The Low Down on Simcoe®

Having trouble getting Simcoe®? You’re not alone. A ton of brewers have asked us for Simcoe®, which we don’t have, as it’s a proprietary hop owned by Select Botanicals Group, LLC, who restricts who can grow it. Our growers have not been licensed to plant Simcoe®.

A brewer in Southern California recently told me he just bought the last 3,000 pounds. I didn’t ask what he paid, but in view of the high demand and short supply, I’m sure the “spot” price was not pretty.

The scarcity of Simcoe® and the near-desperate demand prompted me to poke around. First, let’s look at the sheets. Yakima Chief Ranches,Inc. applied for the original patent in 199. They identified Simcoe® as a dual purpose bittering/aroma hop, with a hefty yield of 2300-2500 pounds per acre. The current owner of the trademark Simcoe(r) is Select Botanicals Group, LLC, of Washington.

A review of the USAHops website shows that the Washington farmers planted 237 acres of Simcoe® in 2010, up 29% from 2009. (By comparison, WA farmers planted 443 acres of Chinook, up 15%).

However, the average yield was 1,698 lbs/acre. This is a 20% drop from the year before and about a 30% decline from it’s purported average yield ( 2,300—2,500 lbs/acre). (By comparison, Chinook’s average yield was up around 8% at 1,963 lbs/acre).

I understand that Simcoe's owner has licensed three (3) farms in Washington to grow their prized invention. I'm not sure how many merchants are allowed to sell it.

It’s clear that the supply was down. A baby harvest? Pest or mildew issues? Not sure.

Why the popular demand? Let’s look at Simcoe’s chemistry:

Alpha acids: 12-14% (Chinook 13-15, Centenn. 10-13)
Beta acids: 4-5%
Cohumulone: 15-20% (remarkably low!)
Total Oil: 2—2.5 ml/100 g (huge, on par with Magnum and Centennial)
Myrcene: 60-65% (Chinook’s is 52)
Farnesene: 0% (Chinook and Centenn. “trace”)
H/C ratio: 2.1 (same as Chinook)
Storability: good
Parentage: Undisclosed (the inventor’s not telling)

Brewers have described the aroma as complex, hovering between citrusy/grapefruity and piney. I’ve read references to Simcoe® as “Cascades on steroids.” Interestingly, in Yakima Chief’s patent application, the only hops referenced were Cascade and Galena, in the context of shattering potential and shoot emergence, respectively.

So let’s say you want Simcoe® but can’t get it or don’t want to pay high spot market prices. Are there “alternatives?” Choosing an “alternative” is at best an inexact science. Do we find a cultivar with similar hop chemistry? We can’t compare parentage, as Yakima Chief’s keeping the blood lines secret. We could study key molecular markers on the Simcoe® mystery hop and on likely parental genotypes, but this would take both big time and big money.

For now, if your recipe calls for Simcoe® but you can’t get it, you might experiment with blending hops. We haven’t done the science, nor have we played with pilot brews ourselves, but our hunch is a blend of Chinook and Horizon might do the trick (Horizon for bittering only).

In our view, the spot market spike and scarcity of Simcoe® points up the need for diversification. Brewers should have access to suitable hop alternatives. Growers should have access to rhizomes without paying restrictive licensing fees. Scientists should have access to the parentage, both to develop alternatives as well as to validate disease resistance assessments.

Of course, the shortage also underscores the need by brewers to contract long term with merchants or growers for must-have varieties. In 2011, we will be harvesting our first crop of both Chinook and Horizon. We’re naturally very excited, as over the last few decades both workhorse hops have been the exclusive province of Washington growers.

Roger Worthington
1/24/11

PS. For more information on Simcoe®, click on:

http://www.yakimachief.com/hopvarieties/simcoeyc014.html

To compare Simcoe’s hop chemistry with other cultivars, click on:

http://www.indiehops.com/haunoldpub-privchart.asp and
http://www.indiehops.com/aroma_variety_survey_chart.asp

To read Simcoe®’s patent application, click here

For more information of Select Botanicals Group, LLC, see http://wa.14thstory.com/select-botanicals-group-llc.html

Click here for the trademark ownership.

Less is More – Larry Sidor, Deschutes Brewery’s Head Hopster

Larry Sidor is a whole hop guy. It’s basically non-negotiable. Having worked for a Yakima hop merchant and an industrial brewer back in the day, Larry has seen first-hand the ravages that processing inflicts upon the noble flower. The Master Brewer for Deschutes who has brought us Abyss, Dissident, Red Chair IPA and Green Lakes Organic Ale (my personal favorite) is a big fan of fresh, wholesome ingredients.

“As a rule, the less we tamper with it, the more I’ll probably like it,” he says.

So you can imagine my trepidation as I walked inside the Deschutes Brewery in Bend with my cooler of hop pellets to meet up with our hop purist. As I told one brewer earlier about my hop ambitions, my goal is to one day create a hop pellet that earns the blessing of Larry Sidor, the High Hop Priestess. I was of course prepared for a polite but firm woodshedding.

What I got instead was a captivating tutorial by a man who not only knows his craft but is eager to learn more. Although Larry is a stickler for whole cones, occasionally, when a beer screams out for pellets (and he's a few bales short), he will listen. Larry had on hand four pelletted varieties from four different suppliers: three from Yakima and one from Germany.

The first noticeable difference was the diameter. Yakima numbers 1 and 2 were 4 mm diameter, Yakima #3 was 6 mm, and the French variety was also 6 mm. Our pellets were 6 mm, and in general they were longer.

The second detectable difference was the Yakima varieties were harder and more baked. A few showed tell-tale signs of “rat-tailing,” a new word I picked up which, as Larry, explained, meant a harder “shell” on the outside of the pellet, indicating excessive heat during pelletization. As previously reported, Indie Hops has been able to lower the temperature at the die of it's spanking new 'patient' pelleting mill without coolants to 104F – 110F, whereas the Yakima standard is 130F.

Third, the Yakima varieties crumbled into a fine powder, the French pellets broke up into a coarser grind, and the IH pellets offered the coarsest grind. I asked the Hop Oracle about the importance of the coarseness of the pellet grist to the craft brewer.

“You have to go back to the beginning. We started pelleting hops back in the mid 1960’s for one reason: whole hops occupied too much valuable space, which translated into higher shipping and refrigeration costs. By increasing the bulk density, we could store and ship more pellets at a lower cost. But the downside was a loss in hop quality.”

“There’s nothing magic about a 4 mm pellet. The smaller the grind, the more cut surface, which means more leaching of vegetative materials into the beer,” Larry rolled on, clearly enjoying his platform. “The English have used ‘plugs,” which are about 25 mm, which they inserted into the bunghole of the cask, but I’ve never seen them produced in the US. A puck-sized pellet with a coarser grind would be … interesting.


We then dropped the hop pellets into a pint half-filled with hot water. The IH brew had the biggest fluid absorption and fiber expansion rates. The pellets on contact sort of blossomed like a dehydrated chili of Brussels sprouts (or, maybe, like a chia pet?).

Next, we performed the flagpole test: we stuck a butter knife in the center of each solution to see if the mass was dense enough to hold the utensil firmly upright. The only Hell Broth to survive the “ramrod salute” test: Indie Hops. Thicker is richer.

Next we compared the pellet fiber expansion with the Real Deal, a cup of compressed whole hops (see photo below). During dry hopping, Larry puts the cones into a bag which he secures to the bottom of the tank. As he explained, the ethanol and Co2 in the wort combine to help extract the lovely oils from the lupulin.

Larry posited that a whole cone is better able to preserve the precious lupulin glands by virtue of a sort of “anti-oxidant barrier” contained in the tannins. “When you chop up the hop and rupture the glands, the only shield left is the foil used to bag the pellets,” he said, again in the easy manner of a professor with a boatload of diplomas. “The outer bracts of the whole cone, as well as the in tact membrane of the lupulin gland, provide a natural barrier to oxidation.”

This struck me as an interesting notion, the idea that the cone’s skin of natural anti-oxidants served to insulate the lupulin from degeneration. After class adjourned, I did a bit of digging. First, a bit of hop morphology. Most of the tiny, grandular lupulin glands are located at the base of the bract but others are scattered on the external bracts (or scales). Preserving all of them in tact sounds awfully difficult. The process of picking, drying and then tightly compressing the flowers into bales inescapably ruptures the glands, not to mention the agitation that occurs during transportation and storage.

In sum, a pristine hop for the commercial brewer is a worthy goal but, practically speaking, highly unlikely. At the same time, proper handling of the cone should be able to provide some measure of protection to the internal lupulin glands congregating in the heart of the cone.

Second, the theory that the flower’s natural anti-oxidants coat and insulate the glands from the ravages of heat and air has an elegant appeal, but is it supported by science? I’m not sure, not because I’ve ever done any hop research, which I haven’t, but simply because I don’t know.

I’m a big fan of tannins conceptually, which contain the powerful flavonoids quercetin and xanthohumol, but it’s my impression that the tannins are a chemical constituent inside the leaves and stem; they are not a structural component, nor are they located inside the glands. And, of course, while tannins offer promise neutraceutically, they don’t endear themselves to good tasting brews.

What does make sense is that the anti-oxidants, if they can survive whole cone or pellet processing, could contribute to the storage quality of the plant material. I’ll have to talk to my friends at OSU about that. Good hop food for thought.

In a nutshell, it’s hard for humans not to disturb the noble flower. To prove the point, Larry trotted out a foiled brick of Hallertau Saphir whole cones from Germany, which looked like it had been processed at the bottom of the Mid-Atlantic trench. In the effort to maximize bulk density, the Deutsch processor essentially crushed the cones flat as silver dollars, which doesn’t bode well for either the lupulin glands or the brewer trying to carefully measure out a quart or two.

Larry Sidor’s enthusiasm for hops and brewing is contagious. As my partner Jim says, “The day you stop getting better is the day you start getting worse.” Jim’s the son of a famous high school football coach, so his cornball fire-up clichés are forgivable. In a good but inspirational way Larry exemplifies this ballyhooed spirit of forever striving for higher quality.

”I’ve seen pellets from 2 to 4 to 6 to 7 millimeters. Why not pellet at 10 to 12 millimeters, or bigger?” Larry suggested, his mind churning with strategies for challenging the status quo. “I’m excited about the coarseness of your pellets, but why stop at a few hundred microns? Why not remove the screen from your hammer mill altogether? That would be perfect.”

“Perfect” as is in more like a whole cone. Larry, thank you, we’re on it. We’re here to challenge the pellet orthodoxy which elevates bulk density over oil preservation. Meanwhile, get ready to test out our new bigger and coarser pellets, you may be pleasantly surprised…

Roger Worthington
6/14/10

Hoptalk with Hopmeister Al, Part IX

Aromas? Yes. But Can the Willamette Valley Handle Dual Purpose Heavies Like Centennial, Horizon and Chinook?

If the Willamette Valley is renown for its aroma hops and Yakima Valley for it’s high alpha, where do “dual purpose” hops fit in? Since most mid to high alpha hops hail from Yakima, does that mean they don’t or wouldn’t thrive in Oregon?

First, a bit of background.

“Dual purpose” is a term of art that first emerged in the mid 1990s, about the time that our hopmeister Dr. Al was hanging up his cover-alls and putting away his clipboard. “We never used that term,” recalled Al.

All Purpose Cluster

“Actually, when I first came to the industry in 1965, brewers talked about three major categories of hops. Aromas, high alphas, and general kettle hops. The latter referred mostly to Cluster hops, such as Early Cluster, California Cluster, Yakima Cluster, and Late Cluster. All of these were virtually indistinguishable by quality characteristics. They differed only by their maturity and harvest dates. California Cluster seemed to rank above the others for reasons that I never quite understood.“

The industrial brewers, continued Al, “reluctantly” used Clusters, since they were cheap, easily available, and supplied generic bitterness to their beer. “They boiled the heck out of those Clusters to get every drop of bitterness,” Al laughed, “and then finished it off with an aroma or general kettle hop.”

By the mid 1970s, the emphasis shifted. “General kettle hops” went the way of the Do-Do as the Big Boys simplified the choice between aroma and high alpha. It wasn’t until the 1990s, that a third party re-emerged, this time at the urging of the craft brewers, who demanded the best from both worlds -- hops that could be used for bittering and European style aroma. Thus was born the utility or “dual purpose” hop.

Perle the Pioneer

The closest thing to a “dual purpose” in Al’s hey day was Perle. When grown in Oregon, which is lower in latitude than its home-hopyard in Germany, Perle alpha averaged around 10-11% AA, which back in the day came pretty close to the high water mark for alpha hops.

To qualify as a noble aroma, however, a hop needed to have storagability similar to the classic old-time aromas such as Hallertauer mittelfrueh, Tettnanger or Saazer. A hop’s storagability, explains Al, is an index for measuring the life a hop’s original alpha acid content.

When kept in non-refrigerated space, the land race aroma hop often lost nearly half of their original alphas. Consequently, they were considered to be “poor keepers.” Is that a bad thing? No, says Al. “The loss of original alpha does not mean that the bittering potential had decreased by a comparable amount. Experienced brewers recognized that when alpha acids degraded, the resulting compounds could still offer bittering, even though those new metabolite compounds couldn’t be assayed by a routine alpha analysis.”

Which to me sounds like hops, like wine, can age with grace. Instead of evaporating down to nothing, the hop oils and acids instead can generate new downstream compounds.

Whether a hop is a good, fair or poor keeper is really a message to the grower on the level of TLC that will be required to preserve the best of the good stuff. Why? Because mishandling a hop during or after harvest compounds the natural loss or degradation of alpha acids. How is that measured? It isn’t. To know whether a hop has been handled, you need to know the skill, patience and infrastructure of your grower, as well as your supplier.

Let’s go back full circle to Perle. Perle’s “good” storagability made it too good to hang with the “poor keeper” nobles. In the brewing process, Perle acted more like a high alpha hop than a finicky, thin skinned and easily bruised noble.

Dual Purpose: Good Keepers

Nowadays, in addition to having fair to good storagability, dual purpose hops are generally about twice as high in alpha than nobles, with about twice the total oils. Signature examples are Centennial (11-14% AA, 2.5 oil ml/100g) and Horizon (12-14% AA, 2.0 oil), the latter being another one of Dr. Al’s hop creations (released in 1998 after Al retired).

Newport (15% AA, 2.0 oil) and Chinook (13-15%, 1.8 oil) are two more popular bittering hops with aroma characteristics, both of which Dr. Al struggles to classify as “dual purpose.” “I was approached by Miller Brewing Company in the early 1990s to breed a back up hop to high-alpha Galena. I crossed Magnum, a German super alpha hop with Galena and Hallertauer mittelfrueh parentage, with a male seedling of Brewers Gold, Fuggle and Late Grape parentage. The outcome was Newport.”

Dr. Al did not make the crosses for Centennial, which was originally bred at the USDA facility in Prosser, Washington. Dr. Al did assist in field testing the selection in Oregon.

Green Greatness Denied?

Although Dr. Al had a hand in the creation or testing of these four high alpha/medium aroma cultivars, none of them – Centennial, Chinook, Horizon or Newport, and you can add Mt. Raineer to that list - have flourished commercially in the Willamette Valley.

To be sure, Horizon, Mt. Raineer and Newport have failed to catch on anywhere, whether in Oregon, Idaho or Washington. With respect to Chinook, which ranks as the 5th highest use hop by craft brewers (BA 2009 hop usage survey), the entire US crop of such hops in 2009 was harvested in Washington. As for Centennial, surpassed only by Cascade as the most popular hop in 2009 among crafties, only two Oregon growers harvested Centennial in 2009, both going off radar to do so. Washington brought home nearly the entire supply.

Why is this? Do dual purpose hops grow better in the Yakima Valley? Are the yields in Yakima higher? Are Oregon growers not up the challenge? Do dual purpose hops “keep” or “store” better in the high plains of Eastern Washington?

According to Al, the answer has to do with history, habit and logistics and nothing to do with terroir, or farmer skill, or passion.

“For years the hop merchants have been contracting with Yakima farmers to grow Centennial. A dual-purpose hop like Centennial needs to be harvested, dried, cooled and refrigerated quickly, to avoid combustion and oxidation,” Al instructs soberly. “Most of the cold storage capacity is in Yakima. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to truck tons of volatile hops in non-refrigerated trucks from Oregon when they can be grown a few miles from the storage coolers in Yakima.”

Heat Blows

Hops in general don’t like heat, but higher alpha hops in particular have been known to combust or “self-ignite” when not properly cooled and stored. It’s imperative, stressed Dr. Al, that before stacking bales in a warehouse, the temperature at the core of the bale, as well as the ambient temperature, must be brought down to the 70s.

Hops with high total oils, such as Bullion, Chinook, Newport and Centennial, can generate tremendous heat inside a tightly compressed 200 pound bale. The heat needs to dissipate. It’s critical, reminds Al, that hops be allowed to cool off after drying in a loose stack when removed form the kiln. “If you bale them while they’re hot, and stack them up end on end in a closed room without allowing the heat to dissipate,” Al warns gravely, “they’ll self ignite. They’ll blow.” As in sky high. As in you better have good insurance.

If heat is an enemy, then the Willamette Valley must be a safe harbor. By comparison, the day time ambient temperatures in the Valley around harvest time are six (6) degrees cooler than in Yakima. Impatience is another enemy. Hops must be allowed to cool down for at least 18-24 hours before baling. Hops are dried in the kiln at about 140F (often much higher on especially hot summer days). The optimal temp of a baled hop before storage should hover around 72F. The optimal temp of baled hops in in cold storage drops below freezing.

A hop baled before it’s time and temp is a recipe for blackened, oxidized hops, or worse. Ka-Blam!

What about yields? According to Al, the yields between Oregon and Washington should be compatible. What about alpha acid product? Compatible. What about disease resistance? Per Dr. Al, growing Chinook in Oregon may pose a challenge because of the risk of downy mildew. However, he assures, that risk can be managed by good farming technique and vigilance.

Centennials Busting to Break Out
What about those Oregon-grown Centennials? Are they any good? I haven’t seen any data comparing the chemistry profiles, not that the numbers alone tell the story. We have received feedback from brewers who have used Centennials harvested in 2009 from Goschie Farms (one of our farm partners). In so many words, the consensus sounded something like … err uhh, Damn! This is good sh**!

Here at Indie Hops, we’re satisfied that the Willamette Valley terroir is well suited for both aroma and dual purpose varieties. In the end, it comes down to the talent, skill, patience, experience and passion of the grower. We’ve got two of the finest in Goschie Farms and Coleman Farms.

Cooler, Greener, Richer

In 2010, Indie will be planting “Salmon Safe” Chinook (gotta love that!), Centennial, Horizon, Perle, and a host of aroma hops (e.g., Cascade, Liberty, Mt. Hood, Ultra, Goldings, Santiam, Crystal and Columbia).

If storage is a problem, we can fix that. We’ve got the space. Our patient pelleting mill is now running, which means there’s no need to truck Oregon’s finest beer flower 250 miles to Yakima in the dog days of August. We’ll be able to quickly convert baled cones into fresh, oily, happy pellets within a few days of harvest. We’ve lowered the temperature of the pelleting die below 110 degrees F and our storage cooler is always below freezing.

But more on that later.

Roger Worthington
4/2/10