Hop Notes 15: CBC 2024 Hop Report
Expert analysis to help you make better hop decisions.
CBC 2024 is in the books. Craft beer is maturing and the hop market is struggling - fun! Let’s dive in.
BrewExpo America®️ Trade Show Notes
CBCs are often used as a big platform for showing off new products, brands, etc…with thousands of brewers meandering around the BrewExpo America trade floor eager for free merch.
The vibe at this year’s expo was tuned down. It felt like there were less brewers in attendance than in past years - which may be the case that overall registrations were down - but I also suspect, based on the number of brewers spotted on the strip and the Venetian casino floor, the distractions of Vegas took a fair share of attendees away too.
You could see signs of the tough times ahead for hops. Many hop booths were dressed down. Smaller footprint, less fancy merch, fewer staff. I saw more hop farmers than before, perhaps also a sign of the times - farmers looking for new opportunities to move some crop.
New Products and Updated Brands
Abstrax
Abstrax used CBC to boost their new Skyfarm Fruit extract line. They also hosted their annual “Skunkworks Lounge” tasting area featuring beers brewed with their products. More on all this in the take home messages below.
Blue Lake Hops
These folks have been around for a minute but this might have been the first time their products showed up at CBC. They showcased a dizzying array of various fresh-frozen hop products ranging from whole cone to frozen, ground up, tins of what looked like hop hash from German varieties.
This is not the only outfit going deep on making wet hops available more than once a year, see RipeLocker and Mill95.
The British Hop Association
British hop farmers were showing off whole cone Mystic, Harlequin, Jester, and Olicana, all newer British releases targeted at the modern aroma market. In short, they all slapped - try these out!
Crosby Hops
CGX™️ Vista! Enriched pellets are not a new product category anymore, in fact I think some brewers are hitting a enriched hop/Cryo®️ hangover. But enrichment offers a great opportunity for some hop varieties to take their turn in the IPA game. Crosby sells CGX™️ Vista, Hop Head Farms sells Vista T45s and, The Hop Guild sells Vista Lupulin Pellets™️. Give them a shot!
Haas
Haas showed off a new very colorful branding concept - splashes of a rainbow of colors now provide the stage for the unchanged Haas hops badge. This brand-update gets my highest marks for fresh branding at CBC 2024, beating out their rivals at YCH whose new hop extract brand failed to impress (more on that below).
Haas also teased a new Euphorics™️ line of blended hop and fruit extracts - which since CBC has been fully released. The names of these products read more like fruit blend product names than beer ingredients: “Cosmic Guava” for example.
Hop Growers of America / USA Hops
Every year the quality of the merch at the HGA booth gets better and better! This year a fresh batch of beautiful USA Hops pins was available paired with a very well executed set of ‘variety trading cards’ highlighting various American grown hop varieties including Anchovy and Vista.
Mill95 and RipeLocker
Mill95 has partnered with RipeLocker to store and ship freshly harvested hops months and months after harvest. No freezing, squishing, etc…just stored in a scientifically managed stasis in a very fancy box. Kinda fun.
Yakima Chief Hops
DynaBoost™️ featuring an image of an old wizard is the big new brand from the hop industry’s marketing leader. Formally known as YCH-702, it’s a flowable hot side hop extract product akin to Haas’ Incognito®️ or HopSteiner’s Salvo™️ products.
I was anxiously awaiting YCH’s first brand in this hop extract segment - expecting something that would set a new higher bar for a segment that I think still struggles to find good brand names. For me, DynaBoost™️ is fine, just not the leap ahead I expected from the industry’s marketing leader. DynaBoost™️ sounds like something you add to an engine while the hops-n-wizards imagery is a common pairing used for years in this space.
On that note, remember Cryo Pop®️ or Cryo Fresh™️? Both recent releases and ‘brand extensions’ from YCH’s flagship Cryo®️ Hop line. Neither of those products or brands have found the success of their namesake. Has YCH lost a step in marketing or is it just a sign of the tough times?
Seminar and Meetup Notes
I attended two seminars and two “Meetups”.
This year’s updated CLS and Haas pick timing seminar continued to effectively show that the timing of harvest is one of the most important determining factors when it comes to a variety’s aroma expression.
Sam Pecoraro from Von Ebert and Aaron Justus from The East Village Brewing Company presented “Selecting Quality Hops: Alternative Methods for Small Breweries”. I loved the framing of this talk, they even used the words “mitigate risk” in the context of a brewery’s hop supply! The talk itself did not disappoint. A couple highlights from my point of view:
They recommended that a brewery first define hop use cases, then calculate usage rates for those cases, then narrow in on specific aroma and flavor targets, THEN look for hops that hit those targets. If more brewers took a flavor-and-use-first, variety-last approach I think beers would taste better (and the hop market might not be so upside down).
They highlighted a little known ‘hack’ if you will of selection. That you don’t need to spend big money to go out west every fall to select hops. You could call up all your suppliers right now, ask for pellet samples and be able to get the majority of the benefit of out-west selection for next to nothing in cost. This method is accessible to breweries of any size. PS if you’re into this I help breweries through this type of selection, building out a process and program, get in touch! (End of self ad).
Hop Nose It All, a hop sensory competition and fundraiser for the Hop Research Council, was far and away the most fun I had at CBC. HRC provides 8 unmarked whole cone hop samples. Contestants get a sheet with a bank of 10 hop varieties - only 8 of which are on the table. The winner is the contestant who correctly identifies the most hops. Congrats to Graham from Hollingbery on his big win - correctly identifying 6 of the 8 samples - and he was almost perfect if he had flipped the final two. Yours truly got 3 out of 8 correct, which I am quite proud of. This is a massively difficult test. Incredibly fun. I can’t wait to compete again in future Hop Nose It Alls!
Finally, Hop Quality Group hosted a tasting event for experimental public hops that they are ushering through the development phases. They had 8 advanced line hops in beers brewed by Firestone Walker and 2 elite line hops in beers brewed by Deschutes. My favorites from the advanced lines were HQ2015006-024 and HQ2015026-004. Both had nice sweet aromatics. Most interesting were the two elite lines, HQG 3 and HQG 4. These beers both had a very thiol-forward aroma, reminiscent of the type of aroma experiences from heavily NZ hopped beers. This is a super interesting trait to find in American hop varieties. More on that below.
Take Home Messages:
American grown “Thiol Hops”
Thiol hops which I’ll define as hops that have a strong thiol-led aroma. The best example is Nelson Sauvin. This thiol-led aroma in hops is the calling card of many NZ hops. I’ve noticed this thiol character in HQG experimental public hops HQG 3 and 4 as well as HopSteiner’s HS16660.
The implications of domestically grown “thiol hops” are big; cheaper, higher production capacity, ability to export, more money and marketing behind them, all relative to NZ production. Who knows though. Will these hops continue to show this as they come to market? How do domestic thiol hops perform in a beer relative to NZ hops? Will brewers accept or expect or understand how to use domestic thiol hops or is that only something they think to use from NZ hops?
Hop extracts, hop extracts, hop extracts…where to begin?
1. Third generation hop oil extracts have not caught on yet.
The winner of Abstrax’s self-created Skunkwerks trophy for best beer using Abstrax products (as voted on by CBC attendees) was a beer that used Abstrax’s cannabis and fruit extracts. Conspicuously absent from that beer? Either of Abstrax’s two third generation hop oil extract lines.
Haas’ new product line, Euphorics, is counting on fruit partnering with hops to meet beverage maker’s needs. Last year Haas released a third gen hop oil extract that was just hops, HopKick®️.
These are two of the most well-funded players in the third generation hop oil extract segment pushing out from simple hop oils - perhaps hop oil extracts aren’t moving the way they hoped.
2. Will applying an extract process to fruit land better?
Maybe the beach head for this product segment in craft beer isn’t pure hop extracts. Maybe it will follow Abstrax and Haas’s new lines of fruit extract flavors - by pushing out some fruit usage. These fruit extracts are much less expensive than real fruit to get fruit flavors into your beer. The thing is massive companies sell fruit extracts already - like Amaretti or Kerry.
3. Maybe the one bottle assumption is wrong, what about a cocktail approach?
Kalsec was showing off their various of hop extract products using a “cocktail” approach. Mix 2 parts of Kalsec Product A, 2 parts of Product B and 1 part of Product C into your beverage to achieve a certain outcome.
Seeing how hard it has been to encourage brewers to adopt non-flowable generation 1 or generation 2 hop extracts that require one-ish steps before pouring makes me skeptical that brewers will adopt a multi-bottle cocktail approach, but who knows!
More hop content:
There’s more than just hops at CBC of course: For some beyond-hop CBC reviews check out VinePair and New School Beer.
Hop Magic: Yes I know it is sponsored content but I love the story and framing of this Indie Hops adverti-blog in Craft Beer and Brewing.
Hop podcast content: The San Diego Brewers Guild’s Capital of Craft podcast interviewed Steve Burchill of Hollingbery and Son Hops. Great content here about the hop market situation from a brewer’s point of view.
Online Hop Pellet Analysis Class: I’m hosting an online hop pellet analysis class in a few weeks. We’ll cover how to rub hops, a new tool for sensory analysis, and talk about how to analyze hop pellet quality. Use code “Iknowaguy'“ for 50% off.
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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.