and dry hopping:
Pitch and hold at 19.5º C (67º F), dry hop day 6 with 2.5 pounds per barrel. Leave on hops for 4 days and transfer off. Crash beer on day 12 and carbonate.
(For homebrewers, 2.5 pounds per barrel is about 6.5 ounces per 19 liters.)
A HINT OF LIME?
Perhaps this is an example of the power of suggestion at work. Earlier this month we enjoyed beers at Other Half in Philadelphia with several members of Daria’s family. Looking at the menu, I suggested the Mexican Lager for my brother-in-law. He is not a hophead and I have seen him stuff a lime in the neck of a bottle of Corona.
He told me his beer tasted “very good,” and that was the total of his tasting notes. When I looked at the description of the beer OH provided, I read, “Light body, a touch of corn sweetness, the signature wisp of green apple aroma the yeast is known for combined with late additions of Zumo hops to make the fruitiness of this lager really pop.”
Zumo (Hop Queries Vol. 7, No. 9) is a newcomer from Segal Ranch in the Yakima Valley, noteworthy because it smells of lime zest on the rub. It is one of the hops in the 2024 version of Pliny for President from Russian River Brewing.
Rather than categorizing Zumo as another fruit-forward hop to add to a hazy IPA (Other Half makes some of the best), somebody at OH gave it a different thought. That fruity note, more than I would expect in a “Mexican lager,” was apparent. A hint of lime? Maybe. Citrus? Certainly. Did my brother-in-law notice either? No. So perhaps what I tasted was influenced by what I read.
John Segal sells most of his hops directly to brewers, but a limited amount of Zumo is available from Hollingbery and Sons in Yakima.
BILLY GOAT WINS AGAIN
Last year, Billy Goat Hop Farm south of Montrose, Colorado, became the first outside of Washington or Oregon to captures the Cascade Cup, awarded by the Hop Quality Group. This year, they became the first farm to win the cup back-to-back.
Billy Goat was one of five small non-Northwest, and in some cases non-U.S., farms I wrote about for in The New Brewer raw materials issue. Audrey Gehlhausen and Chris DellaBianca started Billy Goat in 2017, acquiring 40 acres on Colorado’s Western Slope and putting in 2,300 poles and 57 miles of cables on the 32 acres they farm. They did most of the work themselves, with some help from day laborers.
“It feels bold, now that we are in it,” Gehlhausen said. DellaBianca, who has a degree in environmental biology, spent a year working at the Jackson Hop Farm in Idaho before they determined how many acres they wanted to manage and what they would need to do that.
The Hop Quality Group began awarding the Cascade Cup in 2013, inviting growers to send their best samples of Cascade — a foundational hop for craft brewing — to be evaluated by members of the group. There were 40 entries this year. Brulotte Farms in Washington was second and Misty Mountain in Colorado was third. This was the fourth time Brulotte has finished in the top three. Misty Mountain Hop Farm, west of Olathe and about a dozen miles from Montrose, became just the third farm outside of Washington or Oregon to finish in the top three.
In Michigan, Top Hop Farms won the Chinook Cup, a competition patterned after the Cascade Cup. Top Hop also won in 2018 and 2019, and finish second last year. Early on, Michigan growers learned that Chinook grown in their state smells and tastes different than Chinook grown in the Northwest. Michigan Chinook is fruitier, often hinting of pineapple.
Bell’s Brewery Estate Hopyard was second in the competition and Hop Head Farms in Hickory Corners third.