There’s a sweet, viridescent stink emerging from the hop room inside Ninkasi Brewing’s pilot brewery. Ninkasi brewer Rich Masella has 40 pounds of Crystal hops boiling, just over an hour after picking them up from Sodbuster Farms in Salem.
Late summer and early fall’s hop season is a special time of year in the Pacific Northwest. Few other places in the world have access to this crop that embodies the craft beer industry’s connection to the soil. This kinship is apparent not only in the symbiotic relationship between hop farms and breweries, but also in the grassy palate snap that freshly picked hops elicit with each varietal’s singular flavor profile.
“The quality of our beer rests on the quality of ingredients. We want to make sure that farmers are aware that we're not just somebody on the other end of an invoice,” said Daniel Sharp, Ninkasi’s director of brewing operations. “Fresh hops really show how close beer is to farming and agriculture.”
The hop — a Pacific Northwest institution
According to usahops.org, Washington, Oregon and Idaho grow more than 96 percent of the hops in the United States, with over 14 percent harvested in Oregon. The region’s hop history has led to a thriving craft industry, with about 3,500 breweries in the U.S. As of 2018, 281 breweries operated by 228 companies spread across 79 cities in Oregon, according to oregoncraftbeer.org.
The Oregon Encyclopedia defines hops as a “perennial, cone-producing, climbing plant native to Europe, Asia and North America.” The Northwest’s favorable climate, fertile soil, plentiful water and multi-generational family farms yield world-class hops, along with its agricultural peers in similar climactic zones through England, Germany and the Czech Republic. Cultivated for more than a thousand years for ornamental and medicinal purposes, European brewers began to use hops in the 15th century. Brewers then, as they do now, would extract oils from the resin inside female hop cones, called lupulin, to spice beers.
At Ninkasi’s pilot brewery, Masella cracks open a Crystal hop from that day’s pickup at Sodbuster, revealing a yellow powder, similar in sight to pollen, scattered amidst the cone’s glands.
“That’s the lupulin,” Masella said. “We boil down the hops in order to release the oils and release Crystal’s intense flavor profile.”
The hop industry's Oregon evolution
In 1867, William Wells planted Oregon’s first commercial hop yard in Buena Vista, astride the Willamette River in Polk County. Wells helped to inspire other small family farms to grow hops as their sole cash crop, harvested by Native American and American laborers in late August and September.
This led to Oregon’s distinction as the nation's largest hop producer from 1905 to 1915. By the 1930s (following Prohibition’s repeal), the state’s hop farmers expanded to more than 20,000 acres, earning Polk County distinction as the "Hop Center of the World."
As of 2019, Oregon growers farmed over 7,500 acres to produce between eight and 11 million pounds of hops, approximately 5% of global supply. This is second only to Washington, which grows hops in the Yakima Valley on over 40,000 acres and yields around 70% of the national and 25% of the international hop harvest. Most of this fresh fruit is dried and concentrated into preservable bundles.
“Most professional brewers use what are called pellet hops,” Kiley Gwynn, Ninkasi’s brand director, said. “They've been dried through a kilning process, they get bailed, and from there they get sent to Yakima where they get pelletized.”
Breweries store these pellets cold after purging them of oxygen to keep their freshness as long as possible. Almost all beer is brewed from stored pellets.
“They're still delightful hops, but they still don't have that je ne sais quoi of the fresh hop,” Gwynn said.
Only farms in Marion and Polk counties grow fresh Oregon hops, where fewer than 30 multi-generational families work less than 400 acres per crop on average.
Coleman Agriculture, on the other hand, grows hops on three farms in Independence, Mt. Angel and St. Paul. It's a sixth-generation family farm complex cultivating over 7,500 acres of hops, hazelnuts, seed crops, vegetables and hemp. As one of the most diverse growers in the state, Coleman claims to produce more than 4 million pounds of hops each year from 24 distinct varieties, making the farm the largest hop grower in Oregon.
“Whoever wants fresh hops, we don't turn them away, at least not right now,” Haley Nelson, Coleman’s digital brand marketing project manager, said. “We don't say no. We can sell as many fresh hops that brewers want.”
'We like to say it's kind of like Christmas'
What brewers want, though, has been affected quite a bit in 2020. Ninkasi, for example, usually orders several hundred pounds of fresh hops for annual harvests, enough to yield about 90 barrels to serve in its Better Living Room restaurant and for area restaurant taps. This year, however, that number dropped to five barrels per batch, which will only result in 10 total barrels after wildfires canceled its trip north to retrieve Citra hops.
This struggle reverberates for the farms that grow fresh hops, as well. Erica Lorentz, owner and treasurer of Sodbuster Farms, related that fresh hop sales have declined by 50% this year over last due to a steep decline in draft sales, with restaurants first closed and now restricted.
"We anticipate seeing the continued strain in our next growing season," Lorentz said via email. "This year, our farm is down around 150 acres of hops. Not sure at this point how we will be affected by the fires."
In spite of current conditions, Coleman’s quality and crop diversity has seen the farm survive more than 150 years of business ups-and-downs, weathering all types of environmental and political climates.
This all began before the Civil War when, in the spring of 1847, James and Frances Coleman and their infant daughter, Anna, left Iowa to venture westward on the Oregon Trail in search of opportunity. With a gritty, determined sense of purpose, the Coleman family weathered the journey and made it to the western edge of the Oregon territory, settling at the St. Paul Mission and soon putting the plow to the soil.
Today, the farm’s vast holdings not only allow for a spectrum of hop flavors, but also inspire Coleman to experiment with the hop terroir, or local growing conditions. Just as the wine industry studies terroir to determine how a particular region, soil, climate and environment affect the taste of wine, terroir also creates unique hop characteristics.
This led Coleman Agriculture and Oregon State University to embark on a first-of-its-kind hop terroir study in 2018. The study’s goal is to advance hop terroir knowledge by gathering data on soil, climate and hop chemistry in three Willamette Valley microregions, as well as conducting sensory and brewing analyses.
“If you drink a pinot noir from Oregon, it's not going to taste anything like a pinot noir from California, even though it's the same grape,” Nelson said. “Our study with Oregon State University for the past two years found the same thing exists with hops. One day, we hope to say that this type of soil with this type of hop will create this type of flavor.”
Hop varietals already have a distinct flavor profile. Hoplist.com, for example, describes the Centennial hops in Ninkasi’s Centennial Fresh Hop brew as "a 'super Cascade' because of its citric characteristic. Centennial is a much-celebrated hop in its versatility with its depth of bitterness and forward aroma — two characteristics that balance each other beautifully.”
Crystal hops, featured in what will be Ninkasi’s October fresh hop brew Total Crystalation, are more vegetal, considered “woodsy, green, floral and fruity with herb and spice notes of cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper," according to Hopslist.com.
In fresh-hopped suds, these flavors can be sharper and less subtle. Beerandbrewing.com cites that a wet-hops cone has about 80% water by weight versus only 8% to 10% for dried hops. Wet hops make for a ripe environment for mold and oxidation, so brewers have to brew each variety within 24 to 36 hours of picking. Subsequently, Ninkasi’s brewing schedule needs to be flexible to align harvesting of hops for peak ripeness.
“Each hop really has its own unique profile. They're kind of like spices in the cabinet,” Gwynn said. “Fresh hops have a really unique flavor that you don't get with dry hops. They come off really earthy or grassy.”
There’s a back-of-the-tongue bite to the brew that’s indicative of fresh hops. Even with this year’s low yield, the fresh hop harvest is a climactic time of year for growers, brewers and consumers, an experience that primarily only brewers in this western corner of the continental U.S. get to experience.
“We like to say it's kind of like Christmas,” Nelson said. “When brewers come out here, they get to come see and smell the hop farm. We hand sew all of our bags that the fresh hops go into and the brewer gets to stand there and hold it open like a big Santa sack as the hops just fall in.”
The Link LonkSeptember 27, 2020 at 07:30PM
https://www.registerguard.com/story/lifestyle/2020/09/27/wonder-annual-fresh-hop-harvest-oregon/3395441001/
The wonder that is the annual fresh hop harvest - The Register-Guard
https://news.google.com/search?q=fresh&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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