Hop Harvest
Beer is an agricultural product and at no other time is that present than during hop harvest.
Hops are grown around the 48th parallel north around the world and the opposite distance from the equator in the southern Hemisphere mainly in Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa. The vast majority of global production is concentrated in the Hallertau in Germany and the Yakima Valley, just two hours east of Seattle, WA.
Travel to Yakima in late August through to the end of September, it’ll be impossible to avoid hops. The city smells of hops, hops litter the sides of roads as trucks haul cut bines from the fields to the harvesters, brewers are everywhere.
We attempt to purchase all of our hops directly from farmers when possible. We then take these hops and ensure that in our hop forward beers, only the hops grown by the same farms are present in the beer. This allows us to showcase the terroir of the farms and give us an excuse to hang out with some truly awesome people.
This year we have three fresh hop beers. The first is Kome Forest, a Strata Fresh Hop Rice Lager made with Roy Farms grown Strata. We used 55 kg of Fresh Strata in our lauter tun and then another small 5kg dry hop of the exact same lot of hops, just pelletized. That’s one of the very cool things about Roy Farms. They have not one but two pelletizers and this allows them to go from cooling directly to pelletizing without having to be compressed into bales and stored for months in a cooler. They call these “Harvest Fresh” pellets and the goal is for the hops to be pelletized within 48 hours of being picked from the field.
Our second release is Jungle of the Unknown Gods, an El Dorado Fresh Hop Hazy IPA made with Fresh Early Harvest El Dorado developed and grown by CLS Farms. We used 90kg of Fresh El Dorado again in our lauter tun and then two dry hops of previous crop year Mid Harvest El Dorado. We specify harvest picking windows with El Dorado as CLS Farms has been working tirelessly over the past few years determining the best pick windows for their hops, specifically El Dorado which has a very long pick window. Well, what’s the best? Depends on what characteristics you want in the final product. Their research has shown that pick windows drastically change the flavour and aroma profiles of the hops and the final beer they go into. Early harvest is shown to be citrusy and bright, mid harvest is watermelon and pear, late harvest is stone fruit, tropical, and cherry.
Our third release will be coming out October 15th and we cannot wait to share it with everyone 😊 If you’re a brewer, we highly recommend going out to Yakima for hop harvest every year even if you’re not selecting, checking out the farms and building those relationships is huge.
If you’re just a fan of hoppy beers, then Reuben’s Brews in Seattle has the solution for you. Every year they organise a bus that departs from their Taproom in Ballard on a Saturday in the middle of the month. While we haven’t been on their tour previously, this is likely the best way to check out the harvest if you’re outside of the industry. This year’s tour occurred on September 21st.
We can’t wait for everyone to try our Fresh Hop Brews this year. These are likely the only fresh hop brews in Canada made with American grown Hops. These hops are much more potent and unique compared to those grown in Canada. We still grow great hops north of the 49th parallel but there’s something to be said about driving up from Yakima with bales of fresh hops in your back seat.
