Variety, Uniqueness, Consistency

Craft beer thrives in a culture of diversity and adventure. In our own little town of Portland, Oregon, as soon as we reached thirty-some breweries and mumblings of “over saturated” picked up, a dozen more breweries opened up much to the enduring gratitude of happy customers. The growing variety of beers, pubs and breweries is attracting more and more thirsty people everyday.

Perhaps more than any other arrow in the quiver of ingredients, hops cast a spell on brewers and imbibers of American craft beer, tickling the potential for variety and individualism. Their symphony of oils reaches each of us with a unique tone, the crescendo leading some to ecstasy and others to seek refuge. We continue to be amazed at how wildly different educated palates can interpret the same hop.

Last summer a focus group panel was held that illustrates these varied perceptions toward hops. A group of accomplished craft brewers from Oregon tasted a series of single-hopped beers, not knowing what the hop was in the various samples. Descriptors they used to describe the prevailing hop character, and the number of panelists who used that descriptor, are below:

Clearly, one brewer’s nectar can be another’s poison! [One guy’s fruity apple can be another’s cat pee?]

As we’ve striven to learn from brewers how they’d like to see the hop world evolve, this theme of variety, creativity and uniqueness stands out.

Our resident brewer and Brewery Ambassador Matt Sage has recently travelled the craft brewery scenes in Washington State, Oregon, Southern California and Colorado, seeking insights into what brewers are looking for in hops. His findings are as varied as his travels! Click here for a taste of Matt’s curious adventures in the world of hop flavor.

Alongside variety and uniqueness, brewers also care about consistency. After all, when we find something we really like, we want it to be consistent. What can Indie Hops do to help the hop world evolve in a way that craft brewers would like to see? Well...might as well start with variety, uniqueness and consistency!

Click here for a review of a few of the breeding projects underway at Oregon State University that we are spearheading in our quest to probe the mysteries and amplify the wonders of the noble flower.

Cheers!
JS
jim@indiehops.com
2/8/11

The Art and Science of Hop Substitution Charts

We are often asked how the “Hop Substitution Charts” available on the web came about. There is some variation among them, but many appear to be carbon copies of each other.

What are they based on? Hop chemistry? Parentage? Sensory Panels? Educated guesswork? Test brews? Marketing sleight of hand? I asked my friends at OSU and the consensus was anywhere between “pseudo-science” to all of the above.

If anyone has any insights on the basis (or reliability) of the hop substitution charts (e.g., see http://www.byo.com/resources/hops) please let me know.

We aren’t so bold as to assert that one hop can be “substituted” for another – at least not without accurate genetic and sensory information. We prefer to say that one might present a suitable “alternative” for another.

When the hop “shortage” struck in 2008, many brewers scrambled to find substitutes for aroma hops. Many brewers tapped higher alpha varieties and to this day have stuck with them. One macro-consequence of this recipe change has been a decrease in the production and usage of aroma hops compared to pre–shortage years.

The recent New Brewer reported substantial decreases in the US acreage of workhorses such as Cascade and Willamette, while acreage in the “dual purpose” powerhouse Centennial has actually increased since 2008.

Based on anecdotal encounters with brewers, I’ve noted a trend towards simplification of the aroma hops used. It appears that while usage of public varieties, such as Sterling, Cascade and Mt. Hood has fallen, proprietary cultivars, such as Amarillo, Palisade and dual purpose Simcoe has gone up.

Of course, when a hop is proprietary, the owner can limit which farmers can grow it. The owner stands to obtain a licensing fee or royalty from the sale of the hop from the grower to the owner/merchant.

Random Sampling of Web-based Hop Charts: Brew 365 Bitter Brewer Knight's of the Mashing Fork South Atlantic Home Brewer (Please note, this is a large .pdf file)

Since many of the hop merchants in Yakima also own patents on hop cultivars (e.g., Simcoe, Palisade, Citra, Amarillo, Warrior), it’s no secret that between public and their own varieties they’d rather push their own. That’s simply an illustration of the guiding hand of self-interest in a capitalist, laissez-faire economy.

But when each Yakima hop merchant pursues their own self-interest, is it true that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” magically makes sure that hop varieties are fairly and propitiously allocated in a way that insures the march of the craft revolution?

Is the trend towards less diversity of the hop supply good for crafties? Is the consolidation of hop acreage in Yakima good for crafties? Should crafties rely on foreign imports when suitable varieties can be grown less expensively and more reliably in the US? Do crafties benefit when each year we see fewer heritage hop farmers willing to give it another go? Is the risk of over dependence on a narrow menu of varieties acceptable?

These are big questions. I’m sure the patent owners can make a strong argument that their hop inventions are unique and superior. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with owning patents. It takes years of R & D to bring home a winning cultivar – such as Citra. The question that intrigues us is not whether a proprietary hop is unique, but how unique is it?

That’s where the “substitution” charts come in. Within the framework of the aroma hops breeding program we sponsor at OSU, we will be looking at the design of a “sub” chart that is based on science and sensory analysis.

In the meantime, when brewers ask us for an “alternative” to Simcoe, we suggest Chinook, based mainly on the grapefruity aroma and the similar alpha acid profile (Centennial’s another choice). We’re not absolutely sure on parentage of Simcoe, since it’s proprietary.

It may be best to suggest blends of hop varieties to attain a particular character. As an example, it might be useful to say, “instead of Simcoe, use 50% of Hop A, 25% of Hop B, and 25% of Hop C.” Of course, as OSU continues to develop crosses in the pursuit of unique aroma hops, perhaps the day will come soon when the choice will be simple.

As we explore these questions, we’re always learning more from you about what works. Have you on a lark or hunch swapped out one variety (or blend of varieties) to imitate or, better yet, emulate a go-to hop? How did it go? We’d love to hear about your fortuitous trials and even your not so happy errors.

Roger Worthington
12/3/10

Indie Hops’ Open House: A Celebration to Usher in the 2010 Harvest

HUBBARD, OR. In the heart of Oregon’s hop country, Indie Hops unveiled its clean, green pellet mill to over 100 craft brewers, hop farmers, OSU and WSU ag scientists and even a few of our competitors last Friday. After plying our guests with BBQ and beers, we cranked up the space age mill and it didn’t blow.

It did, however, to the delight of all, convert a bale of Cascade hops into big, fat, oily Type 90 pellets. As one brewer commented, “They kept crowing about their pellet die temp being under 110F and they delivered. We gunned their pellets at 106F.”

Special guest Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Or), himself an avid home brewer, delivered a rousing speech to the faithful in which he lauded craft brewing as “a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy economy.” Rep. DeFazio made no bones about it: he’s proud to help nurture a growing industry that generates thousands of jobs at a time when the largest brewer in the US is foreign-owned (InBev/Bud).

It’s well known that Oregonians tend to support their own. Almost 40% of the beer brewed in Oregon is consumed within the state – a testament to brand loyalty as well as customer sophistication. And small in-state breweries own about 11% of the market share in Oregon, the highest in the US.

As Jim noted in his opening remarks to the faithful, "Oregon has it all. We’ve got the soil, water and climate. We’ve got some of the best brewers, the best hop farmers, and the smartest hop scientists in the world. And now Oregon has its own hop processor and we pledge to rise to the same standard of excellence that you have set."

Of course, even the best aroma hops terroir has it’s hiccups. This season was a wet one in the Willamette Valley. The rainy Spring finally did surrender to the sunny skies of Summer, but only recently. (By the way, aroma hops thrive in cooler weather). Insect pressure has been light. Mildew was a potential threat but it stayed manageable. Aphids never posed a serious threat and, thanks to cooler temperatures, the spider mites were kept at bay. The cooler summer has allowed our beloved cones to achieve their iconic plumpness.

The scuttlebutt among the Oregon farmers is that, thanks to the surge in sunshine, we should have a decent – but not banner --harvest, although for certain cultivars it might be delayed about a week. The following is a snapshot of the anticipated harvest for select varieties:

US Tettanger -- August 16-18th
Centennials -- August 18-20th
Willamettes -- August 23ish
Sterling -- September 3-6.
Cascade -- September 6-8th.
Mt. Hood -- 1st week September

As the venerable Val Peacock, Ph.D, recently advised in The New Brewer (July/Aug 2010), brewers are advised to visit the farms from which they purchase their hops. We agree – and we’ll add to that sage advice our own admonition that you ought to get to know your pellet millers and walk their shop. At Indie Hops, we’d be happy to arrange for you to visit the Goschie and Coleman hopyards.

Check for yourself the quality of the hops, the cleanliness of the farms and machinery, the timing of the harvest, the status of any mildew or pest problems, and the operation of the drying rooms. After a tour of the hopyards, we’d be pleased to escort you over to our nearby plant and perhaps run a few bales for you. We’ll provide the earplugs, but even though we tend to get carried away with our pellet design and quality, we’ll ask in advance that you not insert them until we flip the switch.

Thanks to everybody for joining us in the celebration of Oregon’s first pellet mill. We’re very pleased to join the craft beer revolution and we appreciate your support and feedback. Special thanks to Bridgeport, Lucky Labrador and Full Sail for bringing the beer.

Roger Worthington
8/9/10

Hop History with Dr. Al Haunold, Part VI

Saazer vs Sterling: Do You Want Sizzle or Steak?

Saazer is a land race, noble aroma hop whose “Old Europe” mystique may overshadow a few telling flaws. It’s a low total oil, low alpha acid, low co-humulone classic hop renowned for its spicy and herbal flavors. Over the last 700 years, Saazer hops have survived wars, famine, invasions, Nazis and Communist collective farming in the tiny town of Zatec (formerly Saaz), in what’s today the Czech Republic, about 50 miles south of Dresden, Germany.

In 2009, Saazer (Cz) ranked as the 7th most used hop in the Brewers Association 2009 hop usage poll, just behind it’s more robust US offshoot, Sterling. Sterling, as we’ll see, may not carry the mystique of a land race Euro hop (think castles, coats-of-arms, Oompah bands), but US farmers and craft brewers love it.

The Wages of Communism

Saazer hops have been beset by unsteady availability and small yields. The acreage has not expanded in decades (centuries?) and the yields by US standards have been dramatically low, which of course has helped push up its price. It was the uncertain supply and wild price fluctuations that prompted US brewers back in the early 1980s to grow Czech Saaz in the U.S. At the time, the walls of Communism were beginning to crack and the Czech people were poised to embrace the promise of capitalism.

A prominent US brewer began growing Czech Saaz in Northern Idaho in the 1980s on a farm near the Canadian border (aka, “the Boundary Farm”), which was owned by Anheuser Busch. The latitude of the Boundary Farm was similar to the Saazer region but the former’s growing season was a tad shorter. Dr. Cal Skotland, a plant pathologist stationed at Prosser, WA found and destroyed the Prunus Necrotic Ringspot Virus in the original planting stock he got from Czechoslovakia This virus, commonly found in many older hop cultivars around the world, was probably retarding the yield of the hop back in its homeland as well as reducing its alpha acids potential, but went unheeded under a see-no-evil Communist regime.

So, in the late 1980s, the stage was set. Noble aroma? Check. Low yield in it’s Bohemian homeland? Check. Low alpha acid? Check. Low oil? Check. Throw in the Ringspot Necrotic Ringspot virus with a gathering threat of the Apple Mosaic Virus and you have all the elements of the kind of perfect hop storm that our very own Dr. Al Haunold was put on this Earth to clean up, amp up, oil up, and let her rip.

Purging the Rootstock

Al obtained virus free clones in 1990 from the Washington Experiment Station at Prosser, and immediately set to work cooking up a new cultivar. His mission: higher yield, more alpha, similar storage potential, disease resistance and a compatible oil profile.

All very good, kind sir, but wait a second. The rootstock was infected? This budding hopster was still hung up on the virus thing.

RGW: “Do you mean to tell me the noble Saazer directly from it’s idyllic birthplace was chronically infected? And that’s probably why the yields – then and now – have been so puny? Why didn’t your colleagues back East get mad as hell and knock those viral bastards out? Good lord! Didn’t the virus skunk up the beer?”

Al, being Al, of steady hand and disciplined demeanor, first calmed me down. “Viruses are not uncommon,” he assured. “Usually in about 10 to 15 years the rootstock will get infected with mechanically transmitted viruses, such as the Prunus Necrotic Ringspot virus. Roots can get contaminated when machinery moves from one hop yard to another without first being cleaned. Workers can also act as hosts if they labor in multiple yards without cleaning up first. That’s why it pays for farmers to take every precaution – steamcleaning machinery, vigorous hand washing, targeting pathogens by hand, etc -- all of which are par for the course in the Valley.”

He continued. “This is also why scientists need to constantly monitor and why growers should check their rootstock before planting. Why did my colleagues in Czechoslavakia send us virus-infected Saazer during the good glasnost times of the 1980s? I don’t know, maybe that’s all they had. The virus detection kit was certainly available in the 1970s. Detection wasn’t the problem – it was the solution. Massive acreage of infected hops would have to have been sacrificed. It takes 2 to 3 years to bring in a healthy crop, so all of that investment would’ve been lost.”

“At the same time,” Al mused, “it was a centrally planned government that didn’t readily admit to flaws or imperfections. Maybe nobody wanted to be the one to admit that the fruit of their almighty Communist labor was infected.”

Building a Bigger & Bolder Saaz Offspring

Al decided to cross the virus-free Czech Saaz female with a vigorous male plant that had Cascade and German aroma parentage with a smattering of higher alpha potential from Brewer’s Gold. His vision was to design a lush growing hop plant that would fill in the spaces between plants in each row, so it would look like a solid green wall with plenty of side-arms and lots of cones, in contrast to the sparse cone set normally obtained with Saaz plants.

“Czech Saaz have puny sidearms with short secondary and tertiary branching,” he noted grimly. “The cone volume is weak, about 20 per sidearm. We wanted longer sidearms with 30 to 50 or more cones on average. Also, Saaz cones tend to be light, brittle and smallish. We wanted something more substantial.”Done. Al bred a robust cultivar whose parentage was ½ Saazer, ¼ Cascade, 1/8th German aroma, plus a smidgen of Brewers Gold, Early Green and more mystery hop. The yields shot up about 80% (4 bales, or about 800 lbs per acre on average in Czech hop yards vs. 8 - 10 bales, or 1600 to 2000 lbs per acre, in the Valley). Alpha acid edged up from 3-4% to 6-8%, while co-humulone, one of the major alpha acids fractions stayed in the expected Saazer range. Total oil pumped up from .6 to 1.3 ml/100g, while farnesene, the characteristic Saazer hop oil component, stayed within the expected 11 – 15% range.

Meanwhile, Al’s creation retained the ostensibly ignominious title as a “poor keeper.” Al explains. “Then, as now, alpha acid retention tends to dominate the conversation particularly with super-alpha hops destined for extract production. A ‘poor keeper’ is not desirable for making hop extracts but is not a particularly bad thing with aroma hops, of course with certain limitations. For aroma hops, it’s probably desirable to be a ‘relatively poor keeper.’ Oils, as well as the acids, oxidize relatively quickly. During the beer making process, the oils break down into dozens of new compounds which,” our master of precision noted with a twinge of frustration, “by some mysterious process impart the flavor and aroma that we like.”

The Crown Sterling

“I decided to name it Sterling to keep with the currency theme. Word play with Gold had been exhausted but I wanted to suggest a solid, reliable standard, like the pound sterling. Thankfully the Brits didn’t convert their currency over to the Euro.”

Al established a four acre plot in the Valley in 1991. At around that time, Coors took an interest. The details are sketchy, but after it’s initial romance with Sterling, Coors broke it off in a few short years. Another source, not Al, who retired from the USDA in 1995, advised me that a farmer in Washington hijacked a few experimental Sterling-related rhizomes, planted them before they were ready, and harvested the cones too early before its oils fully flourished.

The net result was Coors soured on the imposter, which wasn’t a bad thing, since the crafties thereafter discovered Sterling when it was finally released in 1999 by Al’s successor, Dr. John Henning. The crafties, we know, have been hopping up their brews ever since, including Deschutes, which showcases Sterling in my favorite brew, Green Lakes Organic Ale, the brainchild of Ueber Brewer Larry Sidor.

Now you might think that an eight year lag between a promising cross and it’s public release speaks of pokiness. You’d be wrong, according to Al, a hard charging man who by no means suffers dilly-dallying gladly. It takes time to get it right. For example, he teaches, a farmer cannot rush into harvesting Sterling. It cannot be plucked before it’s time. If he does, the brewer is not likely to get the desirable oil profile or its characteristic citrusy flavor and most likely not the full alpha acids potential.

The Hop Whisperer

How does a farmer know when it’s time to pick Sterling (or other US aromas, for that matter)? Is it simply a matter of analytic testing? Or, like those warthogs who can sniff out a truffle under two feet of mud, does one instead need a sensitive snout, a delicate touch and an acute ear? For Al Haunold, it’s all about the personal touch.

“Aromas are not super alphas,” says Al, emphatically. “If you have 400 acres of Magnum, but only 4 acres of Sterling, you can’t let the economics of harvesting the alpha crop drive the harvest of the aromas. Aromas need more time. The oil has to develop.”

How does one know if the Sterling aroma hop is ready? This is the kind of question the answer to which separates the book smart from the hopyard-hardened. “You break out your magnifying glass and you pick apart a cone. Is the lupulin gland an inverted cup and pale in color? Then it’s not ready. The cup [i.e. resin gland] must runneth over— plump, full, rich and yellow. The sprig [the central axis of the cone] – if it splits easily, she’s not ready. When you rub the cone, does it squeak or rustle? It’s not ready if it doesn’t rustle.”

“Agronomics are important. It costs money to clean the picking equipment between varieties. It’s more efficient to pick everything at once, even if grown at different locations. But aromas don’t respect labor and time charts. Factory farming high alpha and artisan aroma hops just don’t mix.”

Well said, Al. And thanks for the reminder to take the time now and then to stop and listen to aroma hop wunderkinds like Sterling.

Roger Worthington
2/17/10