Hop Notes 03: The American Public Hop Breeding Program
Expert analysis to help you make better hop decisions.
A few notes before we get started:
I skipped Hop Notes in March because my wife and I welcomed our beautiful baby Rose Marie into our family.
Heading to CBC? Me too. I’ll have Hop Notes stickers for subscribers. I’d love to share a beverage with you. I may even have some secret hop products on hand.
Did you know every Hop Notes is also available in a read aloud podcast format? You can listen here.
You know Cascade. You know Centennial and Chinook. Maybe you know Vista. But what do you know about the breeding program that produces these hops?
With the US hop market experiencing a market shake up not seen since the late 2000s and the uncertainty that comes with that, now is the perfect time for a deep dive education into how the public breeding program works, the role it plays in supporting a healthy hop market, and what you can do as a brewer to support it.
Back up Eric, what exactly is the public hop breeding program?
Started in 1931, the public hop breeding program is run by the USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS). I’d say the public breeding program’s main objective is to breed new hop varieties guided by the needs of the hop and brewing industries. This program bred the flavors and aromas that built American craft beer.
If you read Hop Notes 02 you won’t be surprised that there are at least 20 other hop breeding programs active in the US. So you might ask what makes the USDA public hop breeding program special in this crowded landscape?
1. Public. Our federal tax dollars (less than .0003% of em) fund the program. The aims and outcomes are public, not private. It’s good for everyone in the industry, everyone benefits from the research being done: hop growers, brewers, private breeders. Hop growers everywhere have access to all public varieties. Brewers everywhere benefit from unlimited farmer access with more choice and clear price point. Plus private programs have access to public releases just as much as any of the rest of us do - so some of your favorite proprietary hops have public ancestors!
2. Long Term. The public program is the oldest and most long term focused breeding program in the US. Started in 1931 to help jumpstart domestic hop production after prohibition eliminated the domestic market for hops, it is the oldest continuously running hop breeding program in the United States. Public breeders do not have a private profit interest so when making breeding decisions they are able to rank other considerations like disease resistance, climate change resiliency, or overall market needs more highly.
3. Interdisciplinary. Another defining feature is that the public breeding program is an interdisciplinary endeavor - pairing breeding researchers with talented pathologists, horticulturalists, virologists, molecular geneticists, entomologists, germplasm curators, field staff...and on and on!
The Journey of a Public Hop
Development of a new public hop variety follows a 6 stage process. This process takes 13 and a half years, on average, from start to finish, and involves hundreds of people from USDA scientists and field staff, to hop and beer industry organizations, to hop farmers and brewers. Importantly, the final 4 stages offer many opportunities for brewers to engage with and support the work, I’ll highlight each of those!
The first 3 stages are early exploratory development and can take 5-7 years.
Stage 1: Pre-Field Trials. In this stage parents are selected based on their known traits, crosses are made and the progeny are evaluated. Progeny are evaluated against a bevy of common hop diseases. From this process selections are made for graduation to field trials based on results of disease resistance tests.
Stage 2: Field Trials. In this stage the selected progeny, also called crosses, are grown in the field for the first time and evaluated for disease resistance, vigor, cone morphology, aroma, and screened for sex. Promising individuals move on to the next stage.
Stage 3: Single Hill Tests. This is the first stage where any hops are harvested - varieties in the single hill phase are harvested and yield less than 1 pound of dry cones.
Stages 4 through 6 represent the remaining 5-7 years of the process. It is in Stage 4 through 6 that more hop and beer industry groups become involved including the Hop Research Council (HRC) and the Brewer’s Association (BA). This is also the time where breweries have the most opportunity to engage!
Stage 4: Advanced Line. This stage sees the hop-in-development achieve large-enough yields to start active sensory trials. Additionally, Advanced Line hops are evaluated for maturity timing, yield, chemistry analysis, agronomy, picking ability, cone size/shape/characteristics. Advanced Line sensory traits are reviewed internally by the USDA as well as by brewers through the Hop Research Council’s sensory and brewing trials and the Brewer Associations’ Hop Source sensory.
With this limited yield HRC facilitates sensory rubs and then single hop brew trials with HRC member brewers, HRC merchant members or even hop growers, BA members, or brewers at large. Get in touch with the HRC if you’re interested in participating. Some Advanced Line varieties also make it to the table for the BA’s Hop Source rubs. Hop Source is an annual event hosted at the end of harvest in Yakima where brewers who are in town can drop in and rub a selection of experimental public hop varieties. The results of all of these analyses are shared with USDA breeders and influence the line’s movement to the next stage of the process. To graduate from Advanced to Pre-Elite a line must have good brewer interest and desirable sensory notes over a number of years of sensory evaluation.
Advanced Line by the numbers:
Number of plants: 7-14
Yield: 15-30lbs
Years: 2-3 years
Stage 5: Pre-Elite Stage. Once a variety passes the Advanced Line stage it gets more plantings, in more locations for further agronomic evaluation. It continues to go through HRC and BA sensory evaluations. Most importantly this is when a variety enters the Clean Plant Center Northwest. They perform a series of processes to remove any disease or virus. This step is a purgatory. A waiting room. A variety cannot graduate to Elite Line status until it is certified clean.
Pre-Elite Line by the numbers:
Number of plants: 50, in multiple field locations
Yield: 45-90lbs
Years: as long as it takes until it is clean!
Stage 6: Elite Line. Now that a variety is clean it can be propagated up and get ready for the big leagues! The Elite Line stage is the final stop before a variety can be released. Ongoing USDA agronomic review is bolstered by Elite Line Growouts at a number of commercial hop farms in multiple states. These Growouts get incredibly valuable farmer input on pest and disease pressure, stringing/training behavior, picking or drying issues.
Critically the Growouts also provide a significant boost in yield for sensory evaluations to go nuts. Elite Line hops feature in the BA’s Hop Source and HRC beer trials expand from limited single hop explorations into larger volume commercial recipes. Elite Line Growouts are so important to the development of a new variety that farmers have their costs covered by the HRC to grow them. HRC brewer and merchant members then pay for the yield and start introducing the Elite Line into the industry.
Elite Line by the numbers:
Number of plants: 1000-2000 or more, across 1-3 states
Yield: 1000-3000lbs
Years: 3 years
Finally, if and when a hop performs well agronomically in these Elite Line Growouts and shines in brewer trials and sensory for a number of years, it can become a candidate to be released! Released varieties receive a name, clean material is sent to propagators, and then farmers everywhere can grow them for brewers!
The Role of the Public Hop Program
The USDA public hop breeding program and the organizations and brewers that support it are doing important work to build resiliency in the hop industry. Public hops help stabilize the overall hop market by providing a transparent marketplace: farmers choose what and how much to plant and hop merchants and brewers decide how much they want to buy and the market finds a price.
Famously, before proprietary varieties and craft brewing took off, the US hop market was characterized by a roughly 7 year boom/bust cycle. That relative predictability and health was the hallmark of a fully public hop market. That was then.
Now, for the first time in over a decade, for the first time since the rise of proprietary hops and craft brewer demand, the US hop market is unsettled, uncertain. Historic decisions to cut acres are being made to try and correct for a 40 million pound glut. American hop farmers are facing the brunt of the pain of these cuts. And I’d bet more cuts are coming next year.
These cuts mean the role of public hops in offering farmers independence is in the spotlight. Public varieties give farmers agency. Any farmer, in any state (or country) can grow however many acres or varieties of public hops they think make sense for their farm. They can grow them how they like. And harvest them on their own chosen schedule. If a farmer has their proprietary acreage cut by the owners of that variety for example, that farmer can choose to plant public hops instead.
In this uncertain market, the independence that public hops offer farmers may be the buoy that keeps some American hop farmers going.
Public Hops Want You!
Brewers, does supporting independent American hop farmers AND contributing to a healthy hop market sound good to you?
First and foremost: buy public hops! Nearly every hop merchant and every hop farmer you know has access to these varieties. They are plentiful and easy to access. They support balance, stability, and independence in our industry.
Plus public hops are an invitation to get creative - go outside your comfort zone - and show off your chops. Brew a hazer or a DIPA with public hops! Experienced brewers across the country know how to leverage public hops to make distinctive and interesting beers, often times with a lower total cost to boot.
Next go deeper! Get involved with the Hop Research Council, more information on how to do that here. Participate in the Brewer Association’s annual Hop Source event at the end of September in Yakima, WA.
Beer drinkers, do you want to support American hop farmers and enjoy a diversity of hop flavors? Go get a delicious public hopped beer, take a sexy-hype-whale-beer-photo and drink it out of a bowl.
A very special thank you to my primary sources for this issue. That’s right, your lowly blogger actually did something journalistic(ish)!
First off, thank you to Dr. Kayla Altendorf, Research Geneticist with the USDA-ARS who is the hop breeder at the Prosser, Washington hop research station. Dr. Altendorf is the northern partner to the USDA’s long-time public hop researcher, Dr. John Henning who leads the research USDA-ARS program at the Corvallis, Oregon hop research station.
And thank you to Alicia Adler, the new director of the Hop Research Council (HRC) who took over from HRC former executive and technical directors Brian and Judith Thoet in 2022.
More hop content:
On the historic US acreage cuts:
Claire Desmarais’ (of CLS farms) post rounding up the discussion around acreage cuts on Hop Talk. Hop Talk is CLS farms’ blog and offers great insight into the hop market from one of America’s great hop farming families. You should probably sign up for their emails.
John I Haas’ most recent Haas Hopcast episode is a rundown of the 2022 hop season and they talk pretty plainly about the acreage cuts from the perspective of one of the biggest merchants in the market.
BSG hosted an hour-long chat with Nectaron®️ breeder and namesake Dr. Ron Beatson and Hinetai Hops farmer Dean Palmer. This year there were about 250 acres of Nectaron®️ grown, up three times from last year. And the word is Nectaron®️ seems to hang well on the bine - making for a wider harvest window.
This BA collab hour presentation (BA member’s only content) by Leandro Meiners of PLACEBO brewing in Argentina was a fascinating review of published research around biotransformation. Leandro repudiated the conventional understanding of the importance of biotransformation in creating fruitier hop flavors. It seems that C02 bubbling and yeast death reducing non-fruity flavors is the most likely contributor to the increased perception of fruitiness in beers that had hops introduced during fermentation.
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That’s all for now. If you have topics you’d like to read about in Hop Notes my inbox is open 24/7: ericsannerud@gmail.com.