Striking Gold
Developing and bringing a new hops variety to market is a tricky proposition fraught with expense and uncertainty. Here’s how breeders, growers, and brewers are working together to bring promising new strains to beers near you.
CREATING A NEW HOPS
hybrid is a matter of boy meets girl. Just introduce a male hops plant of one variety to a female of another and let nature take its course. Of course, that’s way oversimplifying things in the age of genome mapping and controlled pollination and given the big business of hops and their importance to craft beer, but essentially it’s the same mechanics as two wild, star-crossed young hops plants whose pollen and pistil happen to meet and produce offspring.
Only these days—and beginning with Professor E.S. Salmon at Wye College in England, who crossbred a cultivated English hops of unknown origin with a wild seedling in the early 1900s to create Brewer’s Gold—there’s an entire industry of professional matchmakers selectively breeding for desirable traits and agronomic viability.
It doesn’t always work out, given the multitude of possible combinations and variables involved, but when it does? Think Nugget, El Dorado, Brewer’s Gold.
While actually creating a new hops variety is straightforward, developing and evaluating the plant’s viability, establishing a production base, and successfully introducing it commercially is a long and involved process with no guarantees. It often takes at least a decade to bring a new hops to market—whether through a private or public breeding program—and tastes can change quickly.
Only a scant few strains end up passing muster, as breeders and growers have to be reasonably confident about the prospects and their ability to sustainably grow it before even introducing it to brewers.
“It takes a commitment to produce it from whoever developed it—you have to produce it before you get contracts—and that’s hard to do,” says Eric Desmarais, owner of CLS Farms in the Yakima Valley region of Washington. “Growers don’t like to go out on that limb. The trick becomes selecting the one you want and that brewers might want.”
As in any commodity-driven business, hops growers primarily respond to market economics when deciding which crops to cultivate. It’s an equation based on yield and what’s going to give them the highest gross revenue per acre. Currently, and for at least the past decade among many American commercial growers, that means aromatic varieties with mediumto high-levels of alpha acid and lots of essential oils—varieties such as Simcoe, Amarillo, and Citra that are in demand by American craft brewers and can be used for both bittering and to impart unique aromas and flavor.
Push and Pull
Breeders are attuned to these trends too, which helps in narrowing down likely crosses and selecting for desired traits. Then they need to make sure that a plant is agronomically sound before taking it any further, Desmarais explains. Breeders consider whether it grows during the right time and with a sufficient yield; whether it is resistant to pests and disease; and whether it is relatively easy to harvest and process.
Desmarais estimates that there are currently at least 100 promising new hops varieties in some degree of development among all the different breeders and public programs. “They’re all solid agronomically, but they haven’t been named yet; some have been tested by some brewers, but what it really comes down to is production and distribution,” he says. becomes a matter of push and pull.”
The “push” comes from establishing a solid production base behind a new variety, as well as from generating buzz through “It
Hops growers primarily respond to market economics when deciding which crops to cultivate. It’s an equation based on yield and what’s going to give them the highest gross revenue per acre. Currently… that means aromatic varieties with medium- to high-levels of alpha acid and lots of essential oils— varieties such as Simcoe, Amarillo, and Citra.