Very Serious Hop-Sniffin’ Business
How our brewing team selects the hops that shape the beer in your glass.
What Are We Sniffing For?
Hi everyone! It's hop selection time at the brewery, which means we've been spending a good amount of time with our noses buried in some hop cones. While it's a fun (albeit sticky) process, we're in charge of making some incredibly important decisions as well. We wanted to give y'all a glimpse of what that looks like here, and how our process may look different than some other breweries!
Hop selection is exactly what it sounds like. We're sent a few lots of varietals to choose between. For example, we selected from five lots of Centennial this week. Each lot may be from a different farm, or from a different location at the same farm. Terroir plays an important role in hops, as it does with wine, and that's exactly what we're looking at here. We want to smell each lot and evaluate how it compares with our current supply of that varietal. Sometimes differences are subtle. For example, there were two nearly identical El Dorado lots I was smelling. One had the faintest mint note to it, which was tempting to choose, but that's not what I know our El Dorado smells like, so I passed on it. Bummer :(
From Yakima to Our Brewery
Every year, brewers are invited to travel out to Yakima, WA for hop selection at the hop supplier they work with. While we've been fortunate to do this a few times ourselves, the past few years have gone a little differently here.
Making an annual trip out to the West Coast is pricey, and we would usually only be able to send a couple folks at a time. That means just two people are responsible for choosing the hops we'll be using in the coming year. Seems fair? Not quite.
A few years back, we worked it out with our main hop supplier to overnight ship the hop lots we would be choosing from. That way, we can select our hops as a team! We're all very familiar with the hops we handle every day. Having more educated noses on the table gives us better feedback and helps us choose confidently. It's actually pretty cool to see how much the team aligns with specific lots too.
Of course, we miss the beautiful drive into Yakima, and the smell of hops that wafts through the air when the breeze picks up. We miss our favorite tamale shop too. That place rules.
But going through selection as a team makes that tradeoff well worth it. I'm so proud of our team and the care they put into this every year. The noses on this team are exactly the reason our beer tastes the way it does.
Anyways, here are some fun, hop-sniffin' pics from this week! Very serious business over here.