Hop Notes 25: 2025 US Hop Acreage Strung Report
Expert analysis to help you make better hop decisions.
The 2025 USDA-NASS Hop Acres Strung For Harvest Report has arrived. You can view my updated spreadsheet of variety and state acreage strung changes from 2022 to 2025 here. Lets dive into the numbers and see what we can learn about the state of the US hop market this summer.
Numbers: What do they mean?
Overall acres are down 6% from last year’s harvest and down 29% from 2022
A 30% acreage decrease for the US hop market over 3 years is shocking. The damage this has done to overall industry strength will be felt for years.
The start of the cuts where at the 2022 Hop Convention when the major merchants suggested a cut of 10,000 acres was necessary. Per this acreage strung report the US market is down nearly 16,000 acres to a new total of 43,000. The last time US hop acreage was around 43,000 acres was a decade ago in 2015.
I think this may be about as low as US hop acreage gets in this lull, watching major varieties jump up and some of the falling varieties slow their descent. We may be close to our ‘new normal’.
Idaho and Oregon swap second place in acreage again;
Washington: 32,898 acres.
Oregon: 5,421 acres.
Idaho: 5,109 acres.
Checking in on consolidation:
Public/private acreage share remained steady at ~35% public, ~65% private.
Back in 2015, the last time there were ~43,000 acres of hops grown in the US, the public/private split was 75% public, 25% private.
To me, the defining characteristic of the last decade of US hop production is an era of rapid privatization and consolidation. Propelled by the emergence of creative and disruptive craft brewers a new age of hops promised a diverse, highly specialized and competitive horticultural product marketplace that instead gave rise to massive consolidation and was brought to heel at the feet of capital.
I haven’t seen any updates to the count of hop farms in the PNW. It was ~70 in 2023. Anecdotally, many hop farms have closed up or moved on to other crops.
Cuts to domestic lager hop production
Saaz down 77%, Loral down 60%, Hallertauer down 80%, Mt.Hood and Sterling steady.
With the United State’s chaotic trade wars creating significant uncertainty now seems like a time to invest in domestic lager hop production. Who knows how much a pound of Czech Saaz or German Hallertauer will cost next harvest? Nobody!
Talus® is up 397 acres, +417%
What could all this Talus® be for? Demand for this hop, domestically at least, has cratered over the last few years as evidenced by previous acreage cuts. Perhaps Talus® can be grown well organically or get past EU restrictions easier than Citra®? Maybe destined for the export market. Or maybe Talus® is great for extraction in the newest downstream creations.
Strata® down to 338 acres, down 70% from 2022 peak
Quite the fall for this beloved and fun variety. You saw Strata® come out in YCH product lines last year even though Strata® is an Indie Hops-owned variety. This is usually a sign that a variety has excess inventory as turning excess or old inventory to new formats can be a helpful tool for managing inventory storage costs, accounting issues, and providing a little bump in demand.
Citra® is up 768 acres, Simcoe® is up 268, and Mosaic® down 89
Could we be back in the prisoners dilemma of Haas and YCH upping acreage against the hope the other won’t? My guess is lessons have been learned and this is probably a decent indicator of increasing demand for Citra® and Simcoe® and a fairly balanced Mosaic® market.
My big question is about the source of demand driving these additional acres. Is that domestic Citra® demand or export demand? Extract product demand? That is where this story gets interesting. I would rank the three in descending order: Export Demand, Extract Demand, then Domestic Demand third.
Steiner acreage falls across the board
It is a tough report for Steiner varieties with many moving to the “(D)” category which is acreage not disclosed to maintain anonymity of the farmers completing the survey.
Wellness check on our endangered hops:
Cashmere - down 20 acres, still at 181.
Comet - up 20 acres to 194! And no reported acreage in Oregon, but we know Crosby Hops is growing their “Estate” Comet there. So maybe more than 200 acres total.
Hallertauer - welcome to the list! Hallertauer dropped 80% from last year down to just 30 acres.
Mt.Hood - Held fairly steady at 187.
Saaz - welcome to the list! Saaz dropped 77% since last year down to 84 reported acres.
Sabro® - down to 169 acres strung from 203 last year.
Tahoma - down to no acreage reported, from 258 reported acres in the 2024 Acreage Strung Report. RIP?
Talus® - off of life support and back to living large! See above.
Triumph - still no reported acreage since 2022. Spooky.
One final note to end on here, farmers do not have to complete this survey. I'm a little surprised the big players still allow and or instruct their farms to do it. When viewed myopically from a self-interested corporate view point the small bit of market transparency that this report provides may not always be to your favor. As a third party commenter and advocate I am thankful for this type of data sharing - I hope it doesn’t go anywhere. In fact it’d be great to have more transparency!
More hop content:
ICYMI - the Brewer’s Association announced a new one-time 2025 GABF category for Vera Hopped Beers. I hope this inspires many a brewer to try out Vera. And if you want any info on how it brews, check out Hop Notes 24 where I share my experiences with Vera hops in beer.
Also from the BA - a report on the Longview Outlook for hops: It’s a good read if I am a little disappointed no words were given to the increasing concentration in the space. In my opinion, no longview outlook on hops is complete without acknowledging the significant challenges continued concentration will pose for everyone involved in the hop market.
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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.