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

Optimal Oil Extraction 101.

Whole Cones vs Turkish Espresso Pellets: Where’s That Sweet Spot?

How does a brewer get the most hop oil for the buck? Does he dry hop with whole cones? Or with pellets? The research shows that a brewer using pellets can extract about 30-35% more alpha acid in solution than he can from whole cones, but I’m not aware of any oil extraction studies pitting cones vs pellets.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but assuming the same holds true with respect to oil extraction – that a pellet offers up more oil for extraction than a cone, what is the optimal design of the pellet?

In short, where’s the sweet spot? On one end, we have a properly harvested, dried, baled and stored whole cone flower. On the other, we have that same flower pulverized into a fine Turkish espresso powder compressed to a 3 mm pellet.

How do we open up the flower to best utilize the oil inside the resin glands without unduly exposing them to the ravages of oxygen and heat? And why do we need to “open” them up at all?

The answer to that last question is intuitive. Look at a whole cone. The oil together with the resins is inside the tiny cup- shaped yellowish resin glands. The glands themselves are coated with a permeable membrane, or skin. Even though it seems logical, there’s no definitive research proving that heat or air have an impact on the gland’s permeability. The permeability varies between hop varieties.

The inside of the gland consists of many molecules, including the hop resins, the oil (about 250 bio-chemically distinct compounds) and anti-oxidants (like quercetin and xanthohumol), which themselves help prevent oxidation and prolong the shelf life of both the oil and the resin.

Nature designed the cone to protect those precious glands from predators. They’re tucked around the vertebrae of the cone (the strig) where they cling to the bracteoles, the internal scales shielded by the weather-exposed bracts. If you poured water over the cone, it’s not likely that much would penetrate the bracteoles and reach the resin glands (like water off a duck’s back).

If you dipped the cone into an aqueous solution, more water would reach the central axis, but the process of extracting the oils from the glands is not very efficient. This became clear to me when I recently scooped up a handful of spent whole cones that had been dry hopped. I opened a few up and I could plainly see a few yellowish glands, all perky and plump.

It’s not a great analogy, but think about coffee beans. You can’t dip coffee beans into hot water and efficiently extract any appreciable amount of oil. To bring out the oil, you need to grind the bean up. The question is, to get the best flavor and aroma out of that bean, how do you preserve the bean, when do you grind it up, and how finely do you grind it?

I’ve been applying these same questions to the hop cone. It’s clear to me after examining several pellets from different pellet mills that the size of the pellet and the coarseness/fineness of the grind dramatically influence both the quality and quantity of utilizable oil. Granted, I haven’t measured the “extraction” rate or amount in a laboratory. But it’s fairly well known that hop oils degrade rapidly when they’re exposed to heat, light and air.

If the key to optimal oil extraction is maximal lupulin gland preservation, but the oil glands are tucked inside, how does one “process” the cone, or open it up, and shake out the glands, without unduly rupturing, cooking, or shattering them? I called the People’ Hopmeister , Dr. Al Haunold, for help.

It turns out there is a middle ground, but I’ m not sure how sweet it is. Dr. Al tells me that there was a technique developed years ago for shaking the lupulin glands out of the cone and capturing them fairly whole: pure, concentrated glands containing resins and oils. The shake-out process requires freezing the dried cones followed by a “gentle” shaking. The cones are not compressed into a bale. The process is laborious and both time and space consuming.

The shake-down-and-out method might work in a Willy Wonka-ish factory run by oompa loompahs who never complain. But, after investing a few million in a pellet mill, not sure I’m ready to throw down for a massive shake down operation. Nor do I think there’s an immediate demand for pure unfractionated hop oil, as brewers are accustomed to using pellets and cones, and few have drilled down to knowing precisely which of the several dozen popular oil “essences” they want for each brew style.

Al explains that the resin glands during picking and drying tend to fall out of the tossed-about cone. The rate at which the glands fall or shake out depends on the variety, the moisture content, and the harvest date – if the cone is harvested late and is therefore too “fluffy,” then the glands are more likely to fall out – a phenomenon he calls “shattering.”

A badly harvested, picked and dried cone can lose up to 40% of its lupulin glands. Where do they go? They fall on the floor. Per Al, you can separate the good farmers from the mediocre or worse by the concentration of yellow lupulin glands on the picking and drying floors – the so-called “Yellow Floor” syndrome. And by the way, according to the Hop Oracle, it’s not unusual for the farmer to scoop up all that yellow gold and sell it separately to extractors in years of hop shortages. In good hop production years, there may not be much of a demand for such sweepings.

All that piney, citrusy, mango-ish, floral oil, together with all the bittersweet alpha, swept away like dust in the wind. A tragedy!

So, where do we go from here? We continue to question and tinker. I recently met with a brewer who said he wanted to experiment with dry hopping using both pellets and whole cones. He’s convinced that while traditional, and perhaps even romantic, dry hopping with whole cones leaves a lot of juice on the table (in addition to soaking up a lot of valuable beer). He wants to dry hopping using cones, in one batch, hand, and coarsely ground and fatter IH pellets, in another, and evaluate the differences.

Straight up he says whats driving his curiosity is a blend of both wanting to up the quality of his brew and save money by using fewer hops but extracting more flavorful oil. We like that. Question everything.

In the meantime, we control the things we can. For example, we will freeze our freshly harvested 2010 bales on receipt. We’ll hammer the flowers minimally and squeeze them through our die lovingly at under 110 Degrees F. And we’ll double nitrogen flush our cool pellets, wrap them in an impermeable layer of foil, and whisk them right back into the deep freeze in under 70 minutes. Can’t wait to crank it up!

Roger Worthington
7/27/10

Sen. Wyden: Cut taxes, build more breweries, create more jobs, buy more beer (and hops!)

Eugene, OR. Against the backdrop of the Ninkasi brewery in the midst of a major upgrade, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) made the case today that passing a federal bill that will slash taxes for small brewers will help crafties plow their savings back into creating more jobs.

“In a state that’s hurting, “ said Senator Wyden, “ the craft brewing industry is a magnet for investment and new jobs.” Flanked by brewers, hop and barley growers, OSU researchers and equipment manufacturers, Senator Wyden proudly noted that craft brewing is “one of Oregon’s core industries,” adding $2.33 billion to the state’s economy.

“A lower tax will open the door for new breweries to start up – breweries that will buy more hops and barley, build more breweries and hire more people,” said Sen. Wyden. Along with Sen. John Kerry, Sen Wyden has proposed a bill that will lower taxes on the first 60,000 barrels, which he said would provide the nation’s 1500 small brewers with an additional $44 million to invest in facilities and create jobs.

Indie Hops was pleased to be invited to speak as Oregon’s first home-grown hops merchant. My partner Jim Solberg , clad for the first time in recent memory in a pair of sensible black wingtip knock-offs (instead of his signature Berkenshire knock-offs), spoke of Indie Hops’ commitment to jobs.

“We invested over $2 million in a pellet mill, employing ironworkers, electricians, technicians and all sorts of specialists,” Solberg said. “We funded a first-ever aroma hops research program at Oregon State. And we’re contracting with local farmers to grow the premium hop varieties that craft brewers love.”

Earlier, Gayle Goschie of Goschie Farms, one of the heritage hop farmers with whom IH contracts, spoke of a decrease in acreage from over 6,100 acres in 2009 to around 5,100 acres in 2010, largely because the decision by Anheuser/InBev to cut its purchase of Willamette hops. “We’d like to make up for that deficit, and then some, by expanding our craft brewer customer base, putting in more hop acreage, funding more research and expanding our payroll and facilities, “ said Jim.

Oregon is the nation’s second largest producer of craft beer, behind our neighbor California, which of course has about 10 times the population. Oregon ‘s 78 breweries employ 4,700 full and part-time employees in 106 brewing facilities in 47 cities. Cool numbers.

Special thanks to Jamie Floyd, owner of Ninkasi, who hosted the press conference. Ninkasi’s phenomenal growth in a few short years in a local market stacked with craft cognoscenti sends a strong message that the consumer base is expanding commensurate with the escalating quality of craft beer nationwide. We haven’t even scratched the surface!

Oregonians are going nuts for craft. Eugene, with a population of about 150,000, sports six (6) craft breweries. Bend, where I live part time, with a much smaller population of around 80,000, boasts a whopping eight breweries. And we’re not done. The rumor is two, maybe three more breweries, are slated to join the fun in Bend’s (much ballyhooed but far from omnipresent) sun.

Roger Worthington
7/6/2010

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

Do Your Pellets Pack Enough Punch? Field Testing from Pizza Port Carlsbad

I dropped by Pizza Port in Carlsbad, California this week to conduct a little impromptu field research with award-winning master brewer Jeff Bagby. The mission: compare Indie Hops’ type 90 pellets with that of the competition.

As reported, we’ve designed a state of the art pellet mill that’s sized and scaled to meet the needs of craft brewers. We’ve increased the average particle size of the grist and lowered the temperature at the pellet die in order to minimize damage to the lupulin glans, home of the rich and aromatic hop oils. We designed the mill with the goal of converting the form of the noble flower without excessively oxidizing the oils.

Pizza Port is near and dear to me. My wife and I have coached our kids for many years in basketball and soccer, respectively, and we wouldn’t think of holding our team “banquet” anywhere but their brewpub in San Clemente. The adults get to drink great craft beer (including outrageously awesome guest taps) and the kids get to run amok with all the root beer they can guzzle

At the 2009 GABF, Jeff won an amazing seven medals and Pizza Port Carlsbad was awarded the Large Brewpub and Large Brewpub Brewer of the Year. Not only does Jeff have the accolades, he’s also an incredibly polite, humble and decent guy who clearly loves his work.

Despite being pulled in about 12 different directions on a typically helter skelter brewing day, Jeff was kind enough to help me conduct a “field experiment” of sorts. I brought with me ice cold samples of our 2009 harvest, Oregon-grown Centennial and Liberty pellets. From Pizza Port’s cold storage, Jeff scooped up a jarful of pellets from the same harvest and variety, both from another supplier.

And thus began the adventure.

Does Size Matter?

The first noticeable difference was the diameter of the respective pellets. Our pellet diameter was ¼ inch; the other’s was 1/8. When we opted for a bigger diameter, our theory was that the less grist exposed to heat during pelleting, the less oxidation of volatile oils. As we’ve come to learn, the bigger the better.

Jeff broke up the pellets. IH’s pellet, he noticed, had a gummier, oilier feel and did not deconstruct into a fine powder. After concentrated finger work, the pellet broke up into small clumps. The other pellet was a tad harder, and the grind was far finer.

The Verdict: “The IH pellet feels stickier, gummier, and fresher. You can feel the oiliness.”

The Solution Dilution

Jeff then weighed out equal amounts of the respective hops and dumped them into pints of hot water. Both broke apart and dispersed at about the same rate. The IH pellets seemed to be more buoyant. They behaved, as Jeff observed, more like leafs from a flower, suspending longer and floating at the top. After a few minutes of settling, the other hop appeared to increase its density at the bottom of the pint a little more rapidly.

The Verdict: “The IH hop tends to resemble a whole flower when it hits the hot water. It’s a bit more buoyant, and there’s less water separation.”

The Exploding Flower Factor

The density of the hop-shake was substantially different. IH’s pellets blossomed into a thicker solution that resembled a creamy-clumpy milkshake. You could literally float a quarter on top of the IH “shake.” The other’s hop solution was thinner.

I had heard that the original sizing of the particles and circumference of the pellet was driven by the notion that a thinner solution would be easier to wash down the drain after the wort was sent to the heat exchanger. Jeff theorized that the thickness of the IH hops would not pose any sort of clogging problem. “We drain our hop residue into the public sewer system, which I’m sure can easily accommodate a coarser hop grind.”

The Verdict: “The Indie Hops pellets were like a thick Texas chili; the other was more like pea soup.”

What about the aroma?

Finally, the aroma. First, a disclosure. Jeff has been a brewer for over 10 years and he has been using The Other Guy’s Centennial pellets for at least that long. He is accustomed its aroma and uses their pellets in his award-winning Shark Bite, a hopped up IPA which is the beer I usually order when I bring my family to Pizza Port up the road in San Clemente. The point: Jeff is both accustomed to this hop and obviously satisfied with it.

Now then. Jeff noted that The Other Guy’s Centennial hop brew exuded a “sharp, skunkier, marijuana aroma.” The IH pellet, brew by comparison, had a “more herbal, spicy, peppery” aroma.

The Verdict: “I was amazed at the difference in aromas. Each had a distinct aroma, both nice, but the [Indie Hops brew] smelled fresher, greener. It’s incredible when you think they are the same variety harvested the same year.”

Pizza Port’s supplier of the hop in question was from Washington, but we don’t know where the hops were grown. Nor do we know exactly who pelleted said hops. The IH hops were grown on Goschie Farms in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. They were pelleted about 2 months ago at our new “patient” pelleting mill in Hubbard, Oregon, located only a few miles up the road from Goschie Farms.

Thanks Jeff, we appreciate your candid feedback. Throughout the session, I nursed a pint of Sharkbite, which featured the Other Guy’s hops. I loved it. It’s hard to imagine improving an already delightful taste, but like my partner Jim says, “The day you stop getting better is the day you start getting worse.” At Indie Hops, we aim to get it right. Brewer feedback is not only essential, it’s fun. It’s even more fun when it validates our theories about the linkage between pellet particle size, pellet surface area to volume , and pellet die temperature.

As another well respected brewer in nearby San Marcos, Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey, recently suggested to me: if less oxidation is the Holy Grail, why not process cigar sized or even hockey puck sized pellets? Good question. We’re on it!

Roger Worthington
5/28/10