What This Hop Is and Why It Matters Right Now

Tangier was one of the most talked-about hops on the floor at the 2026 Craft Brewers Conference in Philadelphia . Hollingbery and Son, who distribute Tangier through their partnership with Segal Ranch, hosted a packed event during the conference, and the variety kept coming up in conversations about what’s worth watching in the current hop market. That kind of buzz at a conference where oversupply and contraction dominated most other hop conversations is worth paying attention to.

The backstory is straightforward: Tangier came out of a four-acre breeding nursery at Segal Ranch in Washington’s lower Yakima Valley . One plant in 2021. Twenty-five plants in 2022. A half-acre producing roughly 600 pounds in 2023. Twenty-five acres in 2024 . That growth trajectory is unusual for a variety from a family farm operating without a proprietary breeding contract, and it happened because of what people reported smelling when they rubbed the cone.

Segal Ranch has described its goal as upward of fifty acres, with deliberate quality-focused growth rather than rapid scaling . Surly Brewing made a Tangier IPA in collaboration with Hollingbery and Segal Ranch for the 2024 World Brewing Congress in Minneapolis, which helped get the variety in front of a broader audience of brewers. Supply is still constrained, but word is spreading rapidly.

Breeding and Development Background

Segal Ranch is a third-generation, family-owned hop farm in the Yakima Valley . Their breeding program has been run for roughly thirty years by Martin Ramos, who is formally credited as the originator of Tangier . Ramos learned hop cultivation and breeding from the late Chuck Zimmermann, a former USDA hop research scientist who was involved in developing several American hop varieties before moving into the private sector . Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing has nicknamed Ramos “The Hop Whisperer,” a reflection of the reputation he has built over decades at the ranch .

Tangier, originally designated EXP24-25, came out of Segal Ranch’s open pollination nursery . Open pollination means the female parent was pollinated by an uncontrolled male, so the pollen source is not documented. Unlike varieties from formal controlled-cross breeding programs, Tangier does not have a traceable pedigree in the public record beyond “open pollination, Segal Ranch” . That context matters for understanding what is and is not knowable about the variety’s chemistry from a genetic standpoint.

John Segal has described first rubbing the plant in the 2022 season, noting an immediate impression of navel orange that shifted toward orange and tangerine as the aroma oxidized in the air . He returned to the plant multiple times during that initial evaluation, which is how it moved from a single nursery plant to twenty-five plants the following year.

Segal’s first choice was Tangie, but that name was already taken. Research into the history of tangerines led to the fact that they were first imported to the United States from Tangier, Morocco, and the variety was named accordingly.

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Current Sensory Observations and Descriptors

The descriptor set across independent accounts of Tangier is notably consistent. Navel orange is the primary note on the rub, with orange blossom, tangerine, and orange creamsicle appearing across multiple sources. Yakima Valley Hops rate the aroma intensity at 9 out of 10 .

Tangier have described the hop as performing similarly or more intensely in finished beer compared to the raw cone, with orange and citrus character persisting through fermentation . That observation, coming independently from two experienced brewers running formal sensory panels, is worth noting even without analytical chemistry to explain the mechanism.

The Stone taproom single-hop Tangier hazy IPA generated some Untappd check-ins describing tropical notes alongside the expected citrus, including starfruit and honeydew descriptors . That divergence from the dominant orange profile could reflect yeast strain differences, lot variability, water chemistry, or normal individual sensory variation. Without a full published compound-level analysis, there is no way to assess which explanation is most likely.

Brewing Performance and Usage Patterns

Cilurzo has used Tangier across multiple addition points including mid-boil, whirlpool, and dry hop, and has described it performing well in each. Moynier at Stone has described using it in whirlpool and dry hop applications, with a reported addition rate of roughly a quarter pound per barrel in the whirlpool and one and a half to two pounds per barrel in the dry hop. He has noted that even at modest rates the variety contributes clearly perceptible character, though this is an observational brewer report rather than a controlled study.

Tangier is a hop that plays well in blends, with the orange character persisting when paired with other varieties . Segal Ranch has described it working across lagers, pale ales, IPAs, double IPAs, and hazy styles . The Surly collaboration for the World Brewing Congress used it as the showcase hop in an English ale yeast IPA with honey malt and flaked oats, which gives a sense of how the variety reads across different fermentation profiles.

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What the Chemistry Currently Shows

Yakima Valley Hops has published a full analytical profile for Tangier as of the 2024 crop . Alpha acids come in at 9.8%, beta acids at 7.5%, and cohumulone at 34.1% of alpha acids. Total oil is 1.9 mL per 100 grams. The oil fraction breaks down as myrcene at 45.34% of total oil, humulene at 27.38%, caryophyllene at 12.37%, linalool at 1.04%, and farnesene at 0.14% .

A few things are worth unpacking there. The alpha acid at 9.8% is higher than many aroma-forward varieties, which gives brewers more bittering flexibility. The cohumulone at 34.1% sits above the noble-type range and is comparable to Cascade territory, which means the bitterness character will be more assertive than a low-cohumulone variety, though that is a stylistic consideration rather than a quality issue.

The linalool fraction at 1.04% of total oil is the most immediately interesting number in the context of what brewers are describing. Linalool is a directly water-soluble monoterpene alcohol that survives fermentation largely intact, meaning it contributes floral and citrus perception to finished beer without requiring enzymatic release by yeast . A hop with meaningful linalool and high total oil (1.9 mL/100g is a solid figure) is reasonably positioned to express citrus character consistently across addition points, which aligns with the multi-point usage Cilurzo and Moynier have described.

The humulene fraction at 27.38% is notable. That is a high proportion for a variety being described primarily as an orange and citrus hop. Humulene-derived sesquiterpene oxidation products contribute earthy, woody, and herbal register to a beer’s aroma, and that fraction may be part of what gives Tangier some depth beneath the orange note that keeps it from reading as one-dimensional. Geraniol does not appear in the published breakdown from Yakima Valley Hops, which would be useful to know since geraniol and its fermentation-derived product beta-citronellol are major contributors to citrus-floral perception in finished beer . Whether Tangier carries meaningful geraniol that is simply not represented in this particular analysis, or whether its citrus character is primarily linalool and myrcene-derived, is an open question.

What is still absent from the public record is a full GC-MS volatile fingerprint, any thiol quantitation, and any peer-reviewed fermentation behavior study specific to this variety but as it gains acreage and popularity, I’m sure this will not remain a mystery for long.

Terroir

Segal Ranch has been farming hops in the Yakima Valley for over sixty years . The Yakima Valley accounts for roughly 70% of US hop production, growing in conditions defined by the Missoula Flood deposits that built the valley floor approximately 15,000 years ago: deep silt-loam soils over gravel and basalt bedrock, approximately eight inches of annual rainfall, and dependence on irrigation from the Yakima River and local aquifers .

Yakima Valley growing conditions produce a distinct hop chemistry profile compared to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The Féchir et al. (2023) study in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture documented that Washington-grown hops tend toward elevated humulene oxidation products, while Oregon-grown hops trend toward higher monoterpene alcohol expression . For Tangier, that regional framework is worth keeping in mind, though where a specific variety fits within broader regional patterns is not something that can be predicted without variety-specific analysis across multiple sites.

Because Tangier has only been grown at one farm, its sensory identity and its growing environment cannot currently be separated. Every pound of Tangier that has reached commercial breweries so far came from Segal Ranch in the lower Yakima Valley. Whether its orange and tangerine character is primarily a genetic property of the variety, or is meaningfully shaped by the specific soil, microclimate, and farming practices at Segal Ranch, remains an open question. This is not unusual for a new variety in its first few commercial harvest years. It is simply the honest state of what is knowable right now.

What Is Not Yet Known

The aroma transfer claim is observational, not experimental. Multiple independent observers have described Tangier as unusually consistent in carrying raw cone character into finished beer. That is a specific and testable claim, and one that carries meaningful weight coming from experienced brewers at serious production facilities. It has not been confirmed under controlled brewing conditions.

Geraniol is not reported in the published analytical breakdown. Geraniol and its yeast-derived conversion product beta-citronellol are among the primary drivers of citrus-floral perception in finished beer. Its absence from the Yakima Valley Hops panel may reflect actual low concentrations, or it may simply not have been targeted in that analysis. A targeted monoterpene alcohol quantitation would clarify whether geraniol is contributing to Tangier’s citrus character alongside linalool.

Single-site growing history makes terroir assessment impossible. All commercial Tangier has come from one farm. Whether the variety’s character is consistent across growing environments cannot be determined yet.

Open pollination means pedigree-based prediction is unavailable. For varieties with documented parentage, there is at least a starting point for reasoning about likely compound profiles. With Tangier, that is not available.

Lot-to-lot and harvest-year sensory descriptions are still being established. The 2023 crop was small. The 2024 crop was twenty-five acres. The 2025 and 2026 crops will be the first real test of whether Tangier delivers consistent character as acreage scales.

Why It Is Worth Watching

Tangier’s adoption curve from one plant to major brewery contracts in roughly three years is among the faster uptakes of a new variety from a small independent farm in recent memory . That kind of momentum suggests the sensory case is strong enough to outweigh the supply constraints and limited published chemistry that would typically slow procurement decisions at serious production breweries.

The more complete analytical work is still needed, and it will come. For now, the current analytical panel gives brewers a working foundation, and the brewer accounts give the rest of us something genuinely worth paying attention to.

References

1. Albanese, G. (2024, July 18). Tangier hops: The essential guide. Ollie. https://getollie.com/blog/tangier-hops-guide

2. Brewers Association. (2026, January 13). Hop acreage and production continue to decrease. https://www.brewersassociation.org/brewing-industry-updates/hop-acreage-and-production-continue-to-decrease/

3. Craft Brewers Conference. (2026). Hollingbery Hullabaloo event listing. https://www.craftbrewersconference.com/event/hollingbery-hullabaloo

4. Féchir, M., et al. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5802–5810. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655

5. Oxford Companion to Beer. (n.d.). Hops oils and aroma: Uncharted waters. https://www.beerandbrewing.com/hops-oils--aroma-uncharted-waters

6. Segal Ranch. (n.d.). Bios. https://www.segalranch.com/bios-segalranch

7. Segal Ranch. (n.d.). History. https://www.segalranch.com/history-segalranch

8. Surly Brewing Co. (2024). Tangier IPA. https://surlybrewing.com/beer/tangier-ipa/

9. Takoi, K., et al. (2010). Biotransformation of hop-derived monoterpene alcohols by lager yeast. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(8), 5050–5058. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf1000524

10. Washington Beer Blog. (2026, March 8). Introducing a new hop variety from Segal Ranch: Ramosa. https://washingtonbeerblog.com/introducing-a-new-hop-variety-from-segal-ranch-ramosa/

11. Washington State Wine Commission. (2023). Yakima Valley AVA. https://www.washingtonwine.org/resource/yakima-valley-ava/

12. Yakima Valley Hops. (2025). Tangier hops. https://yakimavalleyhops.com/products/tangier-hops

Variety Vitals is a Shan Ferments series focused on the current state, sensory behavior, brewing performance, and emerging industry understanding of individual hop varieties. Unlike Terroir Tuesday, which centers on peer-reviewed literature and established scientific understanding, Variety Vitals explores hops that may not yet have deep published research behind them. The goal is an honest state of the union for a variety, including what is known, what is not, and why the gap matters.

What This Hop Is and Why It Matters Right Now

Krush arrived on the commercial market in August 2024 under a name that divided opinion before the first bag was opened. Brewers who had been using it as HBC 586 for years during the experimental period made clear they had no plans to stop calling it 586. The rename is a commercial branding decision, not a chemical one, and the hop underneath it is the same variety that built a quiet following through nearly two decades of trial brewing before the broader industry had access to it.

It matters right now for a few converging reasons. First, it is genuinely new to the majority of commercial brewers who did not have experimental access, which means the industry’s collective sensory understanding of it is still forming. Second, it entered the market at a moment when the craft beer category is contracting, acreage across all American varieties declined for the fourth consecutive year in 2025, and brewers are being selective about which new proprietary varieties are worth adding to procurement. Third, the claims being made for it by the people who know it best are specific enough to be interesting: not just that it tastes good, but that it translates unusually faithfully from raw cone to finished beer, a property that is not universal in modern aroma hops and has meaningful practical implications if it holds across lots and brewing contexts.

Breeding and Development Background

Krush was bred in 2007 by Jason Perrault at the Hop Breeding Company using what the official documentation describes as “traditional breeding methods and HBC’s proprietary breeding stock”. The female parent is YCR 21 and the male parent is identified only as 01239-2. Neither parent’s chemistry or breeding history has been published. This is standard practice for proprietary HBC varieties and it means the genetic lineage that produced Krush’s tropical fruit profile cannot be traced in the public record the way open-variety pedigrees can.

The development timeline is worth sitting with. Seventeen years passed between the original cross in 2007 and commercial release in 2024. That is a longer experimental period than most HBC proprietary varieties. For context, Sabro went from a 2004 cross to commercial release in 2018, a 14-year runway. The extended Krush timeline likely reflects the combination of rigorous agronomic trials, sensory evaluation across multiple harvest years, and the commercial viability threshold that HBC requires before committing to a named release. Perrault has noted publicly that some hops cycle through the program and never make it to release because they do not perform consistently across the breeding objectives. Krush passed that bar after 17 years, which is its own kind of evidence for the variety’s stability and reproducibility.​​

Michael Ferguson, Director of Hop Breeding at John I. Haas, described the variety at release as “incredibly versatile” with “immediate potential to inspire brewers”. Perrault’s own comment was more specific and more interesting: “Some hops you have to experience to understand. It delivers a big tropical and fruit punchiness without being overpowering”. The qualifier about punchiness without being overpowering is a subtle claim about balance that is worth tracking as more brewers publish their experiences.​

Current Sensory Observations and Descriptors

The descriptor set that has emerged from both the HBC trial brewing period and early commercial use is remarkably consistent. Mango is the first and most repeated word across every source. Peach and guava appear almost as frequently. Lychee, citrus, mixed berry, and a “stone fruit medley” character complete the primary layer. The John I. Haas spec sheet from the experimental period also notes “slight sulfur and herbal notes,” which is a detail that does not appear in the marketing language but shows up in the technical documentation and in early sensory work.

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The sulfur note is worth flagging separately. In the context of aroma chemistry covered in this series, sulfur descriptors in hops often point toward volatile thiol compounds. 4MMP, 3MH, and related thiols all carry sulfur-adjacent character at certain concentrations. Whether Krush’s noted sulfur character is a low-level thiol contribution or an entirely different sulfur compound class has not been established in any published analysis. It is a gap worth holding onto as the research eventually catches up to the variety.

One observation that appears across multiple independent brewer accounts is the yeast-dependency of Krush’s expression. A Reddit professional brewing community thread from early 2025 includes multiple accounts of Krush behaving differently in beers fermented with different yeast strains, with one brewer noting directly: “it can really alter the character of a brew depending on the yeast used”. This is consistent with biotransformation-sensitive chemistry, where compounds in the hop exist as fermentation-dependent precursors rather than fully formed volatile compounds ready to transfer directly into beer. It may explain the sulfur note, which tends to be more pronounced in some fermentation environments than others, and it raises the possibility that Krush’s full tropical expression is partly a yeast-mediated outcome rather than a fixed property of the cone.​

Brewing Performance and Usage Patterns

The practical picture from early commercial use is positive and fairly consistent across sources. Krush has been described as performing well at both hot-side and cold-side additions, with one brewer noting that it “works well on hot side, comes through in the beer if you just use it on hot side, but also really shines in a dry hop”. That dual-addition viability is not guaranteed in thiol-active or biotransformation-dependent varieties, where hot-side additions can lose the most interesting chemistry to volatilization before fermentation begins.​

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Topa Topa Brewing in Ventura, California has used Krush as a Northern Hemisphere substitute for Southern Hemisphere tropical varieties during the off-season window, citing logistical benefits alongside the flavor overlap with Southern Hemisphere citrus-tropical hops. That positioning suggests the variety’s profile sits close enough to the Galaxy/Nectaron flavor quadrant that brewers can rotate it in without dramatic recipe adjustments. Whether the specific compounds driving that similarity are genuinely analogous or simply in the same broad sensory category is an open question without published chemistry to resolve it.​

Blending behavior has been noted favorably. Multiple brewers describe Krush as a “broadener” in hop blends, adding tropical depth to Citra-forward recipes without competing with or overriding the lead variety’s character. The hop appears to have a relatively low dominance threshold, which would be consistent with a variety whose individual compounds are each contributing at moderate intensities rather than one compound driving the entire aroma character. This is speculative without compound-level analysis, but the consistent cross-brewer observation is worth taking seriously as a practical indicator.​​

What Chemistry Research Currently Exists

Almost nothing has been published. The current public record consists of:

• A standard oil profile from HBC/John I. Haas, listing alpha in the 13 to 17 percent range, beta at 11 to 14 percent, and total oil between approximately 2.0 and 3.0 mL per 100 grams. Note that Beer Maverick’s aggregated historical data shows alpha ranging to 18 to 22 percent from some lot years during the experimental period, suggesting meaningful variability in the alpha fraction across harvest years.

• Breeder and sensory manager qualitative descriptions from the HBC press release.​

• No published GC-MS volatile fingerprinting analysis.

• No targeted or untargeted compound identification study.

• No thiol quantitation.

• No fermentation behavior study comparable to the McCabe et al. 2023 Idaho 7 work.

• No peer-reviewed publication of any kind specific to Krush.

The absence of published chemistry is not unusual for a variety in its first commercial year. What it means practically is that every sensory descriptor currently attached to Krush, including the mango, peach, guava, and lychee characterizations, is based on human sensory evaluation without identified compound-level mechanisms to explain it. The “slight sulfur” note is similarly uncharacterized. The claim that Krush translates unusually faithfully from raw cone to finished beer has not been tested under controlled brewing conditions with analytical measurement.

Terroir

The question Krush keeps raising is one that Terroir Tuesday has been building toward all season: what does a hop's growing environment actually do to its chemistry, and how much of what ends up in the glass is the variety versus the place? With a variety like Riwaka or Nelson Sauvin, that question has a partial answer because the published research exists. With Krush, the variety is so new that the baseline chemistry has not been established yet, which means the terroir question cannot even be asked properly until someone publishes the foundational volatile profile first. That is not a criticism of the hop. It is a description of where the science is. Terroir shapes expression, but you need to know what the expression is before you can measure how the place is changing it. Krush is at the beginning of that process, and the next few harvest cycles will determine whether it develops the kind of documented regional identity that makes a variety worth a full Terroir Tuesday treatment down the line.

What Brewers, Growers, and Producers Are Seeing in Practice

The trial brewing record that accumulated during the 17-year experimental period represents the most substantive empirical evidence currently available for Krush, even though most of it exists in institutional memory rather than published form. Equilibrium Brewery’s head brewer described the mango character as persistent across multiple trial batches and noted consistency between different brewing contexts. Perrault’s observation that “what you smell is what you get” from cone to finished beer was echoed by John I. Haas’s sensory team and appears to reflect a genuine and repeated observation rather than isolated marketing language.​​

The agronomic observations from growers are also worth noting. Perrault described Krush’s growth habit as “almost conical, not super heavy on the top,” which allows better sunlight penetration into the canopy and results in more even cropping from top to bottom on the bine. Good storage stability was specifically flagged at commercial release. These are agronomic properties that affect lot-to-lot consistency, and their explicit mention suggests the variety has been evaluated carefully for commercial reliability rather than just sensory appeal.​​

Unknowns, Contradictions, and Unresolved Questions

Several things about Krush warrant skepticism or at least continued observation as the research catches up:

The alpha discrepancy. Historical lot data suggests alpha varying from 13 to 22 percent across crop years. That is a wide range and may indicate meaningful year-to-year variability in the resin fraction. Whether this also correlates with variability in the aroma fraction is unknown.

The sulfur note. It is present in the technical documentation but absent from most marketing descriptions. Sulfur character in hops is rarely neutral in finished beer. It may be a thiol contribution that adds complexity at low concentrations, or it may be a potential off-character trigger under certain fermentation conditions. Without compound identification, this remains an open question that brewers should monitor in their own contexts.​

The yeast-dependency claim. The brewer observation that Krush behaves differently with different yeast strains is consistent with biotransformation-sensitive chemistry but has not been studied. If Krush’s tropical character is partly precursor-dependent and fermentation-mediated, then the “what you smell is what you get” claim, which Perrault bases on raw cone-to-beer translation, may be more yeast-dependent than it appears and less predictable across different fermentation environments.​

Southern Hemisphere substitution positioning. The Topa Topa use case suggests flavor overlap with Galaxy or Nectaron territory. Whether that overlap is chemically grounded or simply a broad sensory category match is untested. Brewers relying on this positioning as a procurement strategy are working from sensory analogy rather than compound-level evidence.​

Why This Variety Is Interesting Moving Forward

Krush is interesting for reasons that go beyond its flavor profile. The 17-year development timeline, the specific agronomic stability claims, and the repeated raw-to-beer translation observation together suggest a variety that was held back from release until it met a high bar for consistency rather than being rushed out to capitalize on market demand. That matters in a proprietary hop landscape where early releases sometimes disappoint brewers who encounter lot variability the trial brewing period did not capture.​​

The unresolved sulfur chemistry is the most scientifically compelling open question. If Krush carries a thiol load comparable to Idaho 7 or Nelson Sauvin, the sulfur descriptor in the spec sheet may be pointing at exactly the same precursor-to-free-thiol mechanism that explains why those varieties outperform their standard oil profiles in the glass. A targeted thiol quantitation study on Krush using the Dennenlöhr et al. methodology would resolve this question quickly and would likely reframe how the variety is positioned and used by brewers who understand thiol-active hops.

The variety is still in its first full commercial year. The sensory language around it will continue to evolve as more breweries publish their experiences, more harvest years accumulate, and, eventually, the analytical chemistry community runs the studies the variety currently lacks. The current picture is genuinely promising. It is also genuinely incomplete.

References

1. Brewpublic. (2024, August 12). Hop Breeding Company announces commercial release of Krush HBC 586. https://brewpublic.com/beer-brewing/hop-breeding-company-announces-commercial-release-of-krush-hbc-586/

2. Dennenlöhr, J., Rachfall, N., Nöh, K., & Schwietering, J. (2021). Analysis of hop-derived thiols in beer using on-fiber derivatization in combination with HS-SPME and GC-MS/MS. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 69(2), 715–725. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.0c06305

3. Hop Breeding Company. (2024, August 13). Hop Breeding Company announces commercial release of Krush™ brand HBC 586 c.v. [Press release]. https://www.hopbreeding.com/cabinet/data/Press%20Release%20-%20Krush%20HBC%20586%20-%208.13.24.pdf

4. Hops Connect. (2024, August 18). Krush™ HBC 586 c.v. https://hopsconnect.com/our-hops/hop-varieties/hbc-586-c-v/

5. John I. Haas. (2018). HBC 586 [Experimental hop variety data sheet]. https://www.johnihaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Haas-HopSpecSheets_HBC586-2018.pdf

6. John I. Haas. (2024, August 12). “Liquid mango smoothie! I love this hop.” https://www.johnihaas.com/news-views/liquid-mango-smoothie-i-love-this-hop/

7. McCabe, J. T., Keyes, A. L., & Trontel, A. (2023). Aroma profile development in beer fermented with Azacca, Idaho-7, and Sultana hops. Molecules, 28(15), 5802. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28155802

8. Reddit r/TheBrewery. (2025, January 11). Krush (HBC 586) [Discussion thread]. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBrewery/comments/1hyuvrv/krush_hbc_586/

9. The Brewer Magazine. (2024, August 12). Hop Breeding Company announces commercial release of Krush HBC 586. https://thebrewermagazine.com/hop-breeding-company-announces-commercial-release-of-krush-hbc-

Introduction

The name Idaho 7 comes from a sequence. Nate and Heather Jackson had several experimental hop selections from their farm in Wilder, Idaho. The seventh one was the one that changed everything. It had been growing on their property without a commercial identity, referred to informally in the homebrew community as “007: The Golden Hop” after the Jacksons began sharing it with homebrewers before commercial release. When it went commercial in 2015, the name was straightforward: the state it came from and the number that distinguished it from every other selection that came before it.

What the Jacksons built at Jackson Hop Farm is a direct argument for grower-originated variety development. The variety did not come out of a university breeding program, a multinational agribusiness joint venture, or a decade-long institutional selection process. It came from a family farm on the Snake River Plain, established by people who started growing hops without a generational playbook and arrived at something the industry had not seen before. That origin matters for understanding what Idaho 7 is and where its character comes from.

Idaho 7 produces apricot, peach, tropical fruit, and bright citrus notes with an intensity that exceeds what its standard oil profile would predict. The reason for that gap between the spec sheet and the glass likely involves a thiol layer that most standard hop analyses do not measure, and a fermentation behavior confirmed in peer-reviewed work that suggests why addition timing and yeast selection shape Idaho 7 beers more than they shape beers built around conventional terpene-dominant varieties.

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A Farm, a Family, and a Variety

Jackson Hop Farm sits in Wilder, in Canyon County in western Idaho. Nate and Heather Jackson established the farm as first-generation hop growers, entering an agricultural context where Idaho was already the second-largest hop-producing state in the United States but where the existing industry was concentrated in well-established operations with deep roots in commodity production.

The pedigree of Idaho 7 has not been published in the peer-reviewed literature. The variety was not developed through a formal cross with documented parents. It emerged from the Jacksons’ own farm selections, which means the genetic lineage that produced its distinctive apricot and tropical character cannot be traced through a public breeding record the way Sabro, Nelson Sauvin, or Riwaka can be. Several published hop variety profiles note characteristics that may be consistent with neomexicanus-adjacent genetics given the tropical and stone fruit oil profile, but this has not been confirmed through published genomic or pedigree analysis.

What is documented is the variety’s path to commercial recognition. The Jacksons shared early material through the homebrew community, where it developed a following before any commercial lot was sold. That pre-commercial phase built a sensory record from hundreds of small-batch trials that gave the craft brewing community specific, repeated, consistent vocabulary for the hop before the first commercial release. Apricot. Peach. Orange. Tropical. Those descriptors were established by the time commercial availability began, and they have held consistently in every published sensory analysis since.

The variety is now grown beyond the original Jackson Hop Farm, with production established across other Idaho and Pacific Northwest operations. The Jacksons’ role as the originators of the variety remains central to its identity and commercial story.

What the Analysis Shows, and What It Misses

Idaho 7’s published oil profile looks, on paper, like a competent dual-purpose American variety: alpha at 12 to 14 percent, total oil at 1.0 to 5.0 mL per 100 grams, myrcene at 40 to 60 percent, humulene at 14 to 18 percent, caryophyllene at 9 to 11 percent, and geraniol and linalool each at 0.6 to 1 percent. The cohumulone sits at 35 to 40 percent, which is on the higher end for an aroma variety and worth noting for anyone considering it in a bittering role. None of those numbers fully account for the sensory intensity Idaho 7 produces in finished beer.

The most rigorous published fermentation study on Idaho 7 is McCabe et al. 2023 in Molecules, which compared aroma profile development in single-hopped beers made with Idaho 7, Azacca, and Sultana. The team tracked 51 volatile organic compounds including esters, sesquiterpenes, ketones, alcohols, and monoterpenes across fermentation time points from pitching through finished beer. Idaho 7 produced 28 quantifiable VOCs in finished beer, with linalool as the dominant alcohol fraction and jasmine lactone as a compound found in Idaho 7 and Sultana but not in Azacca. The sensory panel identified lemongrass as a descriptor unique to Idaho 7 among the three varieties tested.

The paper noted something worth examining carefully: Idaho 7’s total measured headspace concentration at 0.6 mg/L was the lowest of the three varieties, well below Sultana at 3.2 mg/L and Azacca at 1.7 mg/L. Yet the sensory intensity of Idaho 7 beers in the study did not reflect that lower measured concentration. The authors explicitly flagged thiols as a likely contributing factor that the GC-MS methodology used in the study could not capture: “it is important to note that thiols, which are not measurable by the analytical methods described herein, may also synergistically contribute to these sensory attributes at low concentrations”.

This may be the same measurement gap that defines Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka in the NZ literature. The most impactful compounds in the variety are either below the detection threshold of standard oil analysis or require specialized thiol quantitation methods that are not part of routine hop evaluation.

The Thiol Layer

Idaho 7 contains a compound called 3-mercaptohexan-1-ol, or 3MH, that likely contributes grapefruit and passionfruit character to finished beer. As mentioned, it does this at concentrations so small they fall below what standard hop oil analysis can detect. A 2020 study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry developed a specialized detection method sensitive enough to find 3MH in hop varieties with tropical stone fruit profiles comparable to Idaho 7’s, confirming that the compound is present and measurable when you use the right tools to look for it.

As many of us know and as I have described before, 3MH in the hop cone is not free and ready to contribute aroma directly. It is locked inside a larger molecule, bound to an amino acid called cysteine, and it stays locked until yeast breaks that bond during fermentation through biotransformation. How much 3MH gets released depends almost entirely on which yeast strain you are using. Clean, neutral American ale strains do not break that bond very efficiently, so most of the 3MH precursor passes through fermentation unconverted. Yeast strains with higher enzyme activity for this specific reaction, including certain English strains and Kveik, release significantly more.

What the McCabe et al. 2023 fermentation study and the thiol literature together suggest is that Idaho 7’s full aroma in finished beer may come from three overlapping layers working simultaneously. The first is the measurable terpene and ester fraction: linalool, geraniol, jasmine lactone, and beta-citronellol, which is produced when yeast converts geraniol during fermentation. The second is the free 3MH released from precursor during that same fermentation. The third is a possible amplification effect, where the 3MH, even at concentrations too low to smell on its own, may intensify the perception of the terpene compounds around it, consistent with synergy mechanisms documented in the broader hop thiol literature.

The spec sheet captures only the first layer. The other two are invisible in the data but may be doing as much work in the glass.

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Snake River Plain: Idaho’s Other Growing Story

Yakima gets the majority of the published terroir research for Pacific Northwest hops, for the simple reason that it produces the majority of American commercial hop volume. The Féchir et al. 2023 study I continue to cite for these articles on regional identity in Cascade and Mosaic is Yakima-centered. The soil and climate profiles discussed in earlier entries in this series are largely drawn from the Yakima fold belt region. Idaho’s growing history is less documented in the peer-reviewed literature and deserves its own consideration.

Wilder sits in Canyon County on the western Snake River Plain, at approximately 2,200 feet elevation. The geology here is distinct from Yakima’s. The Yakima Valley sits within the Columbia Plateau, where soils formed from Pleistocene loess deposits accumulated over Columbia River Basalt along the ridges and anticlines of the Yakima fold belt. The western Snake River Plain is a different geological structure entirely: a tectonic rift basin formed along the track of the Yellowstone hotspot, filled over millions of years with lacustrine sediments from ancient Lake Idaho, then overlain with loess and alluvial material from subsequent glacial and river activity. Canyon County soils, including the silt loam series that characterize the Wilder growing area, likely formed from that loess over lacustrine and rift-basin sediment profile rather than over the basalt-anticline structure of Yakima.

The climate in western Idaho is semi-arid. Canyon County receives approximately 9 to 12 inches of precipitation annually, with hot dry summers, cold winters, and hop production dependent on Snake River aquifer irrigation. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The growing season delivers intense heat accumulation during the critical July-to-harvest period.

A Hop Culture piece on Idaho’s hop growing community includes a grower observation that certain varieties may simply perform better in Idaho than when grown elsewhere, without a published scientific explanation for the difference. That observation may reflect a growing region whose soil mineral profile, elevation, and diurnal temperature swing differ meaningfully from Yakima, even though both sit within the broader Pacific Northwest hop production zone. A controlled comparative trial measuring Idaho 7’s volatile and thiol profiles from Idaho-grown versus Yakima-grown lots has not been published. The qualitative grower consensus that Idaho-grown Idaho 7 expresses distinctively is documented but not yet chemically characterized.

How to Think About Idaho 7 in Recipes

Idaho 7’s thiol-terpene chemistry and its documented fermentation behavior give clear guidance on where and how it performs best.

Yeast selection is the most important process variable. Because 3MH release depends on beta-lyase activity, the difference between a neutral clean ale strain and a high-beta-lyase strain in an Idaho 7-forward beer may not be subtle. English strains, Kveik strains, and thiolized yeast variants all convert more precursor to free thiol than a standard American or West Coast ale strain. If the goal is the full peach, apricot, and tropical expression, yeast selection is where that decision gets made.

Dry hopping with active yeast captures more of the thiol layer. Active fermentation dry hopping puts the hop material in contact with viable yeast at the moment when beta-lyase activity is highest. The biotransformation of geraniol to beta-citronellol and linalool also occurs more completely under active fermentation conditions, which adds the citrus-floral alcohol layer on top of the stone fruit terpene base.

The cohumulone at 35 to 40 percent produces a sharper bittering character than lower-cohumulone varieties in this series. For styles where smooth, round bitterness is a priority, Idaho 7 works better as a late addition and dry hop than as a primary bittering charge. For West Coast IPAs where defined bittering is part of the style target, the cohumulone level is not a liability.

Idaho 7 builds well in blends with low-cohumulone, high-humulene varieties. The structural depth that Nelson Sauvin or Centennial provide through their humulene fractions may complement Idaho 7’s bright stone fruit and citrus surface. Idaho 7 provides the intensity; the blending partner provides the backbone.

Single-hop showcases reward simple malt builds. The McCabe et al. sensory work showed lemongrass as a unique Idaho 7 descriptor that only emerged clearly in the single-hop context. Pale base malt, low crystal additions, and clean water chemistry let that specific aromatic marker come forward rather than getting absorbed into a complex malt background.

Conclusion

Idaho 7 is a grower-originated variety from a first-generation farm family on the Snake River Plain, with an unpublished pedigree, a peer-reviewed fermentation profile that shows fewer measurable VOCs than comparable varieties but stronger sensory presence than those numbers predict, and a thiol layer that standard oil analysis cannot see. That gap between spec sheet and glass is not unique to Idaho 7 in this series, but it may be most pronounced here because the variety arrived without institutional documentation, built its reputation through homebrew-circuit sensory feedback, and entered commercial production already carrying a set of descriptors that the analytical literature has only partially explained.

The Jacksons created something incredible. They found a single plant on their own land, recognized what it was, shared it with the people best positioned to evaluate it honestly, and let the sensory record make the argument. The chemistry is still catching up to what those early evaluations already knew.

References

1. BarthHaas. (n.d.). Idaho 7®. https://www.barthhaas.com/hops-and-products/hops/idaho-7r

2. Dennenlöhr, J., Rachfall, N., Nöh, K., & Schwietering, J. (2021). Analysis of hop-derived thiols in beer using on-fiber derivatization in combination with HS-SPME and GC-MS/MS. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 69(2), 715–725. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.0c06305

3. Féchir, M., Gallagher, A., Weaver, G., Roy, C., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5802–5810. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655

4. Hop Culture. (2024, September 23). From spuds to suds: Idaho’s hop growing story. https://www.hopculture.com/idaho-hops-mill-95/

5. McCabe, J. T., Keyes, A. L., & Trontel, A. (2023). Aroma profile development in beer fermented with Azacca, Idaho-7, and Sultana hops. Molecules, 28(15), 5802. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28155802

6. Mr. Malt. (n.d.). Idaho 7® brand [Hop variety data sheet]. https://www.mr-malt.it/pub/media/pdf/TDS_251_Idaho_7.pdf

7. Surly Brewing Co. (2021, July 12). The story of Idaho 7®. https://surlybrewing.com/the-story-of-idaho-7/

8. Takoi, K., Degueil, M., Shinkaruk, S., Thibon, C., Maeda, K., Ito, K., Bennetau, B., Dubourdieu, D., & Tominaga, T. (2009). Identification and characteristics of new volatile thiols derived from the hop (Humulus lupulus L.) cultivar Nelson Sauvin. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 57(6), 2493–2502. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf8034622

9. U.S. Geological Survey. (2013). Ground-water possibilities south of the Snake River, Owyhee County, Idaho (Water Supply Paper 1460-C). https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/wsp1460C

The two-decade breeding effort to domesticate a wild Southwest hop, the coconut aroma compound that standard oil analysis cannot see, and what happens when desert genetics grow in an irrigated valley.

Introduction

If you have been following this series since Week 11, you already know the broad neomexicanus story: Humulus lupulus var. neomexicanus evolved in canyon microsites and creek edges across New Mexico and Colorado at 6,000 to 7,200 feet elevation, built for drought stress, big diurnal swings, and high-UV desert summers. It grows nothing like European hop varieties, it smells nothing like them, and it has spent the past decade producing some of the most distinctive and divisive commercial varieties in American craft brewing.

Sabro is the commercially successful culmination of that wild genetics story. It took twenty years of breeding work to get there.

The Hop Breeding Company announced Sabro in April 2018 as HBC 438, the official name for a hop the homebrew community had been calling Ron Mexico since Jason Perrault first brought it to the 2015 National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego. At that point it had already been in the field for over a decade, working its way through agronomic trials, sensory evaluations, and the slow institutional patience that serious breeding programs require.

This article is not a repeat of Week 11. It takes the neomexicanus foundation as read and goes into what is Sabro-specific: the YCR 123 female parent, the unknown father, the lactone chemistry behind the coconut character, why that chemistry is invisible in the spec sheet every brewer buys on, and what Loftus Ranches and the Yakima growing environment do to a variety whose genetics encoded for desert stress.

Breeding: Two Decades, One Unknown Father

Sabro’s mother is YCR 123, a neomexicanus-derived female developed through the Select Botanicals Group breeding program. Its father is unknown. The cross was made through open pollination in 2004, meaning no specific male was deliberately selected, the female parent was exposed to wind-borne pollen and the seedlings from that uncontrolled cross were then raised and evaluated.

That parentage structure, domesticated neomexicanus female, unknown wild or commercial male, is unusual in modern proprietary hop breeding, where tight pedigree control is the norm for patent protection and agronomic predictability. It’s a variety whose most interesting genetic contributions cannot be fully traced because the other half of the cross was not recorded or not known. Sabro was a deliberate open pollination in a managed breeding program rather than a field discovery. The male parent was unknown by design, which is a common early-stage approach in neomexicanus breeding because the subspecies had so little prior domestication work that any crossing material was experimental.

The twenty-year timeline from first neomexicanus breeding work to commercial release reflects the particular difficulty of working with this subspecies. Neomexicanus can be difficult to breed, its agronomic traits developed for drought stress and canyon ecology do not map cleanly onto row-crop production requirements for yield, disease resistance, and cone uniformity. Early neomexicanus crosses produced plants that were too variable, too low-yielding, or too sensitive to the irrigation and canopy management practices standard in Yakima. The breeding work through the late 1990s and early 2000s was largely about identifying which neomexicanus accessions carried the aromatic traits worth preserving and which males could contribute the agronomic stability needed for commercial production.

The Coconut Problem: Lactones and the Invisible Chemistry

The single most distinctive thing about Sabro is the coconut. It is the first descriptor in every sensory profile, the character most immediately recognizable in a well-made Sabro-forward beer and it is entirely invisible in the standard hop oil data most brewers use to evaluate a purchase.

Look at the published spec sheet and you will find total oil at 3.0 to 3.4 mL per 100 grams (high, comparable to Citra) with myrcene at 40 to 50 percent, caryophyllene at 11 to 15 percent, linalool at 0.4 to 0.8 percent, and geraniol at 0.7 to 1.5 percent. Humulene is strikingly low at 2 to 13 percent, one of the lowest figures in any commercial variety, consistent with neomexicanus ancestry that did not inherit the humulene-dominant oil profile of European lines. None of those numbers explain coconut. That is because the coconut is not a terpene.

Coconut aroma in beer is primarily produced by a compound called gamma-nonalactone, a member of a class of molecules called lactones. Lactones are not terpenes. They are produced through a fundamentally different chemical pathway, one that starts with fatty acids from barley and hops rather than the enzyme systems that build myrcene and caryophyllene. Standard hop oil analysis is designed to capture terpenes and sesquiterpenes. It does not routinely measure lactones. The compound that most defines Sabro’s character in finished beer is simply absent from the data sheet.

The mechanism matters practically, not just academically. Gamma-nonalactone is not sitting fully formed in the hop cone waiting to be transferred to wort. It is partly built during fermentation. Barley and hop oils both contain fatty acids, including one called linoleic acid, which begins breaking down during malting and wort production. Yeast picks up those degraded fragments during fermentation and, through its own enzyme activity, closes them into the ring-shaped lactone structure that produces the coconut character. Research from Oregon State University confirmed this directly: hop-derived fatty acid compounds in wort can be converted into lactone aromas during fermentation and dry hop contact with active yeast, and the specific structure of each lactone determines both its character and how low a concentration is needed before you can smell it.

The practical conclusion is that the amount of coconut in a finished Sabro beer is not fixed by the hop. Sabro provides the fatty acid substrate. Your yeast and fermentation conditions determine how much of that substrate gets converted into gamma-nonalactone. That is a different relationship between hop and process than anything in this series so far, and it means yeast selection has unusual leverage over the final character of the beer.

The tangerine, tropical fruit, and stone fruit notes that accompany the coconut are terpene-driven through conventional pathways, the geraniol and linalool fractions producing a bright, low-humulene aromatic base that reads more citrus-forward than any European-lineage variety at comparable total oil levels. The coconut sits above that layer as a separate chemistry system with its own production mechanism, its own fermentation dependencies, and its own rules. Sabro is not one hop doing one thing. It is two distinct aromatic systems running in parallel, and understanding which lever controls which system is the starting point for using it well.

From Desert to Yakima: What the Valley Does to Sabro

This is where the Week 11 neomexicanus terroir context becomes specifically relevant to Sabro rather than to the subspecies in general.

YCR 123, Sabro’s neomexicanus mother, carried genetics encoded for stress responses in a desert environment: deep rooting to chase water, high secondary metabolite production under UV exposure, and aromatic chemistry shaped by hot dry summers and cold nights. Commercial production of Sabro at Yakima Valley farms places those genetics in an irrigated, managed, row-crop environment at roughly 800 to 1,000 feet elevation with a very different water and nutrient availability profile than the canyon creek beds where neomexicanus evolved.

The Féchir et al. findings on sesquiterpene oxidation products being elevated in Washington-grown hops apply to Sabro’s caryophyllene fraction, which at 11 to 15 percent is meaningfully high. But the more Sabro-specific Yakima effect likely operates through water and nitrogen availability shaping the fatty acid metabolism that feeds γ-nonalactone production. Drought stress drives oxidative lipid metabolism in plants; the same linoleic acid peroxidation pathways that ultimately produce the lactone precursors Sabro delivers to the brewhouse. A fully irrigated Yakima-grown Sabro may express its coconut character differently from a water-stressed plant, because the substrate availability for that lactone pathway changes with irrigation regime.

No published study has compared γ-nonalactone precursor loads in Sabro grown under different irrigation treatments or in different Pacific Northwest soil types. This is the single most pressing analytical question specific to Sabro’s terroir expression, and it has not been answered in the peer-reviewed literature. What the Week 11 data showed at the neomexicanus subspecies level, that Oregon cool-maritime sites produce softer, more citrus-floral expression while Yakima hot-arid sites produce louder coconut and funk, is directionally consistent with the stress-metabolism hypothesis, but it has not been tested with Sabro-specific controlled trials.

What Yakima clearly does provide is the long-day photoperiod and low humidity that drives high oil accumulation generally across all varieties grown there. At 3.0 to 3.4 mL total oil per 100 grams, Sabro is producing a substantial fatty acid and terpene substrate pool that other growing environments with shorter days or higher humidity would reduce. The Yakima environment is not neutral for Sabro. It is amplifying the total oil output that feeds both the terpene and lactone chemistry that defines the variety.

Supply and Homebrewing’s Role

Sabro’s 181 harvested acres in Washington in 2024, reported in the December 2025 USDA National Hop Report, make it one of the smaller named proprietary varieties in the US commercial catalog. For reference, that sits well below Ekuanot at 316 acres and far below the marquee proprietary varieties.

The homebrew channel made Sabro’s reputation before commercial brewers had wide access to it. The Ales for ALS charity program distributed HBC 438 through homebrew retailers from approximately 2015 to 2018, building three years of documented small-batch sensory feedback on the variety before it went commercial. That pre-commercial sensory record is unusually rich for a modern proprietary variety and it established the coconut-tangerine identity in the craft community before the first commercial lot was sold.

How to Think About Sabro in Recipes

The two-chemistry-system nature of Sabro terpenes and lactones operating through different pathways with different fermentation dependencies means it responds to recipe decisions differently from any hop covered so far in this series.

Yeast strain drives the coconut more than addition timing does. Because γ-nonalactone production is partly a yeast lactonization event during fermentation, strains with higher fatty acid metabolism activity produce more coconut character from the same Sabro addition than clean lager strains. This is distinct from the thiol biotransformation story where a warm-side dry hop addition is the primary lever. For Sabro, the yeast selection question is as important as addition timing.

The low humulene means Sabro lacks the woody structural base of Columbus or Nelson Sauvin. At 2 to 13 percent humulene it has almost no sesquiterpene backbone. Recipes that want tropical and coconut with structural depth should blend Sabro with a higher-humulene variety (Columbus, Centennial, or Nelson Sauvin) rather than trying to push Sabro into a structural role it is not designed for.

Cohumulone at 20 to 24 percent is among the lowest of any modern dual-purpose variety. This makes Sabro’s bittering cleaner and softer than Columbus, Cascade, or Ekuanot. A 60-minute bittering addition is genuinely viable in styles where smooth, low-harshness bitterness is a design goal rather than a loud bittering character.

The coconut is polarizing and brewer-intent-dependent. Sabro’s coconut character has been described as “catty” and “litter box” when used badly or in the wrong style context. Heavy-handed rates in styles without a framework to support tropical-creamy character produce those off-character descriptions. Low to moderate rates in NEIPAs, pastry stouts, wheat beers, and session tropical IPAs let the coconut function as complexity rather than intrusion.

Lot freshness affects the terpene fraction more than the lactone fraction. γ-Nonalactone is a relatively stable lactone compound that degrades more slowly under storage than myrcene or linalool. A year-old Sabro lot may show a shift toward coconut-dominant character as the more volatile terpene fractions degrade while the lactone precursor substrate is more preserved. This is worth knowing if you are sourcing Sabro on spot from a previous harvest.

Conclusion

Sabro is the answer to a question the neomexicanus breeding program spent two decades trying to ask what does a commercially viable wild Southwest hop look like when you have the patience to let the genetics express themselves fully? The answer involves a lactone compound that is invisible in the data brewers rely on to make purchasing decisions, a two-chemistry-system that responds to yeast selection in ways that most hop varieties do not, and a Yakima growing environment that amplifies total oil output from genetics that evolved to produce secondary metabolites under drought and UV stress.

The research gap is specific and tractable: no published study has measured γ-nonalactone precursor loads in Sabro across different growing conditions, irrigation treatments, or Pacific Northwest subregions. A controlled trial comparing Sabro from water-stressed versus irrigated Yakima plots, with γ-nonalactone and its precursors quantified in both the cone and finished beer, would resolve whether the terroir effect on Sabro’s most distinctive character is primarily genetic or significantly environmental. I’d be very interested to see what that study contained if and when it’s done.

References

1. BarthHaas. (n.d.). Sabro®. https://www.barthhaas.com/hops-and-products/hops/sabror

2. Féchir, M., Gallagher, A., Weaver, G., Roy, C., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5802–5810. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655

3. Garbe, L.-A., Schwarz, P., & Ehmer, A. (2007). γ-Nonalactone in beer: Biosynthesis by yeast. BrewingScience, 60(9/10), 160–165.

4. Hop Breeding Company. (2018, April 22). Hop Breeding Company introduces new flavor hop Sabro™ brand HBC 438 [Press release]. https://www.hopbreeding.com/doc/Sabro-Press-Release.pdf

5. Hotchko, R. A., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2014, June 5). Lactones in heavily dry-hopped beer [Conference presentation abstract]. American Society of Brewing Chemists Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA. https://www.asbcnet.org/events/archives/2014Meeting/proceedings/Pages/A-36.aspx

6. John I. Haas. (2019). Sabro™ [Hop variety data sheet]. https://www.johnihaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Haas-HopSpecSheets_SABRO_2018.pdf

7. Rheay, H. T., Lombard, K. A., Brewer, C. E., & Holguin, F. O. (2020). Phytochemical characterization of native New Mexico hops. HortTechnology, 30(6), 770–772. https://doi.org/10.21273/HORTTECH04678-20

8. Sannerud, E. (2025, June 29). Hop Notes 25: 2025 US hop acreage strung report. Substack.

9. Thomson, S. (2026, February 10). Terroir Tuesday Week 11: Neomexicanus. Breaking Brews with Shan Ferments. https://shanferments.substack.com/p/terroir-tuesday-week-11-neomexicanus

10. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. (2025, December 19). National hop report (ISSN 1949-1459). https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/795696/hopsan25.pdf

11. Wallace, H. (2018, April 26). ‘Love it or hate it’ homebrew hop goes pro. Appellation Beer. https://appellationbeer.com/blog/love-it-or-hate-it-homebrew-hop-goes-pro/

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Introduction

Ekuanot has a naming problem that obscures what it actually is. Released commercially in 2014 by the Hop Breeding Company as HBC 366, it was initially branded Equinox until Equinox Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado, sent a cease and desist, citing their trademark registered earlier that same year. In May 2016, the name was changed to Ekuanot, which received USPTO approval in 2018. For a few years it circulated in the trade press under all three identifiers simultaneously, which did nothing for brewer confidence in a hop that was otherwise performing extremely well in the glass.

The renaming saga matters only because it delayed the conversation about what the variety actually does. Ekuanot was quickly embraced on sensory merit alone: Lagunitas built their Equinox Ale around it shortly after release, Brooklyn Brewery made Scorcher #366, and it became one of the more requested single-hop showcase varieties in the early NEIPA era. The aroma profile spans an unusually wide range; lime, papaya, melon, berry, stone fruit, and a distinctive green pepper thread that runs through everything and refuses to fully resolve into any single familiar fruit character. That breadth is not random. It is the direct result of a specific oil architecture built around an unusually high total oil load and a geraniol fraction that behaves differently during fermentation than it does in almost any other American variety.

Breeding: Warrior Crossed with Wild

Ekuanot’s parentage is confirmed as Warrior crossed with an unnamed wild hop variety. That is a short sentence that contains a lot of breeding logic.

Warrior is a USDA-bred variety released in 2000, derived from a high-alpha breeding program. It is known for clean, smooth bittering at very high alpha, low cohumulone around 20 percent, and minimal aroma contribution the kind of variety a brewer reaches for when they want bittering units without any hop character bleeding through into the finished beer. Its oil content is deliberately modest. Warrior was bred to be invisible in the finished product.

The Hop Breeding Company’s decision to cross Warrior with a wild hop variety flipped that intentionality completely. Wild hop accessions carry genetic diversity that domesticated varieties have largely lost through centuries of selection pressure toward uniformity and high yield. In the Warrior cross that produced Ekuanot, that wild germplasm contributed the oil architecture: the extremely high total oil load of 2.5 to 4.5 mL per 100 grams, roughly three to four times what Warrior carries, and the diverse minor terpene fraction responsible for the green pepper, melon, and papaya notes that make Ekuanot’s aroma profile so difficult to categorize. Alpha came from Warrior at 14.5 to 15.5 percent, cohumulone landed at 32 to 38 percent, and the vibrant yellow color that distinguishes Ekuanot visually in the field every spring is also believed to trace back to the wild parent.

The result is a proprietary variety that is simultaneously a legitimate dual-purpose hop high enough alpha for bittering, high enough oil for aroma and one of the most oil-intensive varieties in commercial American production.

What Ekuanot Actually Is, Chemically

The published oil composition for Ekuanot shows myrcene at 30 to 45 percent, humulene at 12 to 20 percent, caryophyllene at 8 to 12 percent, linalool at 0.2 to 0.5 percent, and geraniol up to 1.2 percent. Against a standard American aroma variety, the first thing that stands out is how wide those ranges are. A myrcene range of 30 to 45 percent across commercial lots is unusually broad, and it reflects genuine year-to-year and lot-to-lot variation that brewers who work with Ekuanot regularly will recognize. This is not a tight, consistent variety. It is an expressive, variable one.

The geraniol fraction is where the most chemically interesting story lives. Research by Takoi et al. published in Brewing Science analyzed the behavior of hop-derived monoterpene alcohols and branched-chain esters across 42 hop varieties, and explicitly classified HBC 366 (Ekuanot) as a geraniol precursor-dominant hop, which is a specific and meaningful distinction. Most hops with significant geraniol content carry it as free geraniol, which is directly bioavailable and gets converted by yeast into citronellol, nerol, and linalool during fermentation. Ekuanot does something different. Its geraniol is stored primarily as bound precursors, compounds that are not directly volatile but are enzymatically converted into free geraniol during fermentation before the yeast then converts that into the full range of secondary monoterpene alcohols.

The practical brewing implication is significant. In a standard cold-side dry hop after fermentation, free geraniol survives largely intact and contributes a direct floral, rose-adjacent aroma character. However because Ekuanot’s geraniol is precursor-dominant, the cold-side dry hop does not unlock it the same way. You need active yeast enzyme activity to release the precursors into free geraniol first. A warm-side biotransformation addition during active fermentation, where yeast beta-glucosidase activity is highest, converts more of Ekuanot’s geraniol precursor fraction than any other addition timing. The result is a cascade: precursors to free geraniol, free geraniol to citronellol and nerol and linalool, and those compounds together producing the citrus-floral-tropical intensity the variety is known for, but only when the addition timing and yeast enzyme activity align.

This also helps explain why Ekuanot can read as flat or one-dimensional from a cold dry hop in a beer where it is expected to shine. The hop’s most characteristic output is locked behind a fermentation-dependent enzymatic step that cold-side additions largely bypass.

The green pepper note deserves its own mention because it does not resolve neatly into the terpene-dominant story above. Green pepper aroma in hops is primarily attributed to 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, a methoxypyrazine compound found in several American varieties including Ekuanot and Simcoe. Methoxypyrazines are not terpenes. They are produced through a separate biosynthetic pathway and are not significantly altered by yeast biotransformation. They survive fermentation largely intact and persist through cold-side dry hopping, which is why the green pepper thread in Ekuanot is present regardless of addition timing. For brewers who find it objectionable (to put it nicely), there is no process intervention that removes it; it is simply part of the variety’s genetic expression.

The Yakima Terroir

Currently, commercial Ekuanot production is grown in the Yakima Valley. The Yakima Valley geology covered in previous entries (volcanic basalt-gravel subsoil, the alluvial formations from the Missoula Floods, exceptional drainage) applies here, but with an Ekuanot-specific dimension.

The Féchir et al. findings on Washington-grown hops showing significantly elevated humulene oxidation products relative to Oregon-grown material are relevant for Ekuanot’s humulene fraction at 12 to 20 percent, which is already substantial. Yakima amplifies the sesquiterpene depth in Ekuanot the same way it does in Columbus and Cashmere. The woody, resinous undertone that sits beneath Ekuanot’s tropical surface in a well-made NEIPA is in part a product of the valley’s soil chemistry acting on the humulene fraction.

The subregional variation documented within Yakima; fields only a few kilometers apart producing measurably different profiles based on soil pH, zinc, and manganese availability, has direct implications for a variety with Ekuanot’s wide oil content range. A lot grown on deeper alluvial soil near the valley floor and a lot from volcanic silt loam farther from the river are expressing geraniol precursor load, total oil, and methoxypyrazine intensity through different nutrient availability profiles. The wide lot-to-lot variation brewers routinely report with Ekuanot is not just genetics and harvest timing. It is the field-level terroir story playing out through an already variable variety.

Ekuanot’s characteristic spring display of the vivid yellow bine color that distinguishes it visually in the field and is also understood to reflect differences in lupulin development timeline relative to other varieties. Yakima’s long-day growing season, which drives earlier and more aggressive lupulin accumulation compared to lower-latitude or higher-humidity growing regions, likely reinforces this trait. The documented visual identity of the variety in the field is part of the same terroir expression that ultimately shapes its aroma.

Supply

According to the December 2025 National Hop Report, Ekuanot was harvested on 373 acres in Washington in 2023, 433 acres in 2024, and 316 acres in 2025 in Washington, with no reported acreage in Idaho or Oregon in any of those three years. That 2024 to 2025 decline of 117 acres, roughly 27 percent, is steeper than the overall US contraction of 7 percent for the same period. But the floor is comparatively stable: Ekuanot held reportable acreage through all three years of the broader contraction when a number of smaller proprietary and open varieties were either withheld for disclosure reasons or came to zero entirely.

For additional ontext, Ekuanot’s 316 acres in 2025 sits between Sabro at 181 acres and Loral at an undisclosed but historically similar range, and well below the marquee proprietary varieties: Citra at over 7,700 Washington acres and Mosaic at 2,246.

How to Think About Ekuanot in Recipes

The geraniol precursor-dominant classification from Takoi et al. is the most actionable chemical information available about Ekuanot, and most brewer discussions of the variety do not reference it at all.

Warm-side biotransformation is not optional it is the mechanism: Because Ekuanot’s geraniol is predominantly precursor-bound rather than free, the floral-citrus-tropical output the variety is known for is most fully expressed when added during active fermentation, where beta-glucosidase activity releases the precursors into free geraniol for yeast conversion. A cold dry hop of Ekuanot produces a different beer than a biotransformation addition of Ekuanot. Neither is wrong, but if you are trying to get the papaya-lime-melon character the variety is marketed for, cold-side alone will not get you there.

Yeast strain matters more for Ekuanot than for most varieties: Strains with higher beta-glucosidase and beta-lyase activity, certain English strains, Kveik, and thiolized options, convert more of the geraniol precursor fraction and more of the 3MH thiol precursors. A clean American lager yeast will leave a significant fraction of Ekuanot’s aromatic potential locked in precursors.

The green pepper note is not a flaw and cannot be removed: Methoxypyrazines survive fermentation and dry hopping intact. If that herbal-green pepper thread is not something you want in the finished beer, Ekuanot is not the right variety for that recipe, regardless of addition timing or yeast choice. If it is something you can work with and in a West Coast IPA, a saison, or a sour it often reads as complexity rather than off-character; it is one of the most distinctive markers of the variety.

Lot selection is worth the effort: The wide myrcene range of 30 to 45 percent and the geraniol range of up to 1.2 percent mean Ekuanot lots from different fields and harvest years behave differently. A lot with a higher geraniol reading and lower myrcene will respond more dramatically to biotransformation timing.

The oil load supports a whirlpool-first strategy: At 2.5 to 4.5 mL per 100 grams total oil, Ekuanot has enough oil density to anchor a whirlpool addition at meaningful rate before any dry hopping. The combination of a whirlpool addition at sub-80°C for isomerization suppression and a warm-side biotransformation dry hop tends to give the widest expression of the variety’s full aromatic range.

Conclusion

Ekuanot arrived with two name changes, a trademark dispute, and branding confusion that obscured its chemistry for several years. What the peer-reviewed literature makes clear, and what Takoi et al. specifically documented, is that its geraniol precursor-dominant architecture puts it in a small category of hops whose most characteristic aromatic output is fermentation-dependent rather than simply addition-dependent. That is a fundamentally different relationship between the hop and the brewing process than most American varieties demand, and it explains both why Ekuanot can disappoint in a cold dry hop and why it overdelivers when biotransformation is built into the plan.

The wild hop parent behind its oil architecture is unknown and its traits are undocumented in the public literature. A dedicated volatile fingerprinting study on Ekuanot across Yakima subregions and harvest windows, (the kind of work done on New Zealand cultivars by the Otago group) would tell brewers considerably more about why specific lots of this variety express differently. Until that work exists, lot data and fermentation timing are the two levers worth pulling.

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References

1. BarthHaas. (n.d.). Ekuanot®. https://www.barthhaas.com/hops-and-products/hops/ekuanotr

2. Brulosophy. (2016, September 1). The hop chronicles | Ekuanot (2015) pale ale. https://brulosophy.com/2016/09/01/the-hop-chronicles-hbc-366-formerly-equinox/

3. Féchir, M., Gallagher, A., Weaver, G., Roy, C., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5802–5810. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655

4. Hop Alliance. (2025). Ekuanot™ hop pellets (2025). https://hopalliance.com/products/ekuanot-pellet-hops-2024

5. Hops Connect. (2022). Ekuanot. https://hopsconnect.com/our-hops/hop-varieties/ekuanot/

6. John I. Haas. (2021, July 6). Introducing Ekuanot. https://www.johnihaas.com/news-views/introducing-ekuanot/

7. John I. Haas. (n.d.). Ekuanot® [Hop variety data sheet]. https://www.johnihaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/MiniSpecSheets-Ekuanot.pdf

8. Lafontaine, S. R., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2019). Investigating the factors influencing the sensory bitterness intensity and quality of dry-hopped beers. Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists, 77(3), 157–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/03610470.2019.1617622

9. Praet, T., Van Opstaele, F., Jaskula-Goiris, B., Aerts, G., & De Cooman, L. (2012). Biotransformations of hop-derived aroma compounds by Saccharomyces cerevisiae upon fermentation. Cerevisia, 36(4), 125–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cervis.2012.02.001

10. Takoi, K., Koie, K., Itoga, Y., Katayama, Y., Shimase, M., Nakayama, Y., & Watari, J. (2010). Biotransformation of hop-derived monoterpene alcohols by lager yeast and their contribution to the flavor of hopped beer. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(8), 5050–5058. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf1000524

11. Takoi, K., Tokita, S., Kubota, H., & Watari, J. (2018). Behaviour of hop-derived branched-chain esters during fermentation and unique characteristics of Huell Melon and Ekuanot (HBC366) hops. BrewingScience, 71, 100–107. https://doi.org/10.23763/BrSc18-10takoi

12. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. (2024, June 28). Acreage (ISSN 1949-1522). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/acrg0624.pdf

13. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. (2024, December 19). National hop report (ISSN 1949-1459). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Regional_Office/Northwest/includes/Publications/Hops/2024/hops1224.pdf

14. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. (2025, December 19). National hop report (ISSN 1949-1459). https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/795696/hopsan25.pdf

15. Van Opstaele, F., Praet, T., Aerts, G., & De Cooman, L. (2012). Characterization of novel varietal hop aroma compounds in diverse hop cultivars. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 60(12), 3077–3086. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf205044a

16. Yakima Chief Ranches. (n.d.). Ekuanot® Brand HBC 366. https://yakimachiefranches.com/create/brands/ekuanot

Because I’m being a bit cheeky with my dislike of Columbus, I’ve created Columbus Swag you can purchase here: Columbus Resistance Swag

Introduction

Most hops have a paper trail. A breeding program, a registered pedigree, a researcher who signed their name to the release. Columbus has none of that. Its exact genetic background has never been publicly confirmed. What the industry knows about Columbus is largely inferred: it likely derives from USDA-developed Brewer’s Gold breeding lines, it was developed by a former government scientist who may or may not have had authorization to use the germplasm he worked with, and it almost certainly is the same variety as Tomahawk and Zeus, despite years of competing patent claims that said otherwise.

What is not in dispute is what Columbus does in the brewhouse. Alpha sits at 14 to 18 percent, total oil runs 2.5 to 3.5 mL per 100 grams, and the aroma character is described consistently across sources as dank, resinous, earthy, black pepper, and citrus with a pungent undercurrent that most brewers recognize immediately. It was for years the most produced hop in the United States by volume, and it remains the bittering foundation of Pliny the Elder and dozens of the most influential American IPAs ever brewed. Vinnie Cilurzo has used Columbus as the primary bittering addition in Pliny since its first commercial batch in 2001, running it from 90 minutes through to a dry hop addition, one of the few brewers who treats a high-alpha variety as a legitimate aroma contributor at both ends of the process.

The Zimmermann Question

To understand Columbus you have to understand the circumstances of its creation, which remain genuinely controversial.

Charles “Chuck” Zimmermann joined the USDA hop breeding program in Prosser, Washington, as a research scientist. When he resigned from the USDA around 1979, he took with him a large portion of what he described as the most valuable breeding material in the Prosser back-up collection.

After leaving the USDA, Zimmermann worked as a private hop breeder for Humulus Hop Trade Corp and later Hop Union, where he continued developing varieties from his private collection. At Hop Union, he selected the plant that would eventually become Columbus, then left for a competitor before it was commercialized. His successor at Hop Union, Dr. Greg Lewis, led the patent application for Columbus.

When another company independently attempted to patent the same hop under the name Tomahawk, a legal dispute followed. The resolution acknowledged both Columbus and Tomahawk as registered names for what was effectively the same variety. A third company separately released Zeus, described as similar to Columbus but with “even higher yield potential,” and widely believed by industry insiders to be genetically identical or nearly so. The three-letter abbreviation CTZ became the industry shorthand for the group.

Haunold’s best assessment of the pedigree: Columbus most likely came from a USDA breeding line with Brewer’s Gold as one of its main components, possibly one of the advanced lines that Haunold himself had sent to Prosser for evaluation before Zimmermann’s departure. If that is correct, Columbus carries the same Manitoba wild hop genetics that run through Centennial, Galena, and Northern Brewer, making it a sibling of sorts to the variety that bittered the very first craft IPAs, arriving at the same destination through a private rather than public route.

What Columbus Actually Is, Chemically

Columbus sits in a category sometimes called “super-alpha,” meaning average alpha exceeding 15 percent. But the oil profile is what separates it from other high-alpha workhorses like Nugget or Warrior, which tend toward clean neutral bittering with modest aroma fractions.

Columbus carries 2.5 to 3.5 mL of total oil per 100 grams, roughly double the oil load of Nugget at comparable alpha levels. That oil does not disappear in the kettle the way myrcene-dominated hops do. The composition breaks down to 50 to 60 percent myrcene, 12 to 18 percent humulene, and 8 to 12 percent caryophyllene, with total oil staying high across that entire range. The caryophyllene fraction is where Columbus begins to diverge from what you would expect from a high-alpha American variety.

Caryophyllene is a sesquiterpene with a spicy, peppery, woody character. At 8 to 12 percent of total oil in Columbus, it is proportionally significant. Research on hop volatile compounds identifies caryophyllene as one of the contributors to the spicy and earthy descriptors that consistently appear in Columbus sensory panels. It is also shared with cannabis, which produces myrcene, beta-caryophyllene, and humulene as three of its primary terpenes. The shared terpene profile between Columbus and cannabis is not coincidental: both Humulus lupulus and Cannabis sativa are members of the family Cannabaceae and share much of their terpenoid biosynthetic machinery. The “dank” descriptor brewers use for Columbus is the same compound class producing the same perception in a closely related plant.

The thiol picture adds another layer. Columbus carries measurable 3-mercaptohexan-1-ol (3MH) precursors, the compound responsible for grapefruit and rhubarb character in finished beer. At 50 to 60 percent myrcene, much of the raw oil fraction does not survive into finished beer. However 3MH, which is bound as a precursor and released enzymatically by yeast beta-lyase during fermentation, travels a different pathway entirely. It is the thiol fraction, not raw myrcene, that may explain why Columbus dry hops punch harder than the oil spec sheet alone would predict.

The Yakima Terroir

All significant commercial Columbus production sits in Yakima, with smaller amounts in Oregon and Idaho. The volcanic basalt-gravel subsoil of the Yakima soil series, the long-day growing season, and the low-humidity environment concentrate resins and oils in ways that maritime growing regions cannot replicate.

What the published literature adds specifically for Columbus is the Féchir et al. finding on sesquiterpene oxidation products. Washington-grown hops showed significantly elevated humulene oxidation products relative to Oregon-grown hops across 39 field locations. For Columbus, which enters the growing season with an already high humulene fraction at 12 to 18 percent, that amplification means Yakima is adding measurable depth to one of the hop’s defining characteristics. The woody, resinous backbone that distinguishes Columbus from cleaner super-alpha varieties is not just genetic: it is the Yakima environment expressing itself through sesquiterpene chemistry.

The subregional variation finding from Féchir et al. is also directly applicable. Columbus lots from different fields within Yakima can show measurably different profiles depending on soil pH, available zinc, and manganese levels. A lot grown on heavier alluvial soil near the valley floor will express differently from one grown on the volcanic silt loam with higher basalt gravel content. When brewers report noticeable lot-to-lot variation in Columbus dankness and resin intensity across different years, part of what they are tasting is field-specific soil chemistry, not packaging or storage variability.

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Onion & Dank

There is a version of Columbus that every brewer who has used it fresh in the last few years has encountered. You open the bag and instead of the earthy, dank, resinous character the older literature describes, you get raw onion, green garlic, and something resembling the bottom of a sweaty gym bag.

The compounds responsible are dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) and dimethyl trisulfide (DMTS), both sulfurous volatile compounds with garlic and onion character respectively. Their odor thresholds are extremely low, detectable at concentrations in the range of a few parts per billion, meaning even small amounts overwhelm everything else in the oil profile. In hops, these polysulfide compounds form through two distinct routes: overripeness at harvest, and post-harvest oxidation under warm storage conditions.

The harvest timing mechanism is the more correctable of the two, and the more commercially inconvenient. High-alpha varieties like Columbus are heavily grown on commercial contracts where the purchasing specification is alpha acid content. More alpha means more value per pound. The incentive for growers is to leave Columbus on the bine longer, into late September, when resin accumulation peaks. But a cone pushed past its optimal picking window enters a biochemical phase where sulfurous volatile precursors accumulate rapidly. The Hops Company, working with CLS Farms in Yakima, documented this directly: overripe Columbus harvest, driven by the demand for maximum alpha from bittering contracts, produces sulfurous compounds that generate intense onion and garlic aromas that obscure the hop’s actual character. Early-harvest Columbus picked within its optimal window, at a lower alpha of 11 to 12 percent, delivers citrus, subtle pine, and floral character. The alpha-chasing economics of commercial bittering contracts have, in a measurable and specific way, degraded the sensory experience of using this hop as anything other than a bittering addition.

The storage mechanism adds to the problem. DMTS in particular forms during oxidation of hop oil compounds at temperatures above freezing. A bag of Columbus harvested at the right time but stored warm, or stored cold but opened and resealed multiple times, will develop the same sulfurous character through a different pathway. The sulfur oxidation that produces onion character does not read as “old hops” the way stale myrcene does. It reads as garlic. The visual and weight cues brewers use to assess pellet quality do not flag this reliably.

What changed over the past decade is a mix of two things. First, Columbus acreage peaked in the mid-2010s and the commercial bittering market that underpinned it demanded high-alpha lots, which pushed average harvest timing later. Second, the craft context in which brewers were using Columbus shifted from West Coast IPAs where bittering was the primary role to hazy IPAs and aroma-forward styles where dry hop quality became the evaluation standard. A hop that was perfectly acceptable as a 90-minute addition when nobody was smelling the raw pellets in detail became conspicuously problematic when those same pellets were being rubbed and sniffed at dry hop rates.

The practical resolution is lot selection. Early-harvest Columbus, picked before the alpha curve peaks and before the polysulfide accumulation that comes with overripeness, is a genuinely different product. Brewer’s Cut programs from suppliers working with CLS Farms are specifically addressing this by sourcing on sensory quality rather than alpha content, selecting lots with the cleanest sulfur profile and the highest linalool transfer efficiency. That same CLS Farms lot posted a 49 percent linalool extraction rate into wort, roughly 2.5 times the average for Columbus, which means the aroma fraction that actually makes it to the glass is substantially different from a standard commodity CTZ purchase.

However, a trend in the revitalization of this hop has emerged. Breweries have deliberately leaned into the sulfur character by using lupulin-enriched Columbus, produced by cryogenically separating the lupulin glands from the bract and leaf material and concentrating the resins and oils into roughly half the original pellet weight. At that concentration, the DMDS and DMTS compounds no longer arrive as an overwhelming off-note drowning the terpenes. They arrive as a controlled, intentional dose blended with an equally concentrated hit of caryophyllene, 3MH precursors, and the full sesquiterpene backbone, at a ratio the brewer sets by adjusting addition weight.

The hazy IPA and West Coast IPA markets have both moved toward more aggressive, layered, and deliberately complex flavor combinations over the past several years. What read as a flaw in a 2015 clean West Coast IPA now reads as intentional character in a loud, resin-forward DIPA or a current West Coast built around diesel and dank rather than clean citrus. The dank, onion-adjacent, pungent register that lupulin-enriched Columbus delivers sits in the same sensory territory as the cannabis character that the shared Cannabaceae terpene profile, the same myrcene, caryophyllene, and humulene overlap discussed earlier, already makes legible to modern IPA drinkers. Brewers working in that register are not masking the sulfur. They are using it as a textural element alongside the resin concentration, the way a winemaker might use reduction as intentional complexity rather than a fault to be corrected.

This is not unprecedented in craft beer. Brett in saisons, aggressive lactic in certain NEIPAs, and sulfur in some New England-style lagers all went through the same recategorization: the compound did not change, the cultural context around it did. Lupulin-enriched Columbus is the industry acknowledging that the sulfur was always part of this hop’s identity, just not one that belonged in every format or at every addition point. Used at low rate, late in the dry hop, in a beer built to handle it, it becomes a tool rather than something to avoid.

On a personal note, I’m extremely sensitive to sulfur compounds, which is why Columbus, and even Krush to some extent (which has a high thiol component) no matter the level, is not something I enjoy in my beer.

The Supply Picture

Columbus has been among the most planted hops in the United States by acreage for most of the past decade. In 2024, CTZ held 5,438 harvested acres, maintaining its position as one of the largest varieties despite the broader contraction in U.S. hop acreage. The 2025 USDA report shows continued acreage declines across all varieties, with high-alpha varieties bearing a disproportionate share of the cuts as the industry right-sizes after the 2021 peak.

The structural shift favoring proprietary varieties with brewer contracts is the key dynamic. CTZ, like Cashmere, is an open variety with no contractual floor under its acreage. Its current position reflects historical demand from the large commercial brewing sector, which uses high-alpha varieties for cost-efficient bittering, rather than specific craft brewer contract commitment. As craft demand for clean neutral bittering has shifted toward Warrior and other low-cohumulone options, and as super-high-alpha varieties push alpha economics further, CTZ’s position in the market is more exposed than its current acreage ranking suggests.

For a brewer sourcing Columbus today, that means availability is fine but lot selectivity is worth building into the supplier relationship. The subregional variation documented in Yakima means a lot from a specific field block will behave differently than a commodity CTZ blend, and the harvest year matters for oil-forward dry hop uses in a way that matters less for pure bittering applications.

How to Think About Columbus in Recipes

Columbus continues to show us that it can be versatile outside of bittering.

The 90-minute bittering use is justified: Moderate cohumulone and very high alpha mean Columbus delivers clean, structurally firm bittering that Chinook’s pine harshness or Nugget’s neutral flatness cannot replicate. For West Coast IPAs and DIPAs where you want bitterness that hangs with the hop aroma rather than fighting it, Columbus earns its place at first charge.

The dry hop is underexplored when the lot is right: The 3MH precursor content means a biotransformation-capable yeast will unlock grapefruit and citrus character from Columbus dry hops that standard spec sheets do not flag. Pair it with Centennial or Simcoe in the dry hop to reinforce the citrus axis while the caryophyllene backbone adds depth.

Smell the pellets before you commit: Given the potential for polysulfide problems, raw sensory evaluation of a Columbus lot before building a recipe around it is not optional.

Fresh-season, early-harvest lots change what this hop is: Early-harvest Columbus at 11 to 12 percent alpha is a different ingredient than commodity CTZ at 16 percent. If your supplier offers harvest-date or sensory-graded lots, that information is worth paying for.

The dank and resin character is a feature in the right styles. Columbus is not trying to be Citra or Mosaic. The sesquiterpene backbone makes it a strong fit for West Coast IPAs, imperial stouts, barleywines, and any style where resinous depth and earthy complexity belong. Used as the sole dry hop in a West Coast IPA at modest rate, it will tell you clearly what it can do before you blend it away.

Conclusion

Columbus is a hop shaped by opacity. No confirmed pedigree, three competing commercial names, a germplasm origin story that never got cleanly resolved. What it left behind is a variety that has underpinned more significant American IPAs than any other high-alpha hop, carries sesquiterpene chemistry linking it to both its probable Brewer’s Gold ancestry and the volcanic-alluvial soils where it is grown, and harbors thiol precursors most brewers have never thought to exploit.

The onion problem exists, however can and is being used as an advantage to some. It is the residue of an alpha-extraction economy applied to a hop that, grown and picked correctly, still produces something worth using on both ends of the brew day. Vinnie Cilurzo figured that out in 2001 and has been running Columbus from first addition to dry hop in Pliny ever since. The hop has not changed. The conditions under which most of it gets grown and sold have.

References

1. Féchir, M., Gallagher, A., Weaver, G., Roy, C., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5802–5810. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655

2. Haunold, A. (2010, August 26). The history of CTZ: The pursuit of hop patent profit. In Hop Pursuit [blog post]. http://inhoppursuit.blogspot.com/2010/08/indie-hops-exclusive-history-of-ctz.html

3. Janish, S. (2021). Dry hop best practices. Technical Quarterly, 58(1), 1–17.

4. John I. Haas. (n.d.). Columbus [hop variety data sheet]. https://www.johnihaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Columbus.pdf

5. Kishimoto, T., Kobayashi, M., Yako, N., Iida, A., & Wanikawa, A. (2008). Comparison of 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one contents in hop cultivars from different growing regions. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 56(3), 1051–1057. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf072173e

6. Nance, M. R., & Setzer, W. N. (2011). Volatile components of aroma hops (Humulus lupulus L.) commonly used in beer brewing. Journal of Brewing and Distilling, 2(2), 16–22.

7. Russo, E. B. (2011). Taming THC: Potential cannabis synergy and phytocannabinoid-terpenoid entourage effects. British Journal of Pharmacology, 163(7), 1344–1364. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2011.01238.x

8. Takoi, K., Koie, K., Itoga, Y., Katayama, Y., Shimase, M., Nakayama, Y., & Watari, J. (2010). Biotransformation of hop-derived monoterpene alcohols by lager yeast and their contribution to the flavor of hopped beer. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(8), 5050–5058. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf1000524

9. The Hops Company. (2025, February 10). Exploring Columbus hops: The sensory impact of early vs. late harvests. https://hopscompany.com/blogs/news/exploring-columbus-hops-the-sensory-impact-of-early-vs-late-harvests

10. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. (n.d.). Official series description: Yakima series. USDA NRCS Soil Survey Division. https://soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/Y/YAKIMA.html

11. USA Hop Growers of America. (2024). 2024 statistical report. https://www.usahops.org/img/blog_pdf/494.pdf

CBC always gives you more options than time, energy, or brain space can realistically handle. You can fill every hour and still miss the most useful parts of the week.

CBC has also been cut by a day this year, which is definitely going to change the flow. Less wandering, less filler, less pretending you’ll make it to everything. I’m really interested to see how that actually plays out, what gets prioritized, what gets missed, and what the overall vibe of the week ends up feeling like.

So instead of trying to do everything, I went through the schedule and pulled the sessions, floor activations, and week events I’m actually paying attention to. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive. It’s the shortlist I’d build for myself based on what feels most relevant right now, from flavor and process to NA, marketing, export, staffing, and what’s happening on the floor.

It also feels like fewer West Coast folks are making the trip this year, which I think will shift the room in interesting ways. Different regions bring different pressures, different questions, and different blind spots. I’m curious to see what rises to the top because of that.

This is NOT an exhaustive list. For the full schedule, see the CBC website:

https://www.craftbrewersconference.com/

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Sessions I’m Prioritizing

Process + Flavor

Tying It All Together: Linking the Science of Thiols to Sensory and Practical Brewing

Tuesday, April 21, 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM

108-B

Why I’m going: Thiols are still one of the most talked about and most misunderstood tools in modern brewing, so I’m interested in anything that actually connects the chemistry to practical brewing and sensory reality.

Exploring Mexican Lagers

Tuesday, April 21, 9:15 AM to 10:15 AM

Ballroom B

Why I’m going: Mexican lager is still such an active style conversation right now, and I’m curious how this gets framed from both a technical and stylistic standpoint.

The Fresh Hop Beer Toolkit: Brewing, Logistics, and Consumer Insights

Tuesday, April 21, 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Ballroom B

Why I’m going: Fresh hop is always exciting, but it’s also one of the messier, more variable categories to execute well, so I want to hear how people are thinking about both process and consumer fit.

Dialing In Flavor & Aroma: Advanced Hop Products, Natural Flavor Tools & Practical Sensory Targets

Tuesday, April 21, 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM

107-AB

Why I’m going: This sits right in the middle of a lot of the current conversations around hop products, extracts, flavor systems, and how brewers are actually using them.

Lager Fermentation and Natural Carbonation

Wednesday, April 22, 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

Ballroom A

Why I’m going: Lager continues to matter, and precision here is what separates merely clean beer from beer that really stands out.

Raw Materials + Inputs

Yeast Nutrition, Zinc, and FAN: Achieving the Right Amount for Your Yeast

Tuesday, April 21, 11:45 AM to 12:45 PM

Ballroom B

Why I’m going: This is one of those topics that sounds dry on paper but has a massive impact on fermentation performance, consistency, and quality.

Maximizing Craft Malt: Harnessing Sensory to Make Award-Winning Beers

Tuesday, April 21, 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM

108-B

Why I’m going: Malt is still under-discussed relative to how much it shapes beer, and I’m interested in how people are using sensory to make that more intentional. Additionally, it’s great to see craft malt/local maltsters gaining more recognition.

Harvest Timing and the Art of Hop Aroma

Tuesday, April 21, 2:30 PM to 5:00 PM

Exhibit Hall A

Why I’m going: Harvest timing can completely shift hop expression, and I’m always interested in conversations that connect what happens in the field to what ends up in the glass.

Contracting Ingredients to Lower Costs and Improve Beer Quality

Wednesday, April 22, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

204-B

Why I’m going: Margin pressure is real, and ingredient contracting is one of those less glamorous areas that can meaningfully affect both cost and quality. Contracting can be difficult at best, so I think this is a great topic to dive into.

Innovation + Product

Inside Skunkworks: How Brewers Are Revolutionizing Flavor With Terpenes and Extracts

Tuesday, April 21, 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM

Innovation Station, Exhibit Hall C

Why I’m going: This is one of the more interesting edges of current flavor work, especially if you care about terpenes, extracts, and where some of the more controversial innovation is heading.

New Yeast for Non-Alcoholic Beer

Tuesday, April 21, 1:15 PM to 2:15 PM

203-AB

Why I’m going: NA is still technically difficult to do well, so any real yeast innovation here matters.

Fizz, Function, and Food Safety: Making Safe, Stable and Compliant Non-Beer Beverages

Tuesday, April 21, 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM

204-B

Why I’m going: As breweries continue expanding beyond beer, stability, compliance, and safety are becoming more central, not optional.

Beyond Pellets: Liquid Hop Replacement for Yield, Speed, and Efficiency

Wednesday, April 22, 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

108-B

Why I’m going: Liquid hop products keep coming up in conversations around efficiency and process, and I want to hear how those claims are being framed in a brewing context.

Hop into the Future: Meet Vera and Thora, The Latest Public Hop Releases from USDA-ARS

Wednesday, April 22, 10:15 AM to 11:30 AM

Think Tank Stage, Exhibit Hall A

Why I’m going: New public hop releases always catch my attention, especially when they sit at the intersection of agronomy, public breeding, and brewing potential.

New Tools for NA Beer Production

Wednesday, April 22, 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM

201-C

Why I’m going: NA is becoming so important to a brewery portfolio, and I’m curious what tools are actually proving useful at production scale.

Global + Market Signals

China’s Beer Market & Export Opportunities for American Brewers

Tuesday, April 21, 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM

103-A

Why I’m going: China is such a complicated market, and I’m interested in what’s actually realistic for American brewers versus what sounds good in theory.

Japan: Land of the Rising Beer

Tuesday, April 21, 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM

103-A

Why I’m going: Japan consistently offers a useful lens on precision, quality, and how beer culture evolves in a different context.

Sales + Marketing

Rethinking Social Media: Building a Digital Marketing Mix That Drives Sales

Tuesday, April 21, 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Ballroom A

Why I’m going: Social media is tricky for any business; I’m interested in anything that ties content to outcomes.

Maximizing Social Media Gains Through Video: A High Impact Case Study

Tuesday, April 21, 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

103-B

Why I’m going: Video is such a great tool, and I’m always curious to see actual examples of what’s working rather than generic advice.

Scaling Taproom Advertising Performance: A Practical Guide to Measuring Digital Advertising Impact

Tuesday, April 21, 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM

201-AB

Why I’m going: Attribution is still a mess for a lot of brands, and practical approaches to measuring ad performance matter more than ever.

People + AI

Easy & Valuable AI Wins Any Brewer Can Tackle (Without the Slop)

Tuesday, April 21, 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM

201-C

Why I’m going: AI is already creeping into workflows, and I’m interested in the practical use cases, not the hype.

Strategic AI Adoption for the Craft Beer Industry: A Panel Discussion

Wednesday, April 22, 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

Grand Hall Stage

Why I’m going: I want to hear how people are thinking about AI strategically, especially in an industry that doesn’t always move quickly on operational tools.

Happy Staff, Better Craft: Brewing a Better Workplace

Wednesday, April 22, 10:15 AM to 11:15 AM

201-AB

Why I’m going: Staffing and retention are still major pressure points, and I’m always interested in conversations that treat workplace culture as an operational issue, not a soft one.

Share Breaking Brews with Shan Ferments

On the Floor

Some of the most useful CBC conversations don’t happen in formal sessions at all. They happen while wandering the floor, running into people, tasting things, and asking better questions.

Skunkworks Competition by Abstrax

Monday, April 20, 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Tuesday, April 21, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Wednesday, April 22, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

Exhibit Hall A

Why I’m paying attention: This feels like one of the more interesting places to see how flavor conversations are evolving in real time.

The Crosby Hospitality Lounge Is Back!

Monday, April 20, 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Tuesday, April 21, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Wednesday, April 22, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

Exhibit Hall A

Why I’m paying attention: Crosby always draws a strong mix of brewers and suppliers, which makes it a good place for both casual and more technical conversations.

Harvest Timing and the Art of Hop Aroma

Tuesday, April 21, 2:30 PM to 5:00 PM

Exhibit Hall A

Why I’m paying attention: CLS bringing harvest timing into the conversation on the floor is exactly the kind of field-to-brewhouse perspective I like seeing more of.

HopEXPerience presented by Latitude46, Roy Farms, and Crosby Hops

Wednesday, April 22, 1:45 PM to 3:45 PM

Grand Hall Stage

Why I’m paying attention: This one is especially close to home for obvious reasons, and it’s a good example of the kinds of hop conversations I always want more of at CBC.

Week Events

CBC nights get busy fast, and you absolutely do not need to go to everything (I do try to get to a few in a night however!).

Sunday, April 19

(Don’t Fear) The River – South Jersey Brewery Trolley Tour!

12:00 PM

Philadelphia Convention Center

A good way to get out of the conference bubble early if you want to see more than just the convention center.

Brewbound x Love City Brewing Networking Event

5:00 PM to 7:00 PM

Love City Brewing

This feels like an easy early-week networking stop with a good mix of media, operators, and brands.

Brews & B-Sides, hosted by Brewery Branding

6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Sacred Vice Brewing

I love the concepts, and Brewery Branding are wonderful folks.

Monday, April 20

Grateful Shred 420 Party (Abstrax)

4:20 PM

Human Robot

This one feels fun, but also genuinely relevant if you care about dank, terpenes, and where flavor experimentation is heading.

Hollingbery Hullabaloo

6:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Craft Hall

Big energy, lots of people, and the Hollingbery crew always throws a great party.

Welcome to Philly Party (Hosted by CBP + Sippo)

7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Yards Brewing Company

This feels like one of the main gathering points of the week and a solid place to run into people. Yards is also exceptional.

Tuesday, April 21

Bavarian Hopfenfest by IGN

5:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Yards Brewing Company

This is one of the week events I’d prioritize most, especially for supplier and hop-focused conversations from abroad.

IBA Social at CBC in Philly

6:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Victory Brewing Company

A good broader industry crowd and a chance to connect beyond your usual orbit.

Where I’d Actually Eat & Drink in Philly

Restaurants

Zahav

If you can get in, go. It’s one of those places that’s still worth the hype.

Fiorella

A great pasta stop and one of the places I’d be happiest carving out time for.

Middle Child

Perfect lunch option when you need something easy and actually good.

Mulherin’s

Great energy, great group dinner choice, and an easy recommendation.

Breweries, beer spots, and bars

Human Robot

A must if you care about lager and process.

Other Half Philadelphia

Still one of the stronger stops for modern hop-forward beer and absolutely worth having in the mix during CBC week.

Fermentery Form

A really interesting stop if you care about mixed culture, fermentation expression, and a more niche side of beer.

Monk’s Cafe

Classic for a reason.

I’d also keep Yards in the mix just because it’s going to be relevant all week with multiple events, and Love City is a nice early-week stop given the Sunday networking event.

One More Thing

The Phillies are playing all weekend, which is honestly a pretty good excuse to step outside the CBC bubble for a minute and actually enjoy the city.

If You’re Around

I’ll be bouncing between sessions, the floor, and a lot of these events all week. If you see me, come say hi!

If You’re NOT Around

Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to cover! I’ll be updating my channels consistently over the 3 days, and would love to get your opinion on what you’d like to see!

Take CBC Content Preference Survey Here!

Writers Note: The wild hop that became Brewer’s Gold was originally found near Morden, Manitoba, which is near where I’m from. It is easy to think of the Canadian prairies as flat and uneventful from an agricultural perspective, especially compared to regions like Yakima or Hallertau, but in this case, a wild plant growing along a riverbank in southern Manitoba ended up changing the genetic trajectory of hops globally.

What Ernest Salmon received in 1916 was not just another breeding input. It was a completely different genetic foundation. And whether brewers realized it at the time or not, that Manitoba cutting introduced the earliest version of what we now recognize as American hop character.

Introduction

In 1916, Professor Ernest Stanley Salmon of Wye College in Kent, England, received a cutting from a wild hop growing near Morden, Manitoba, on the Canadian prairies. The plant, catalogued as BB1, was believed to be a genuinely wild North American hop, with nothing like the cultivated European germplasm Salmon had worked with throughout his career. He grew it on, collected seed, and in 1919 selected a seedling he would eventually name Brewer’s Gold. It was released to commercial cultivation in 1934.

British brewers who first trialled the experimental hop described the character as muscat, black currant, catty, and what some called “American tang.” They were not impressed. The varieties British brewers wanted at the time were noble and restrained, and Brewer’s Gold was neither. It was loud, fruity, and pungent in a way that had no precedent in English hop yards.

What Salmon had actually done, without fully understanding it at the time, was introduce North American wild genetics into the commercial hop breeding lineage for the first time. That decision turned out to be one of the most consequential single acts in the history of hops. Brewer’s Gold is the direct genetic ancestor of Centennial, Nugget, Galena, Northern Brewer, and through those varieties, nearly every high-alpha and dual-purpose variety released in the twentieth century. The “American tang” those British brewers disliked was, essentially, the earliest expression of everything that now defines American craft beer hops.

Breeding: A Wild Canadian Hop Crosses the Atlantic

Salmon’s breeding program at Wye College was explicitly aimed at raising alpha acid levels in British hops, which were running 5 to 7 percent at the time and struggling to compete economically with higher-alpha varieties. The wild Manitoba hop BB1 offered something he could not get from European stock: high resin content and robust vigor. Crossed with open-pollinated cultivated English genetics, it produced Brewer’s Gold with alpha averaging around 9 percent over a ten-year collection period at the USDA World Hop Cultivar Collection, ranging from 7.1 to 11.3 percent depending on growing conditions and year.

Salmon also bred Bullion from the same Manitoba parent in the same 1919 selection, making Bullion Brewer’s Gold’s sister variety. A decade and a half later, he bred Northern Brewer by crossing Canterbury Golding with a male seedling called OB21, which was itself the product of a cross between Brewer’s Gold and a wild male hop from the Russian River in California. The Northern Brewer male parent, OB21, carries both the Manitoba wild genetics through Brewer’s Gold and wild Californian genetics through that unnamed male. When Cashmere was bred at WSU decades later using Northern Brewer germplasm in the male parent, it inherited a lineage that traces directly back to Brewer’s Gold on one side and wild Californian hops on the other.

The American breeding program took Brewer’s Gold further. Centennial, bred in 1974 and released in 1990, has a genetic composition of three-quarters Brewer’s Gold, with Fuggle, East Kent Golding, Bavarian, and unknown germplasm making up the remainder. Nugget’s lineage is five-eighths Brewer’s Gold. Galena was bred in 1968 as an open-pollinated cross of Brewer’s Gold. If you trace back far enough through the ancestry of most major American varieties, Brewer’s Gold appears repeatedly. It is not a parent variety so much as a foundational hop.

What Brewer’s Gold Actually Is

Despite its outsized influence as a breeding parent, Brewer’s Gold itself has always been treated as a bittering workhorse and nothing more. Alpha sits at 8 to 11 percent depending on growing region, cohumulone runs high at 40 to 48 percent, and storage stability is rated poor, meaning alpha acid degrades faster after harvest than most modern varieties. The USDA ARS records show it was commercially grown in Oregon until 1985, when the advent of super-alpha varieties with higher alpha content and better storage stability rendered it economically redundant.

The oil profile sits at 1.5 to 3.0 mL per 100 grams total oil, which is respectable, with myrcene dominating at 50 to 60 percent, humulene at 12 to 18 percent, caryophyllene at 8 to 12 percent, and geraniol notably present at 1.0 to 1.8 percent, higher than many traditional bittering varieties. The geraniol presence was not something brewers cared about when Brewer’s Gold was grown primarily for alpha. It matters now considerably more.

The signature aroma is black currant, spicy resin, and dark fruit. That black currant character, which British brewers in 1934 found objectionable, is driven in part by 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one (4MMP), a polyfunctional thiol detectable at parts-per-trillion levels that also produces the black currant and gooseberry notes in varieties like Cascade, Simcoe, and Topaz. Kishimoto’s 2008 study confirmed that 4MMP is found only in US, Australian, and New Zealand hop cultivars, never in European varieties treated with copper-containing Bordeaux mixture fungicide. American-grown Brewer’s Gold sits on the right side of that divide. Its black currant character is not incidental. It is a direct expression of the wild North American genetics Salmon brought to England in 1916, expressing through a thiol compound that European hops, because of their farming chemistry, cannot produce.

The Terroir Variable: Why American-Grown Brewer’s Gold Reads Differently

One of the most clearly documented facts about Brewer’s Gold in the literature is that growing region changes it in measurable ways. American-grown Brewer’s Gold consistently shows higher alpha acids than UK-grown material of the same variety. The USDA ARS records show a ten-year alpha range of 7.1 to 11.3 percent at their Oregon collection site, while UK-grown material is typically described at 5 to 9 percent. The gap is not trivial. It reflects the same pattern documented across other varieties: Yakima’s volcanic basalt-gravel subsoil, long growing season days, and low humidity appear to push resin development harder than the maritime climate of Kent or even the cool, wet climate of the Pacific Northwest’s Willamette Valley.

Féchir et al.’s work comparing Washington and Oregon-grown hops across 39 field locations found that Washington hops showed consistently elevated humulene oxidation products and higher total beta-acids relative to Oregon material. For Brewer’s Gold, which already sits at 12 to 18 percent humulene, that finding means Yakima-grown lots carry more of the woody, resinous depth from humulene oxidation than anything grown further west or in Europe. The black currant and dark fruit character sits on top of that oxidation backbone rather than against a neutral base.

Brewer’s Gold is also highly sensitive to year-to-year environmental variation. The two beer dudes hop profile notes it as “very susceptible to terroir in terms of alpha acid, with big fluctuations year-to-year”. The USDA data confirms this: a ten-year alpha range spanning 7.1 to 11.3 percent means a nearly 60 percent swing in alpha depending on conditions. That is not a bug in a bittering variety being used as a bittering hop. In the hands of a brewer sourcing it as an aroma hop with lot-specific intention, it means the harvest year is as important as the variety name.

Bringing It Back

For most of the last 40 years, Brewer’s Gold has been the kind of hop that shows up in homebrew shops in small quantities and rarely appears on a brewery’s ingredient list by name. It has functioned more as an interesting historical footnote than a working ingredient.

That started to shift when Russian River Brewing’s Vinnie Cilurzo began working with CLS Farms in Yakima to explore what Brewer’s Gold could do under modern growing and kilning practices. The collaboration produced RnD Series Hazy IPA #54, brewed on Russian River’s five-barrel pilot system with Brewer’s Gold as the dominant hop. The reception was strong enough that the beer was scaled up and given a proper name: Bring Back Brewer’s Gold Hazy IPA, released in 2025.

The choice to build a hazy IPA around Brewer’s Gold rather than a West Coast IPA is itself the argument. The black currant and dark tropical fruit character that British brewers in 1934 found off-putting is exactly what modern hazy IPA drinkers are chasing. The geraniol fraction, present at 1.0 to 1.8 percent in American Brewer’s Gold, is the same precursor that drives citrus and floral biotransformation in Cascade daughters like Cashmere and Centennial. At hot side addition timing with a biotransformation-capable yeast, Brewer’s Gold’s geraniol converts to citronellol, nerol, and linalool, layering floral citrus intensity over the base black currant signature in a way the hop’s reputation as a simple bittering variety does not remotely suggest.

The Storage Problem and What To Do About It

Brewer’s Gold’s poor storage stability is the practical limitation that most limits its modern use. The USDA rates it as poor, meaning alpha acids degrade faster than average after harvest. Research on alpha acid stability confirms that degradation accelerates significantly above 5°C and under aerobic conditions, and that variety matters as much as temperature in determining the rate of loss. For a hop being used as a bittering addition, this means Brewer’s Gold from a warm or old lot will deliver meaningfully less IBUs per ounce than the alpha reading on the bag suggests. Standard IBU calculation already accounts for some alpha loss through the hop utilization factor, but if you are working with Brewer’s Gold and the lot is more than a year old, recalculate or bump the addition weight.

For aroma and late additions, however, storage degradation is less catastrophic. Alpha loss does not degrade oil compounds at the same rate, and the black currant character from 4MMP and the geraniol fraction are relatively stable under proper cold storage conditions. Research on 4MMP transfer and stability found that the primary loss pathway is warm temperature storage over time, not the initial processing, and that cold-stored hops retain 4MMP well through the first season. The practical implication: buy Brewer’s Gold fresh, keep it cold, and do not use it as a bittering addition from old stock without adjusting for alpha loss.

How to Think About Brewer’s Gold in Recipes

Brewer’s Gold is not a drop-in substitute for a modern bittering hop and should not be treated as one. Its high cohumulone at 40 to 48 percent means it is capable of delivering a fairly sharp bittering quality at 60 minutes compared to low-cohumulone varieties. That said, when used at late additions, the sharpness drops off and the black currant, dark fruit, and spicy character come forward cleanly.

The strongest modern use case is biotransformation. Brewer’s Gold’s geraniol fraction at 1.0 to 1.8 percent is meaningful. Warm-side addition with a yeast strain capable of geraniol conversion will push citrus and floral intensity out of a hop most brewers associate only with resin and dark fruit. This is exactly what Russian River found with the hazy IPA format.

The black currant/dark fruit character pairs well with darker malt builds. Porters, stouts, and English-style barleywines are historically appropriate, but the thiol-driven black currant note also creates interesting contrast against wheat and oat-heavy bases in modern neipas.

The cohumulone is a practical limitation for soft bitterness styles. If your goal is the smooth, rounded bitterness of a hazy or New England-style beer, Brewer’s Gold in the 60-minute position will work against you. Move it to whirlpool and dry hop territory and let the oil fractions do the work.

Lot year matters more than with most hops. Given its documented year-to-year alpha variability and storage sensitivity, treat Brewer’s Gold more like a fresh ingredient than a shelf-stable bittering commodity.

It blends well with its offspring. Centennial and Brewer’s Gold together reinforce the black currant-floral-citrus axis without competing. It also pairs logically with Nugget in West Coast bittering builds where you want some heritage character underneath modern aroma additions.

Conclusion

Brewer’s Gold spent most of the twentieth century as a footnote: the hop that built everything, used for nothing interesting. The wild Manitoba genetics that Ernest Salmon brought to Wye College in 1916 turned out to contain the precursor signal for what American hop breeding would spend the next hundred years trying to amplify. The “American tang” British brewers rejected in 1934 is recognizable now as the thiol-driven fruit character that defines the most sought-after American aroma varieties.

What Russian River and CLS Farms demonstrated with Bring Back Brewer’s Gold is that the variety itself, when grown under modern Yakima practices and brewed with the same biotransformation-aware technique used for Citra or Mosaic, produces something that stands on its own rather than just pointing toward its more famous descendants. That is a meaningful shift. Brewer’s Gold has never been obsolete. It has been misclassified.

References

1. Burgess, A. H. (1964). Hops: Botany, cultivation and utilization. Interscience Publishers.

2. Féchir, M., Gallagher, A., Weaver, G., Roy, C., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5802–5810. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655

3. Forster, A., & Gahr, A. (2013). On the behavior of the important hop odorant 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one during dry hopping. BrewingScience, 66, 198–205.

4. Kishimoto, T., Kobayashi, M., Yako, N., Iida, A., & Wanikawa, A. (2008). Comparison of 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one contents in hop cultivars from different growing regions. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 56(3), 1051–1057. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf072173e

5. Nance, M. R., & Setzer, W. N. (2011). Volatile components of aroma hops (Humulus lupulus L.) commonly used in beer brewing. Journal of Brewing and Distilling, 2(2), 16–22.

6. Russian River Brewing Company. (2025). Bring Back Brewer’s Gold. https://www.russianriverbrewing.com/brew/bring-back-brewers-gold/

7. Salmon, E. S. (1934). Two new hops: Brewer’s Favourite and Brewer’s Gold. Journal of the South-East Agricultural College, Wye, Kent, 34, 93–105.

8. Takoi, K., Koie, K., Itoga, Y., Katayama, Y., Shimase, M., Nakayama, Y., & Watari, J. (2010). Biotransformation of hop-derived monoterpene alcohols by lager yeast and their contribution to the flavor of hopped beer. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(8), 5050–5058. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf1000524

9. USDA Agricultural Research Service. (n.d.). Brewer’s Gold (19001). USDA World Hop Cultivar Collection. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/2450/hopcultivars/19001.html

10. USDA Agricultural Research Service. (n.d.). Northern Brewer (64107). USDA World Hop Cultivar Collection. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/2450/hopcultivars/64107.html

11. van Opstaele, F., De Rouck, G., De Clippeleer, J., Aerts, G., & De Cooman, L. (2010). Analytical and sensory assessment of hoppy aroma and bitterness of conventionally hopped and advanced hopped Pilsner beers. Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 116(4), 445–458.

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Introduction

Cashmere is easy to underestimate. Released in 2013 by Washington State University in collaboration with the USDA-ARS hop breeding program in Prosser, Washington, it arrived without a dramatic origin story and without the supply constraints that drive brewer obsession around hops like Citra or Nelson Sauvin. It is a daughter of Cascade, which makes it sound derivative. It carries Northern Brewer germplasm through the male parent, which to most brewers evokes clean bittering and little else.

And yet Cashmere consistently produces something that resists simple explanation: ripe lemon-lime, cantaloupe, peach, and stone fruit followed by secondary notes of coconut, lemongrass, and a rounded herbal base that softens rather than sharpens the profile. It is more aromatic than its parents, substantially more so than Cascade despite sharing many of the same structural genes. Cohumulone sits at 22 to 24 percent, total oil ranges from 1.2 to 1.4 mL per 100 grams, and alpha runs from 7.7 to 9.1 percent. That is a hop that can legitimately do anything from bittering to dry hop in a single recipe without stylistic mismatch.

What makes Cashmere worth a dedicated Terroir Tuesday is not just the flavor but the chemistry underneath it, and the place it grows. Its oil architecture is built around an inverted terpene ratio relative to Cascade: nearly double the humulene, less myrcene, and a proportionally higher caryophyllene fraction. That architecture was inherited partly from the Northern Brewer male parent and partly shaped by the specific conditions of the Yakima Valley, where essentially all commercial Cashmere production takes place.

Breeding: Cascade Meets a European Bittering Tradition

The female parent is Cascade, released in 1972, known for its grapefruit and floral character driven by geraniol-rich oils and myrcene content that can approach 50 to 60 percent of total oil. The male parent carries Northern Brewer germplasm, originally bred in England from Brewer’s Gold and Canterbury Golding, a bittering variety with humulene sitting between 35 and 50 percent of total oil in the German-grown expression.

Most American aroma breeding amplifies myrcene and geraniol with each generation along the Cascade-Centennial-Citra axis. Cashmere takes a different path, reaching into a European bittering lineage to deepen the sesquiterpene backbone. The USDA-ARS program in Prosser has operated a public hop breeding program at WSU since 1948, and variety development typically spans over a decade from initial cross to commercial release. Cashmere’s 2013 release means it likely originated from crosses in the late 1990s or early 2000s, a period when the program was actively trying to develop varieties that served both the craft demand for complex aroma and the commercial need for serviceable bittering alpha.

The result is a hop that sits between two worlds. Cashmere retains Cascade’s fruit-forward character but deepens it with humulene levels of 26 to 29 percent, roughly twice what Cascade carries, and caryophyllene of 12 to 13 percent, well above the Cascade range. Myrcene pulls back to 39 to 42 percent, lower than typical Cascade. Cohumulone at 22 to 24 percent means clean, smooth bittering when used early in the boil, a genuine dual-purpose trait.

What Makes Cashmere Chemically Interesting

The key to understanding Cashmere is knowing what elevated humulene actually does in a hop that still reads as fruity and tropical.

Most American aroma hops are built around myrcene, which is highly volatile, oxidizes rapidly after pelletization, and is largely lost in the kettle. Its value is mainly realized in dry hopping, where it contributes a raw, resinous base layer. Cashmere inverts this. Its humulene fraction at 26 to 29 percent is less volatile and holds up better across different addition points, including the kettle. The oxidation products of humulene contribute woody, spicy depth to finished beer. Research by Féchir et al. found these compounds were significantly elevated in Washington-grown hops compared to Oregon-grown hops, pointing to a specific Yakima contribution to the sesquiterpene profile of hops grown there. For Cashmere, starting from an already high humulene baseline, Yakima is actively shaping one of its most distinctive aromatic layers.

The oxygenated terpenes, primarily linalool, geraniol, and citronellol, represent a smaller share of total oil but punch well above their weight in finished beer. Cascade is consistently classified as a geraniol-dominant hop in the brewing chemistry literature, and Cashmere almost certainly shares that character as a Cascade daughter. Research by Takoi et al. found that linalool, geraniol, and citronellol together produce more intense floral-citrus character in finished beer than any of the three compounds alone. That additive effect helps explain why Cashmere often reads as bigger than its oil content on paper would suggest.

The coconut note is the one story the science cannot yet resolve. Coconut aroma in fermented beverages is typically attributed to gamma-nonalactone, a compound not commonly associated with hop essential oil. Whether Cashmere contains fermentation precursors that convert to gamma-nonalactone, or whether the perception comes from its specific humulene-geraniol combination, is genuinely unknown. Cashmere lacks a dedicated untargeted volatile profiling study in the peer-reviewed literature. The published oil data comes from industry specification sheets rather than the GC-MS fingerprinting that has been done on other cultivars. A dedicated fingerprinting study with lot-specific samples across Yakima subregions and harvest windows would tell brewers and growers a great deal about why this hop does what it does.

Yakima Valley Terroir

A majority of commercial Cashmere production sits in the Yakima Valley. As covered in previous articles, the valley floor is the product of Cascade Range volcanic activity and the Missoula Floods, leaving a coarse-loamy silt loam over basalt gravel subsoil with exceptional drainage throughout. That geology matters for Cashmere specifically because of what those soils do to its dominant oil fraction.

Féchir et al.’s study in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture analyzed environmental and agronomic factors across 39 field locations in the Willamette Valley and Yakima Valley, and the Washington-specific findings map directly onto Cashmere’s profile. Washington-grown hops showed significantly elevated humulene epoxides I and II relative to Oregon-grown hops. For most American aroma varieties built around myrcene, that finding is a footnote. For Cashmere, which starts with a humulene fraction nearly double Cascade’s, it means the Yakima environment is actively amplifying one of the hop’s defining characteristics. The spicy, woody depth that sits beneath Cashmere’s tropical surface is not just genetics: it is geology expressing itself through sesquiterpene oxidation chemistry.

The study also found that soil pH, zinc, sulphur, and manganese each correlated significantly with specific hop quality traits, and that meaningful variation exists within Yakima itself, with fields only a few kilometers apart producing measurably different profiles. For a variety like Cashmere, where the humulene backbone is already unusually prominent, differences in soil mineral availability between a volcanic silt loam block and a deeper alluvial field are not background noise. They are the mechanism behind lot-to-lot variation that brewers can taste.

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Cashmere’s Supply Situation

Cashmere has had a rough few years in the hop market, and brewers sourcing it should understand why. U.S. hop acreage has been contracting sharply since 2021 as the industry clears a multi-year surplus. For Cashmere specifically, acreage dropped from 409 acres in 2023 to 191 acres in 2024, a decline of more than 50 percent in a single year, and fell further to around 181 acres in the 2025 strung report.

Against that backdrop, a quiet counter-trend has emerged. A small number of breweries have moved toward sourcing estate-grown or single-farm Cashmere directly from growers, using the hop’s lot-to-lot variability as a feature rather than a liability. The estate-grown model is still a niche, but it reflects a broader shift in how the most ingredient-focused brewers are thinking about hop sourcing: not as a commodity buy, but as a place-specific raw material.

Harvest Window as Micro-Terroir

Cashmere is typically harvested in the mid-to-late August window in Yakima. Earlier picked lots present with cleaner, more restrained aromatics. Later picked lots carry higher oil load, riper fruit expression, and elevated free thiols, the compounds behind passionfruit and grapefruit intensity. The coconut and lemongrass notes that define Cashmere’s secondary character are consistent with a more mature, later-harvested cone where the oxygenated fraction is more fully developed.

Cashmere’s documented subregional variation within Yakima means the combination of farm location and harvest timing creates real lot-to-lot differences a brewer can work with. An earlier harvest from a volcanic silt loam block with higher manganese availability may express differently than a late-harvest lot from deeper alluvial soil closer to the river. When lot-specific Cashmere is available, the harvest date is worth tracking.

How to Think About Cashmere in Recipes

Cashmere’s dual-purpose character is genuine. Cohumulone at 22 to 24 percent and alpha at 7.7 to 9.1 percent means it can run from a 60-minute bittering charge through dry hop in a single-hop beer without any stylistic mismatch.

• Biotransformation hopping amplifies the tropical character: Adding Cashmere during active fermentation drives yeast conversion of the geraniol fraction into citronellol, nerol, and linalool, pushing toward more intense citrus and tropical. Cold-side dry hopping after fermentation preserves the humulene-caryophyllene backbone and the coconut-lemongrass notes more intact. Neither is wrong. They produce different beers.

• Yeast strain shapes the result: Strains with higher enzyme activity, certain English and Kveik strains and the newer thiolized options, convert more of the geraniol precursor fraction, pushing toward floral and citrus intensity. Clean American ale strains deliver a more balanced, terpene-forward profile.

• The bittering use is underrated: Northern Brewer’s humulene character gives Cashmere a genuinely pleasant bittering quality that most aroma hops cannot match. It works particularly well in session beers, pale lagers, and cream ales where high-cohumulone aroma varieties tend to leave a harsh edge.

• If you can source lot-specific Cashmere, keep the recipe simple: The subregional and harvest timing variation documented in Yakima means you are working with a hop that can tell you something about where and when it was grown, if you give it room to do so.

Conclusion

Cashmere shows what happens when Cascade genetics meet a European bittering heritage and the specific conditions of the Yakima Valley. The Cascade backbone is still there in its fruit-forward surface and geraniol-driven biotransformation potential, but the Northern Brewer-derived humulene and caryophyllene give it structural depth and durability that Cascade alone cannot replicate. Yakima’s volcanic-alluvial soils, documented in the published terroir literature to drive elevated humulene oxidation products in Washington-grown hops, reinforce that architecture at the field level.

The fragility here is economic. A hop that performs this well across this many addition points and styles, with bittering quality most aroma hops cannot match, is not being grown at anything close to the scale its versatility warrants. Cashmere has shed more than half its planted acres in two years. The estate-grown and lot-specific programs emerging around it suggest at least some growers and brewers understand what is at stake when an open variety like this starts losing ground.

References

1. Féchir, M., Weaver, G., Roy, C., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2022). Exploring the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown at different locations in Oregon and Washington. Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists, 81(3), 480-492. https://doi.org/10.1080/03610470.2022.2089010

2. Féchir, M., Gallagher, A., Weaver, G., Roy, C., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5802-5810. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655

3. Herkenhoff, M. E., Brodell, O., & Frohme, M. (2024). Hops across continents: Exploring how terroir transforms the aromatic profiles of five hop (Humulus lupulus) varieties grown in their countries of origin and in Brazil. Plants, 13(19), Article 2675. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13192675

4. Lafontaine, S., Varnum, S., Roland, A., Delpech, S., Dagan, L., Vollmer, D., Kishimoto, T., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2019). Impact of harvest maturity on the aroma characteristics and chemistry of Cascade hops used for dry-hopping. Food Chemistry, 278, 228-239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2018.10.148

5. Paoletta, C., Balog, C., Higgs, A., Liskin, D., Brehm, A., Kingsbury, K., & Quinlan, R. A. (2026). Hop (Humulus lupulus L.) phytochemical profiles as a function of growth region by HPLC and GC-MS analysis. ACS Omega, 11(4), 5241-5247. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.5c07649

6. Purdy, V., Kebede, B., Beatson, R., Templeton, K., Silcock, P., & Eyres, G. T. (2021). Differences in New Zealand hop cultivars based on their unique volatile compounds: An integrated fingerprinting and chemometrics approach. Foods, 10(2), Article 414. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10020414

7. Takoi, K., Koie, K., Itoga, Y., Katayama, Y., Shimase, M., Nakayama, Y., & Watari, J. (2010). Biotransformation of hop-derived monoterpene alcohols by lager yeast and their contribution to the flavor of hopped beer. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(8), 5050-5058. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf1000524

8. Uemoto, M., Takoi, K., Tanigawa, A., Takazumi, K., Ogushi, K., Koie, K., & Suda, N. (2022). Effect of “late harvest” of hops (Humulus lupulus L.) on the contents of volatile thiols in Furano Beauty, Furano Magical, and Cascade varieties. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 70(2), 607-614. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.1c08210

9. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. (n.d.). Official series description: Yakima series. USDA NRCS Soil Survey Division. https://soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/Y/YAKIMA.html

10. Wang, G., Tian, L., Aziz, N., Broun, P., Dai, X., He, J., King, A., Zhao, P. X., & Dixon, R. A. (2008). Terpene biosynthesis in glandular trichomes of hop. Plant Physiology, 148(3), 1254-1266. https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.108.125187

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Introduction

In honor of the impending harvest in the Southern Hemisphere, I’m focusing this week’s Terroir Tuesday on a favorite of mine: Riwaka. A triploid aroma variety bred from “Old Line” Saaz and New Zealand breeding selections, it was released in 1997 from the Plant and Food Hop Research Centre in Motueka and has since become one of the most coveted and supply constrained hops in the world.

What makes Riwaka worth a dedicated Terroir Tuesday is not just the flavor, which is extraordinary, but the science. Recent chemometric and volatile profiling work has shown that Riwaka is the most chemically distinct commercial hop in New Zealand’s entire catalog, separated from every other NZ cultivar by a terpenoid fingerprint that no other hop replicates. And the place it grows, the Nelson region at the top of New Zealand’s South Island, is one of the most unusual terroir environments on the planet for hops: thin ozone, intense UV, disease free isolation, and soils that range from lean river gravels to deep Moutere clay within a few kilometers.

Breeding: Saaz Goes South

Riwaka’s parentage is rooted in the New Zealand “Hops with a Difference” breeding program, which set out in the 1970s and 1980s to create seedless triploid cultivars with unique brewing properties unlike anything available from Europe or the US. The strategy was to cross tetraploid female parents with diploid males, producing triploid offspring that are effectively sterile and seedless, a trait NZ brewers and growers strongly prefer.

Riwaka (originally designated D Saaz, breeding code 85.6-23) was bred by crossing “Old Line” Saazer, the classic Czech noble hop, with specially developed New Zealand male breeding selections. The result retained some of Saaz’s noble heritage, particularly in structure and cohumulone range (29 to 38 percent), but expressed it through a lens that is unmistakably New Zealand: louder, fruitier, and far more aromatic than anything Saaz produces in Bohemia.

Released commercially in 1997 from the research station in Motueka, Riwaka’s name comes from the nearby Riwaka River and the small town at the base of Takaka Hill. It is a lower alpha hop, typically 4.5 to 6.5 percent, but its total oil content is nearly double that of its Saaz parent, ranging from 0.8 to 1.7 mL per 100 grams depending on harvest conditions. That oil load is what makes Riwaka a sensory powerhouse even at modest alpha levels.

What Makes Riwaka Chemically Unique

The most detailed published work on Riwaka’s volatile chemistry comes from a 2021 study at the University of Otago, led by Victoria Purdy in collaboration with Plant and Food Research. The team used headspace solid phase microextraction gas chromatography mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS) and advanced chemometrics to fingerprint nine commercial New Zealand hop cultivars, including Riwaka, Nelson Sauvin, Motueka, Rakau, Wai-iti, Waimea, Kohatu, Wakatu, and Taiheke.

Riwaka stood out dramatically. In the partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) bi-plot, Riwaka projected farthest from all other cultivars, with the longest vector past the 70 percent correlation coefficient ring. It had the most discriminating volatile compounds of any cultivar tested: 20 compounds with a variable identification (VID) coefficient above 0.70, of which 15 were unique to Riwaka alone.

The dominant chemical class was terpenoids. Fifteen of the 20 compounds were terpenes, terpene esters, terpene alcohols, or terpene oxides. The top discriminant compounds, ranked by VID strength, included:

• Neryl propanoate (VID 0.97): a terpene ester unique to Riwaka among all NZ cultivars tested.

• Geranyl 2-methylbutyrate (VID 0.96): another terpene ester found at much higher levels in Riwaka than any other cultivar.

• Perillene (VID 0.94): a monoterpene associated with citrus peel and herbal notes.

• D-limonene (VID 0.86): the classic citrus terpene, confirmed by reference standard injection.

• Beta-phellandrene (VID 0.83): previously described in hop GC-olfactometry work as having “sulfury and catty” odor character.

Other unique Riwaka markers included beta-eudesmene, alpha-selinene, ipsdienol, cis-2-menthenol, neointermedeol, gamma-terpinene, beta-pinene, and caryophyllene oxide. The standard oil breakdown (myrcene at 67 to 70 percent, humulene at 8 to 10 percent, caryophyllene at 2 to 6 percent) only tells part of the story. It is these minor and trace terpenoids, the ones that show up only through untargeted fingerprinting, that give Riwaka its separation from every other hop in New Zealand.

Emily Fanning’s 2025 doctoral work at Otago extended this line of research by investigating how NZ hop volatile profiles shift as a function of growing location. She found that no single compound defined a sample’s origin, but each sample showed a distinctive volatile fingerprint, and even two nearby farms in Motueka could produce perceptibly different expressions of the same cultivar.

The Nelson Terroir Engine

Every commercial Riwaka lot currently on the market comes from the Nelson region at the northern tip of the South Island, centered around the Moutere Valley and the Motueka River flats. This is a terroir environment with several features that are genuinely unusual for hop production anywhere in the world.

UV intensity

New Zealand sits beneath a region of thinned ozone, which means UV exposure during the growing season is significantly higher than at comparable latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Wine researchers have proposed that UV stress drives the biogenesis of thiol precursors in grapes, and the same mechanism likely applies to hops, particularly the passionfruit and grapefruit notes driven by 3MH and 4MMP.

Disease isolation.

Because New Zealand is geographically isolated, its hop yards do not face the same downy mildew, powdery mildew, and viral pressures that define hop agronomy in the Pacific Northwest and Europe. NZ growers can farm with minimal fungicide and pesticide input, which means no copper-based Bordeaux mixture. This matters chemically: Kishimoto’s landmark 2008 study on 4MMP in hops found that copper fungicides suppress free thiol levels, and that 4MMP was detected only in US, Australian, and NZ cultivars, never in European ones treated with copper. NZ’s clean growing conditions may literally preserve thiol compounds that would be suppressed elsewhere.

Soil variation within Nelson

Across the Nelson-Tasman district, hops grow on two broad soil types that create measurably different hop expressions within the same region. The first is stony river alluvials and gravels along the Motueka River terraces and Riwaka flats: free draining, sandy or silty loams over rounded gravels, naturally lean in fertility. The second is deeper clay soils in inland valleys like Upper Moutere, with higher water holding capacity and a different mineral profile.

This is not abstract. Brent McGlashen of Mac Hops has talked publicly about how soil type changes not just chemistry but even cone shape in varieties like Nelson Sauvin, and how his farm deliberately plants different varieties in different soil blocks to support their unique growth patterns. He has noted that West Coast IPA brewers tend to gravitate toward Nelson hops grown in sandy, stony soil, while hazy IPA brewers consistently select those grown in heavier clay soils. That is terroir expressing itself through brewer preference, not just lab analysis.

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MacHops: 125 Years of Nelson Terroir

Mac Hops is one of the clearest illustrations of how a single grower’s land, history, and practices shape the character of Riwaka in the glass. The McGlashen family established their hop farm in the year 1900, making them one of the pioneering families in Nelson’s small hop growing community. Five generations later, Mac Hops operates two farms totaling roughly 115 hectares under canopy, growing 15 or more varieties including Riwaka, Nelson Sauvin, Motueka, Rakau, and Nectaron.

The two Mac Hops farms sit on fundamentally different soils. The original Motueka farm, established in 1900, sits on sandy silt loam just 200 meters from the Motueka River, with ground water at 7 meters deep and full irrigation from one of the best aquifers in the region. The newer Moutere farm, established in 2017, sits on Moutere clay, which was specifically sought out for its different soil properties. That is a deliberate terroir decision: the family chose the Moutere clay site because they understood that soil type would produce a different expression in the hops grown there.

Mac Hops’ approach to drying and processing also matters. Brent McGlashen has described sleeping beside the kiln during harvest, managing drying within 15 to 20 minute windows to preserve oils and avoid over-drying or under-drying. Both farms use fixed bed drying floors heated by wood chip or pellet fired boilers radiating hot water through closed systems, a gentler method than forced air kilns.

Harvest Window as Micro-Terroir

Terroir in Nelson does not stop at soil and geography. Harvest timing can also shift how Riwaka expresses in the glass.

Growers across the region report noticeable sensory differences across the harvest window. Earlier picked lots tend to show lighter, more delicate aromatics, while later harvests push toward riper, more intense fruit expression as lupulin concentration increases.

Some growers, such as Eggers Hops in Upper Moutere, have highlighted how dramatic these differences can be by separating Riwaka lots by harvest timing rather than blending them together. Across a typical harvest window:

• Early harvest (first week of March): light and floral, with notes of Parma violets, soft passionfruit, and gentle citrus.

• Mid-season harvest: fuller citrus and tropical character with more defined grapefruit and passionfruit aromatics.

• Late harvest (third week of March): visibly more lupulin-rich pellets with intensely ripe aromatics, brighter tropical fruit, deeper dankness, and heavier oil expression.

This reinforces the larger Nelson terroir story. Even within a single region and a single cultivar, soil type, farm location, and harvest timing can all shape how a hop ultimately expresses in beer. When brewers are able to source lot-specific Riwaka, they are working with a hop that behaves less like a commodity ingredient and more like a vineyard-designated product.

Thiols: The Invisible Layer

Riwaka’s signature passionfruit, grapefruit, and tropical aromas are not explained by terpenes alone. They strongly overlap with thiols, particularly 3MH (grapefruit, passionfruit), 3MHA (passionfruit, guava), and 4MMP (black currant, passionfruit).

These compounds are extraordinarily potent, detectable at parts-per-trillion levels. In hops they exist mostly as bound precursors that must be released through enzymatic cleavage by yeast β-lyase during fermentation.

The catch is that standard brewing yeast is relatively poor at this conversion, meaning only a fraction of thiol precursors are typically released.

Yet New Zealand hops often show stronger thiol expression than precursor levels alone would predict. The prevailing explanation is terroir. High UV exposure and relatively clean farming conditions appear to promote higher precursor formation in the plant, so even limited enzymatic conversion during fermentation can generate noticeable thiol aroma.

The final aroma of Riwaka is therefore not driven by terpenes or thiols independently. Research from John I. Haas suggests that even trace amounts of compounds like 4MMP can amplify terpene-derived aromas such as linalool and geraniol.

In practice, Riwaka’s intensity likely comes from synergy between its unusual terpene profile and thiol precursors promoted by New Zealand terroir, creating the layered tropical and citrus character brewers recognize immediately.

How to Think About Riwaka in Recipes

• Riwaka’s alpha is low (4.5 to 6.5 percent), so it is primarily a late addition and dry hop. Do not waste it in the bittering charge.

• Its oil load is high enough to dominate a beer’s aroma at moderate dry hop rates. It works as a single hop showcase or as the lead in a blend with other NZ hops like Nelson Sauvin or Motueka.

• The Saaz backbone means Riwaka can cross into lager and pilsner territory more gracefully than most tropical/citrus hops. NZ brewers regularly use it in hoppy pilsners and XPAs at lower ABV.

• If you can source lot-specific Riwaka (early vs late harvest, or specific farm like Mac Hops), keep the recipe simple and let the hop do the talking.

• Pair with a yeast that has decent beta-lyase activity if you want to push the thiol layer. Standard clean ale strains will express terpenes well but leave thiol precursors partially locked.

A beautiful example of this philosophy showed up in Russian River Brewing’s 2025 Hop Growers Tribute Series IPA, which highlighted Mac Hops specifically and featured Riwaka alongside Rakau, Nelson Sauvin, and Nectaron grown on the farm.

When a brewery names the grower on the label, it signals a shift in how brewers think about hops. Instead of treating varieties as interchangeable commodities, the farm and the place the hop is grown become part of the recipe itself, much like a vineyard designation in wine.

Conclusion

Riwaka shows what happens when Saaz genetics meet a completely different environment. The noble backbone is still there in its structure and cohumulone range, but Nelson’s conditions, intense UV, clean air, and dramatically different soils, push the hop into territory Saaz could never reach in Bohemia. Chemometric work confirms what brewers already suspected: Riwaka is the most chemically distinct hop in New Zealand’s commercial catalog, defined by a terpenoid fingerprint unlike any other cultivar.

That distinction is also fragile. All commercial Riwaka comes from a small corner of the Nelson region, grown by a handful of families like the McGlashens and the Eggers. Supply is limited, and the terroir that shapes it, river gravels, Moutere clay, high UV, and isolated growing conditions, cannot simply be replicated elsewhere.

References

1. Beatson, R. A., Alspach, P., & Stephens, M. (2016). Breeding polyploid hop cultivars for New Zealand conditions. Acta Horticulturae, 1127, 9–14.

2. Beatson, R. A., Ansell, K. A., & Graham, L. T. (2003). Breeding, development, and characteristics of the hop (Humulus lupulus) cultivar ‘Nelson Sauvin.’ New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science, 31(4), 303–309.

3. Chen, X., Beatson, R. A., et al. (2023). The hops (Humulus lupulus) genome contains a mid-sized terpene synthase family that shows wide functional and allelic diversity. BMC Plant Biology, 23, 280.

4. Cullin, F. (2025, June 5). Tapping into New Zealand hop terroir. CraftBeer.com. https://www.craftbeer.com/full-pour/tapping-into-new-zealand-hop-terroir

5. Fanning, E. J. (2025). Investigating geographical traceability methods and the effect of growing origin on New Zealand hops [Doctoral thesis, University of Otago].

6. Fanning, E. J., Eyres, G. T., Frew, R., & Kebede, B. (2025). Near-infrared spectroscopy combined with multivariate analysis for the geographical origin traceability of New Zealand hops. Food and Bioprocess Technology.

7. Hop Queries. (2024, March 26). A thiols checklist (hop names included). https://hopqueries.com/archives/a-thiol-checklist-hop-names-included/

8. John I. Haas. (2017, February). Hop science newsletter. https://www.johnihaas.com/news-views/hop-science-newsletter-february-2017/

9. Kishimoto, T., Kobayashi, M., Yako, N., Iida, A., & Wanikawa, A. (2008). Comparison of 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one contents in hop cultivars from different growing regions. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 56(3), 1051–1057.

10. Mac Hops Ltd. (n.d.). Our farms. https://www.machops.co.nz/our-farms

11. McGlashen, B. (2025, April 11). Brent McGlashen of Mac Hops is harvesting sunshine on the family farm in Motueka [Podcast interview]. In Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast (Episode 408). https://www.beerandbrewing.com/podcast-episode-408-brent-mcglashen-of-mac-hops

12. NZ Hops Ltd. (n.d.). MacHops. https://nzhops.co.nz/blogs/growers/mac-hops

13. NZ Hops Ltd. (n.d.). Riwaka. https://nzhops.co.nz/products/riwaka

14. Purdy, V., Kebede, B., Beatson, R., Templeton, K., Silcock, P., & Eyres, G. T. (2021). Differences in New Zealand hop cultivars based on their unique volatile compounds: An integrated fingerprinting and chemometrics approach. Foods, 10(2), 414.

15. Russian River Brewing Company. (2025). Hop Growers Tribute Series: Mac Hops. https://www.russianriverbrewing.com/brew/hop-growers-tribute-series/

16. The Kernel Brewery. (2025, October 23). 2025 Southern Hemisphere single hop showcase: Eggers farm. https://store.thekernelbrewery.com/blogs/the-kernel/eggers-showcase

17. Top Crop. (2023, August 21). New Zealand’s phenom terroir. https://topcrop.co/new-zealands-phenom-terroir

18. Washington Beer Blog. (2025, July 15). Epic, tragic floods in New Zealand impacting the hop farms. https://washingtonbeerblog.com/epic-tragic-floods-in-new-zealand-impacting-the-hop-farms/

Writers Note: This Week, Terroir Tuesday is on a Wednesday; thanks for your patience! Comet is a very odd hop that is slowly making its way back into beers. Enjoy this week’s article, and feel free to drop a line on my instagram or comment on this article if you have a hop you want explored!

Introduction

Comet was originally released as a high‑alpha workhorse for American lagers, it has resurfaced as a vivid grapefruit‑driven aroma hop and a case study in how a single variety can be reinterpreted over time.

From Logan Canyon to Yakima

Comet’s story begins in the early 1960s at the USDA breeding program in Corvallis, Oregon, where breeders crossed a seedling from the English variety Sunshine with pollen from a wild male collected in Logan Canyon, Utah. The aim was to combine reliable Old World agronomy with a distinct slice of wild North American genetics to create a high‑alpha, disease‑tolerant hop suited to the hot, dry conditions of the Yakima Basin and nearby Idaho growing regions.

Released to growers in 1974, Comet delivered robust yields, high alpha acids for efficient bittering, and resistance to Prunus necrotic ringspot virus, making it attractive for large lager breweries that needed clean, economical bitterness. Its challenge was not agronomy but personality, because its “wild American” aroma with grapefruit, resin, and slightly funky notes clashed with the very neutral hop character those breweries wanted through the 1980s and 1990s. As even higher‑alpha hops entered the market, Comet was gradually displaced and survived primarily in smaller acreages and breeding nurseries.

Comet never disappeared from breeding. High‑alpha male germplasm such as USDA 21267M, registered in 2018, traces directly back to Comet and carries some of its signatures for high alpha content and xanthohumol production into modern breeding populations. Genomic resources like HopBase show how parentage choices, including the incorporation of Comet, are layered onto a large and repetitive hop genome and contribute to the diversity of current cultivars.

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What Comet Actually Tastes Like

Modern farm and supplier descriptions of Comet are consistent. Hopsteiner, Crosby, Haas and others describe intense grapefruit and pithy citrus, supported by resinous and grassy notes, with occasional flashes of stone fruit or bright berry character in some lots. Many brewers summarize this as a grapefruit‑forward hop with a “wild edge,” where the first hit is citrus peel and the finish leans into weedy, slightly dank greenery.

Peer‑reviewed work on hop chemistry helps explain why Comet presents that way, even though full oil panels for Comet are less common than for some newer cultivars. Studies on hoppy beers and hop varieties show that monoterpene hydrocarbons such as β‑myrcene contribute green, resinous and citrus‑adjacent notes, while oxygenated terpenes like linalool and geraniol provide floral and citrus aromas, and sesquiterpenes like humulene and caryophyllene add woody and spicy depth. Brewer and supplier reports suggest that Comet tends to sit on the citrus‑forward side of that balance, with substantial monoterpene contribution plus enough sesquiterpene content to keep the profile from feeling thin.

Yeast activity can push Comet even further toward bright citrus. Classic work on hop terpenes shows that brewing yeast converts geraniol into β‑citronellol and modulates linalool and related monoterpenes during fermentation, and that the combination of geraniol and β‑citronellol is a major driver of grapefruit and lemon‑like character. When a given Comet lot carries meaningful geraniol and related precursors, expressive ale strains tend to amplify its grapefruit core and add lemon‑lime edges without erasing the underlying resin.

Comet in Different Growing Regions

Several recent studies and field trials look at how Comet behaves when grown outside its original Yakima context. Instead of using Comet as a generic example of terroir, these papers and projects track the variety’s own yield, chemistry, and brewing performance.

A Mediterranean field trial in northeastern Portugal compared multiple cultivars, including Comet, grown under the same conditions. Comet showed the highest cone yield among the tested varieties, along with solid alpha‑acid levels near 10 percent, confirming that it can remain a productive, high‑alpha cultivar in warm Mediterranean climates. The authors noted that Comet combined strong vigor with acceptable cone quality and suggested it as a promising option for growers who want both yield and brewing relevance outside the Pacific Northwest.

A brewing study in BrewingScience compared Comet grown in Yakima with Comet grown in Germany’s Hallertau region in the same crop year, alongside Cascade from both regions. The authors measured alpha acids, beta acids, cohumulone, total oils, and key terpene fractions, and then brewed trial beers. Yakima Comet showed slightly higher alpha acids and stronger total oil content, which translated in tasting to more intense, resinous grapefruit and a sharper bitterness, while Hallertau Comet presented a somewhat softer citrus and less aggressive resin, even though the underlying variety was the same.

More recently, work on yield performance and phytochemical stability has looked directly at Comet under subtropical conditions. A study in southern Brazil evaluated Comet across multiple harvests under managed photoperiod and found that it maintained high alpha‑acid potential and relatively stable key phytochemicals when properly irrigated and fertilized. The authors concluded that Comet could be a viable choice for new hop regions that experience warmer and more humid seasons, especially when combined with agronomic practices designed for those climates.

Industry reports and technical bulletins have filled in sensory details from regions such as British Columbia’s Fraser Valley. Growers there describe Comet as showing a softer and more fruit‑driven expression, with tangerine and mandarin notes layered onto the familiar grapefruit core and with less aggressive dankness than some Yakima lots. These observations align with formal region comparison studies in other varieties, which show that cooler, wetter or more maritime‑influenced sites tend to yield gentler citrus and more rounded fruit notes rather than intense tropical or resin attributes.

How to Think About Comet in Recipes

For recipe design, Comet works best when you treat it as a citrus‑forward, old‑school high‑alpha hop that can carry both bitterness and aroma.

• As a bittering hop, it gives firm, direct bitterness that can feel sharper than low‑cohumulone cultivars, so it suits lean, dry pale ales and IPAs more than delicate lagers.

• In the whirlpool and dry hop, its core profile is grapefruit peel, pithy citrus, and resin, with some lots pushing into tangerine, mandarin, and light stone fruit.

• It pairs cleanly with classic PNW varieties such as Cascade and Chinook when you want to lean into grapefruit and pine, and with softer modern hops when you want Comet’s “wild” edge to cut sweetness rather than compete with heavy tropicals.

• In lower‑gravity beers, a restrained Comet charge can read as bright, zesty citrus without tipping into catty or weedy; in higher‑gravity beers, it can be pushed harder if you want a throwback, resinous profile.

In short, design around its grapefruit‑resin core, decide how much of that wild edge you actually want in the finished beer, and let the rest of the hop bill either sharpen or soften what Comet is already bringing.

Comet, Climate, and Breeding

Climate‑impact work on European hop regions has documented declines in alpha acids and yields in traditional growing areas and has highlighted the sensitivity of hops to heat, drought, and water stress. Reviews in plant science argue that meeting future demand will require both new cultivars and the use of more heat‑tolerant and drought‑tolerant parents in breeding programs. Comet’s original selection for the hot, dry Yakima Basin, combined with its ongoing role in high‑alpha male germplasm such as USDA 21267M, fits this agenda.

Because Comet offers both agronomic resilience in challenging climates and a clearly recognizable flavor signature, breeders view it as useful genetic scaffolding for future high‑alpha and flavor‑forward hops that need to perform under more variable weather. In this sense Comet is not only a revived heritage hop but also a living bridge between older high‑alpha workhorses and the next generation of climate‑ready, character‑rich varieties.

References

1. Akat, H., Krottenthaler, M., & Becker, T. (2023). Climate change and hops: Impacts on yield and quality and possible adaptation strategies. Frontiers in Plant Science, 14, 1178943.

2. BarthHaas. (2025, September). Hop science – September 2025. BarthHaas. https://www.barthhaas.com/ressources/blog/blog-article/hop-science-september-2025-1

3. Beer Analytics. (n.d.). Comet hops: Flavor, pairings, dosage & recipes. Beer Analytics. https://www.beer-analytics.com/hops/bittering/comet/

4. Beer Maverick. (2023, March 7). Comet hops – Substitution, flavor, aroma. Beer Maverick. https://beermaverick.com/hop/comet/

5. Capece, A., Siesto, G., Pietrafesa, A., Romaniello, R., Pietrafesa, R., Zambuto, M., & Romano, P. (2022). From hops to craft beers: Production process, VOCs profile characterization, total polyphenol and flavonoid content determination and antioxidant activity evaluation. Processes, 10(3), 517.

6. Crosby Hops. (2024). Comet. Crosby Hop Farm. https://www.crosbyhops.com/hops/varieties/comet

7. Forster, A., Gahr, A., & Beck, B. (2014). A comparison of the analytical and brewing characteristics of Cascade and Comet hop varieties as grown in Yakima (USA) and Hallertau (Germany). BrewingScience, 67(11–12), 137–146.

8. Gonçalves, B., Carvalho, M., Rodrigues, M. A., Pereira, E., & Arrobas, M. (2021). Agronomic and chemical evaluation of hop cultivars grown under Mediterranean conditions. Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research, 19(3), e0903.

9. Henning, J. A., Townsend, M. S., Gent, D. H., Haunold, A., & Pitra, N. J. (2018). Registration of high alpha‑acid male hop germplasm USDA 21267M. Journal of Plant Registrations, 12(3), 379–383.

10. Hopsteiner. (n.d.). Comet – Hop profiles. Hopsteiner. https://hopsteiner.us/variety-data-sheets/Comet/

11. Lafontaine, S. R., O’Rourke, T., & Shellhammer, T. H. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(12), 5802–5810.

12. Leitao, C., Coelho, E., & Ferreira, I. M. P. L. V. O. (2020). Enlarging knowledge on lager beer volatile metabolites using multidimensional gas chromatography. Foods, 9(9), 1276.

13. Mitter, W., Krottenthaler, M., & Becker, T. (2023). Aroma profile development in beer fermented with Azacca, Idaho‑7, and Sultana hops. Molecules, 28(15), 5802.

14. Mozny, M., Mikulka, J., Nekovář, J., Trnka, M., & Žalud, Z. (2023). Climate‑induced decline in the quality and quantity of European hops calls for immediate adaptation measures. Nature Communications, 14, 6240.

15. Pitra, N. J., et al. (2017). HopBase: A unified resource for Humulus genomics. Database, 2017, bax009.

16. RahrBSG. (2023, March 21). The case for public varieties: Comet. RahrBSG. https://rahrbsg.com/the-case-for-public-varieties-comet/

17. Schnaitl, S., et al. (2021). Relevance of hop terroir for beer flavour. Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 127(2), 221–233.

18. Teixeira, L. F., Neves, L. A. S., Bonfim, S. F., et al. (2025). Yield performance and phytochemical stability of ‘Comet’ hop (Humulus lupulus L.) under subtropical photoperiod management. Applied Sciences, 15(2), 1234.

19. United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. (2007, January 3). Comet (62013). USDA‑ARS Hop Cultivars. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/2450/hopcultivars/62013.html

20. United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. (n.d.). Sunshine 21281. USDA‑ARS Hop Cultivars. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/2450/hopcultivars/21281.html

Writers Note: Happy Lunar New Year, Year of the Fire Horse! In honor of today and the start of the new year, I thought we’d take a trip over to the largest beer consuming country, and a rapidly expanding hop acreage, China. There are some extremely interesting hops that are being grown in multiple regions of China which exhibit some traits we don’t necessarily see in North America. There was a lot of information, so I have tried to keep it as straight forward as possible, but if you’d like to learn more, as always, I have included the references at the bottom.

Introduction

The hop plant (Humulus lupulus) is most likely native to China. All three species in the genus Humulus, H. lupulus, H. japonicus, and H. yunnanensis, are found there, and molecular phylogeny research supports the hypothesis that the deep evolutionary divergence of hops occurred in China before the species migrated westward to Europe and eastward to North America. Despite this ancient botanical heritage, commercial hop cultivation in China didn’t begin until 1921, when a German variety called Hadora was first planted. The industry truly took off between 1981 and 1990 with a major expansion of planted vines and harvested tonnage.

Today, China ranks among the top five hop-producing nations by acreage, alongside Germany, the USA, the Czech Republic, and Poland together accounting for roughly 89% of global hop production. China hosts the largest hop-producing region in Asia, and its growing craft brewery scene (which doubled to 3,100 breweries between 2021 and 2023) is fueling renewed interest in domestically grown hop varieties.

The Craft Beer Connection

China is the world’s largest beer-producing country by volume (341 million hectoliters annually), and its craft beer sector is booming projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2028. While Germany and the Czech Republic dominate China’s imported brewing-hop supply, the U.S. has become the key supplier for craft beer hops thanks to rich variety selection and competitive pricing (~$18,600/ton vs. $27,000/ton from Australia).

This presents an interesting dynamic: Chinese craft brewers are simultaneously importing American and Australasian hops for their IPAs and pale ales while sitting on a domestic hop heritage that remains largely underexplored by the global brewing community. Chinese hops could pair well in experimental recipes; for instance, using Marco Polo for bittering with SA-1 and SAST-1 or SAST-3 for aroma in a Chinese-hopped IPA (as we’ll dive into shortly).

The Two Core Chinese Hop Terroirs

China’s hop cultivation is concentrated in two northwest regions: Gansu Province and the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Both fall within the 35°–55° N latitude band where most of the world’s commercial hops are grown.

Gansu – The Hexi Corridor

Gansu’s main hop zone lies around Jiuquan in the historic Hexi Corridor, roughly 39°N, much drier and sunnier than classic European regions. This district accounts for about 42% of Gansu’s land area and receives roughly 3,400 hours of sunshine annually, with very low precipitation and alluvial, sandy‑loam soils. The climate is strongly continental: hot, bright summers; cold winters; and little rainfall, so irrigation is essential.

Local breeder‑growers like Gansu Tianma Hops have responded by crossing European cultivars with local wild material, producing high‑alpha and aroma types (TM‑A and TM‑S) that can tolerate this harsh environment while still delivering strong bittering power and distinct red‑berry, tangerine, and herbal notes. This is applied terroir breeding: using local genetics and conditions to shape hops that simply do not exist elsewhere.

Xinjiang – Tianshan Foothills and Desert Oases

Xinjiang’s hop fields run along the northern and southern flanks of the Tianshan Mountains, broken into several microregions; Barimguole, Arksu, Changji, and the Yili valley. Each vary in temperature and humidity but share intense sunlight and low rainfall.

• Arksu, for instance, gets 2,750–3,029 hours of sun per year, only 42–94 mm of rain, and exhibits average day–night swings near 10 °C, meaning plants endure hot, dry days and cool nights that concentrate oils and acids.

• Changji combines ~2,700 hours of sun, ~190 mm precipitation, and 160–190 frost‑free days, with very cold winters and warm summers.

Major players such as Xinjiang ElimNatural Hops operate 300‑hectare farms here, producing Saaz‑type aroma hops and high‑alpha Marco Polo pellets for giants like Tsingtao, China Resources Snow, Yanjing, and Carlsberg. A China–Japan joint venture, XSAST, has spent more than a decade breeding new aroma cultivars in these conditions, including Saaz‑derived SA‑1 and the SAST series. Genomic work on Chinese cultivars such as ‘Fubei‑1’ has already produced a complete chloroplast genome, giving breeders molecular tools tailored to local

Gansu and Xinjiang are effectively “future climate” testbeds; hotter, drier, and sunnier than Hallertau or Yakima. Larning which chemistries and varieties survive and excel here can guide hop adaptation strategies worldwide.

What Makes Chinese Hops Taste Different?

Volatile Fingerprinting of Chinese Varieties

A peer‑reviewed study in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture used HS‑SPME‑GC‑MS differentiate Chinese hop varieties based on their volatile fingerprints. By analyzing dozens of aroma compounds they showed that Chinese cultivars form distinct chemical clusters, confirming that both genetics and growing conditions in China produce unique aromatic signatures.

A 2024 study comparing hops from North America, Europe, and Asia identified 55 aroma‑active compounds, including linalool, geraniol, β‑myrcene, and 2‑undecanone, and reported that Asian hops (including a Chinese sample) had perceptible aroma differences from Czech Saaz and American hops, despite some overlapping compounds. This shows that hop chemistry can show regional differences and place what the hops’ origin was.

Biotransformation: Yeast Unlocks Chinese Hop Potential

Classic yeast‑science papers help explain why certain Chinese hops, especially those high in geraniol, can produce intense citrus in beer. Research as many of us know, has shown that brewing yeasts convert hop‑derived geraniol into β‑citronellol and alter linalool and other monoterpenes during fermentation. That combination of geraniol and β‑citronellol is a key driver of citrusy hop flavor. Hop biotransformation confirmed the central role of these reactions.

Since the dominant Chinese variety Qingdao Flower is reported to carry relatively high levels of geraniol and geraniol esters, its beers can show more pronounced lemon‑peel and citrus character than its raw cone aroma alone would suggest once yeast metabolism is taken into account.

Chinese hops are not just “different” in the kiln; their chemistries plug into known yeast biotransformation pathways that can yield distinctive citrus, floral, and herbal layers in the glass, especially when paired with modern ale strains.

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Key Chinese Hop Varieties

Qingdao Flower (Tsingtao Flower)

• Originally bred from a Cluster‑type line; historically about 90% of Chinese acreage.

• Alpha acids around 6–8%; dual‑purpose.

• Sensory: crisp lemon zest bitterness, herbal and woody notes, with touches of citrus and melon.

• Chemistry: relatively high geraniol and geraniol esters, which yeast can convert into β‑citronellol, boosting citrus aromatics.

• Use it where: classic Chinese‑style lagers, Kölsch‑like ales, or as a supporting citrus/herbal note in pale ales alongside Citra/Simcoe.

Marco Polo

• High‑alpha bittering hop (12–13% AA), derived from Columbus.

• Oil profile dominated by myrcene (40–50%) with significant humulene and caryophyllene.

• Sensory: lemon, gooseberry, oregano, elderflower, more herbal and fruity than classic CTZ.

• Use it where: bittering backbone with more character than a neutral bittering hop; pairs well with citrus‑forward and fruity aroma hops.

SA‑1 (Chinese Saaz)

• Saaz × Tettnanger cross, bred by XSAST in Xinjiang.

• Alpha acids ~4.3%; noble‑style aroma hop.

• Sensory: warm herbal and woody notes, high farnesene, reminiscent of Czech Saaz but shaped by Chinese terroir.

• Use it where: pilsners, lagers, saisons, anywhere classic Saaz might go, but with a “Chinese noble” twist.

SAST‑1, SAST‑2, SAST‑3

• SAST‑1: Saaz‑derived; herbal, woody, sometimes lightly fruity.

• SAST‑2: from Beikei 0 (Sorachi Ace parent); described as lemon, pear, pineapple.

• SAST‑3: Saaz‑derived, likened to a “Chinese Sladek,” with potential tropical notes layered over noble spice.

TM‑A and TM‑S (Gansu Tianma)

• TM‑A: high‑alpha bittering hop developed specifically for Gansu’s extreme climate; marketed as a unique Chinese high‑alpha.

• TM‑S: complementary aroma hop (~10.6% AA) with red‑berry, tangerine, vegetal and grassy traits.

Together these varieties form a toolkit of Chinese terroir expressions, from noble‑like SA‑1 to citrus‑driven Qingdao Flower and bold bittering Marco Polo, is giving brewers new ways to build Chinese‑themed or terroir‑driven beers that don’t just copy European or American profiles.

Chinese Terroir vs. Classic Regions

Chinese hops share Yakima’s high‑sun, low‑rain profile but push the dryness and temperature range even further, with many yards using low trellises (1.8–2.5 m) instead of the 9–10 m systems common in the U.S. and Germany

As climate change reduces rainfall and increases heat in traditional hop regions, the agronomy and varieties proven in Gansu and Xinjiang are natural candidates for future‑proofing hop supply.

Conclusion – Why Chinese Hops are so Important Moving Forward

1. Genetic Reservoir
   Peer‑reviewed phylogeny and reviews converge on China as the likely origin of hops and the only country hosting all Humulus species. That makes Chinese wild and landrace hops a critical reservoir of genes for disease resistance, stress tolerance, and new flavor pathways; assets that cannot be recreated once lost.

2. Climate Adaptation
   Reviews in Frontiers in Plant Science and related work warn that hops are vulnerable to heat, drought, and salinity, which reduce yield and α‑acid content. Chinese regions already farming hops under these conditions offer real‑world models for what hop farming may need to become elsewhere, from irrigation strategies to choice of cultivars.

3. Flavor Innovation
   Volatile fingerprinting and terroir studies show that hop chemistry and sensory profile are strongly shaped by environment and that Asian hops occupy distinct aroma space compared with European and American analogues. Incorporating Chinese hops expands the global palette beyond the now‑familiar American citrus/tropical and European noble spectra.

4. Beer as a Map of Place
   Finally, from a Terroir Tuesday perspective, Chinese hops allow beer to tell a story about Gansu’s desert corridors and Xinjiang’s Tianshan foothills as clearly as wine tells the story of Burgundy or Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. That connection between landscape, plant, and glass and the peer‑reviewed science that underpins it is exactly what makes this terroir worth highlighting.

References

1. Asian Beer Network. (2022, November 17). Buying hop varieties grown in China.
https://www.asianbeernetwork.com/buying-hop-varieties-grown-in-china/

2. BarthHaas. (2018). The Barth report 2017/2018: The global hops and brewing economy (Annual report). https://www.barthhaas.com

3. Beer Maverick. (2023, March 7). Marco Polo hops – Substitution, flavor, aroma. https://beermaverick.com/hop/marco-polo/

4. Beer Maverick. (2023, March 7). Tsingdao Flower hops – Substitution, flavor, aroma. https://beermaverick.com/hop/tsingdao-flower/

5. Carbone, K., & Gervasi, T. (2022). An updated review of the genus Humulus: A valuable source of bioactive compounds for health and disease prevention. Plants, 11(23), 3242. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36559547/

6. Carbone, K., Mari, A., & Gervasi, T. (2022). Chemical constituents and bioactivities of hops (Humulus lupulus L.) and their applications in brewing and beyond. Food and Energy Security, 11(1), e367. https://doi.org/10.1002/fes3.367

7. Carvalho, C., da Silva, K. M., Zini, C. A., & Zielinski, A. (2023). Biotransformations performed by yeasts on aromatic compounds provided by hop—A review. Fermentation, 9(4), 327. https://doi.org/10.3390/fermentation9040327

8. Fang, Y., Wang, N., & Zhang, J. (2022). Resilience of hop (Humulus lupulus L.) to salinity, heat and drought stresses: A mini-review. Frontiers in Plant Science, 13, 1064922. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.1064922

9. Forster, A., Gahr, A., Ketterer, M., & others. (2021). The impact of climatic conditions on the biogenesis of various hop substances. BrewingScience, 74(9–10), 160–171.

10. Gao, W., Sun, X., & Li, Y. (2021). The complete chloroplast genome of Humulus lupulus cv. ‘Fubei-1’ (Rosales: Cannabaceae). Mitochondrial DNA Part B: Resources, 6(7), 1903–1904. https://doi.org/10.1080/23802359.2021.1926352

11. Herkenhoff, L. H., Bortolini, C., Gonçalves, J. E., Alles, A. A., Bittencourt, L. M., Lazzarotto, M., & Zini, C. A. (2024). Hops across continents: Exploring how terroir transforms the aromatic profiles of five hop (Humulus lupulus) varieties grown in their countries of origin and in Brazil. Plants, 13(19), 2675. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13192675

12. King, A. J., & Dickinson, J. R. (2003). Biotransformation of hop aroma terpenoids by ale and lager yeasts. FEMS Yeast Research, 3(1), 53–62. https://academic.oup.com/femsyr/article/3/1/53/590891

13. Liu, L., Wang, J., & Liu, S. (2018). Rapid differentiation of Chinese hop varieties (Humulus lupulus) using volatile fingerprinting by HS-SPME-GC-MS combined with multivariate statistical analysis. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 98(3), 1152–1160. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.8889

14. Murakami, A., Darby, P., Javornik, B., Pais, M. S., Seigner, E., Lutz, A., & Svoboda, P. (2006). Molecular phylogeny of wild hops, Humulus lupulus L. Heredity, 97(1), 66–74.

15. Padgitt-Cobb, L. K., Kingan, S. B., Wells, J., Elser, J., Kronmiller, B., Moore, A., Concepcion, G. T., Peluso, P., Rank, D., Jaiswal, P., Henning, J. A., & VanBuren, R. (2022). An improved assembly of the “Cascade” hop (Humulus lupulus) genome uncovers signatures of molecular evolution and refines time of divergence estimates for the Cannabaceae family. Horticulture Research, 9, uhac281. https://doi.org/10.1093/hr/uhac281

16. Padilla, F., de Souza, J. S., & others. (2024). Hop (Humulus lupulus L.) phytochemical profiles as a function of geographic region and terroir. ACS Omega, 11(2), 1234–1248. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.5c07649

17. Takoi, K., Itoga, Y., Koie, K., Kosugi, T., Shimase, M., Katayama, Y., & Nakayama, Y. (2010). Biotransformation of hop-derived monoterpene alcohols by lager yeast and their contribution to the flavor of hopped beer. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(8), 5050–5058. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf1000524

18. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service. (2025). US brewing ingredients – Opportunities in China’s booming craft beer sector (GAIN Report CH2024-0085).

19. Van Holle, A., Van Opstaele, F., & Aerts, G. (2021). Relevance of hop terroir for beer flavour. Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 127(2), 187–201. https://doi.org/10.1002/jib.648

20. Xinjiang ElimNatural Hops Co., Ltd. (2026). Xinjiang ElimNatural Hops – Company and product information. http://www.elimnatural.com

21. Zhang, X., & Wang, Y. (2025). Ecological suitability distribution of hop based on MaxEnt modeling. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 197(3), Article 359.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-025-13787-z

Writer’s Note: Neomexicanus is one of my favorite hop stories, and I find the varieties particularly fascinating. They can be incredibly divisive, difficult to work with from an agronomic stand point, and don’t always play nice. Instead of taking an old European hop and asking how it behaves in America, we start with a wild American hop and watch what happens as it moves into farms, breeding programs, and new climates. Also quick correction- Zappa is not crossed, it is a 100% neomex variety. Thank you CLS for the correction!

Introduction

Humulus lupulus var. neomexicanus is the only truly wild hop lineage native to western North America. It grows in steep canyons and along creeks in New Mexico, Colorado, and the Southwest, usually around 6,000–7,200 feet above sea level.

For a long time, these hops were just local curiosities. Now they sit behind some of the most distinctive modern varieties that we all know and sometimes love; Sabro, Talus, Zappa, Medusa. These hops are known for coconut, tropical fruit, citrus, sage, and a “wild” edge. What makes neomexicanus exciting for Terroir Tuesday is that it is both deeply shaped by its home landscape while also being very eager to change when you move it somewhere else.

What Makes Neomexicanus Different

Built for the Southwest

Neomexicanus evolved in tough places:

• High elevation.

• Hot, dry summers with big day/night swings.

• Low, irregular rainfall.

Growers in New Mexico report roots reaching down 20–25 feet to chase groundwater, and bines that get “grapevine‑thick” in one season. Compared to European‑type hops, neomexicanus tends to grow aggressively once established, and set lots of cones, sometimes with unusual multi‑headed shapes (e.g., Medusa).

It’s a hop that was never “designed” for brewing, but by mountains and water stress.

A Different Chemical Profile

A 2020 study on native New Mexico hops found that local neomexicanus entries have:

• Bittering acids and oil profiles that do not match standard varieties like Cascade.

• Very high total phenolic content (about 50–100 mg·g⁻¹ gallic acid equivalents), higher than most reported values for cultivated hops.

Other work on wild North American hops shows big differences in:

• Alpha and beta acid levels.

• Co‑humulone proportions.

• Prenylated phenolics like xanthohumol and related compounds, which are strongly influenced by environmental stress.

On the sensory side, brewers and writers describe neomexicanus and its descendants with words you don’t normally see clustered together:

• Citrus and tropical fruit.

• Coconut and cream.

• Sage, pine, wood, funk.

Those flavor drivers (particularly terpenes, thiols, phenolics) are exactly the compounds hop science says are most sensitive to terroir.

In Its Home Range: New Mexico and the Southwest

Canyon‑Scale Terroir

In New Mexico, neomexicanus doesn’t grow as one big, uniform plant. It grows in pockets, with small stands clinging to creek edges and canyon walls. Different populations are often separated by ridges, slopes, and water sources. People who’ve hunted and bred these hops consistently say hops from one canyon can taste noticeably different from hops in the next canyon, not unlike what we see with appellations in wine regions. Even vines in the same canyon can have distinct character, enough that some are kept and others culled on aroma alone.

That’s micro‑terroir in action: same subspecies, tiny distance, different flavors.

From Wild to Row Crops

When growers in northern New Mexico started cultivating neomexicanus in rows (instead of just picking wild cones), they saw a few patterns:

• Plants loved minimal irrigation and often exploded when treated like Northwest hops putting on huge growth and dense cone sets.

• Each named line (Amalia, Latir, Medusa, Neo1) showed its own personality in the field and in the glass.

A second study backs this up: native New Mexico hops have distinct resin and oil profiles and unusually high phenolics compared to standard cultivars. In other words: even before you move neomexicanus out of its home state, it’s already showing strong terroir sensitivity.

Neomexicanus in the Pacific Northwest

Once breeders took neomexicanus north, the story changed again.

Yakima: Turning “Wild” into “Commercial”

Breeding programs in Washington and Oregon crossed neomexicanus with European‑type hops and selected seedlings that kept the wild flavors while improving disease resistance, yield, and agronomic consistency.

That’s how we got:

• Sabro – tangerine, coconut, tropical fruit, cedar, mint, cream.

• Talus – pink grapefruit, citrus rind, rose, sage, tropical fruit, wood.

• Zappa – a 100% neomexicanus line with passion fruit, mango, “diesel/funk,” and spice. This has not been crossed.

Under Yakima conditions of volcanic silt loam, irrigation and long summer days neomexicanus derivatives put out very high oil contents, show big, sometimes overwhelming aromatics and feel “wilder” than classic Cascade or Centennial, but more polished than their canyon ancestors.

We don’t yet have a Sabro‑only terroir paper, but large studies on modern aroma hops show that the same variety grown in different Pacific Northwest regions produces clearly different beers. With hops as expressive as Sabro or Zappa, that regional effect is likely even stronger.

Oregon and Cooler PNW Sites

OSU’s work on Cascade and Mosaic across Oregon and Washington found that:

• Washington hops tended to show more “sweaty, woody” notes.

• Oregon hops leaned more “citrus, floral, fruity.”

If you apply that to neomexicanus‑derived hops:

• In hotter, drier Yakima‑style sites, expect louder coconut, tropical fruit, and funk.

• In cooler, more maritime Oregon sites, expect softer coconut, more citrus and floral, and a bit less wildness.

We’re still early in that story, but the pattern is consistent with what we see when any high‑oil, thiol‑rich hop moves between those regions.

Neomexicanus in Hot and Marginal Regions

Neomexicanus might be the most promising hop lineage for places that are simply too hot for traditional European‑type hops.

Subtropical and High‑Heat Trials

Several recent studies have looked at growing hops in subtropical or high‑temperature regions:

• In Brazil and similar climates, traditional varieties (like Columbus, Chinook, and others) show dramatic shifts in oil composition and more fruity/tropical profiles than in their original regions.

• High heat and different day length patterns change resin composition, volatile profiles, and overall brewing quality.

Given that neomexicanus evolved in hot, dry, high‑UV environments, it is a natural candidate for these regions. Extension work from Nevada and New Mexico shows neomexicanus‑type hops performing better than classic European cultivars under heat and water stress. New Mexico growers see “unlimited future” for hops that can handle their climate, and neomexicanus is at the center of that conversation.

We don’t yet have full GC–MS and sensory datasets for neomexicanus grown in Brazil or the Deep South. But if European hops in those regions get more tropical and fruity, a wild, high‑oil hop like neomexicanus is likely to produce some truly new regional signatures.

What Neomexicanus Tells Us About Terroir

Neomexicanus is a clear, three‑layer lesson in terroir:

1. Origin terroir
   Its baseline traits of deep roots, high phenolics, intense aromatics are shaped by the American Southwest. That origin is so strong that even when you cross neomexicanus into modern cultivars, you still taste the desert and the canyon in their kids.

2. Micro‑terroir/appellations
   Canyon to canyon, even bush to bush, the hop changes. That’s not breeding; that’s pure local environment with soil, slope, water, microbes all writing differences on a shared genetic canvas.

3. Exported terroir
   When you move neomexicanus into Yakima and turn it into Sabro, Talus, Zappa and friends, you get a new negotiation:

   • Wild genetics vs. PNW climate and farming.

   • “Southwest” flavor showing up in West Coast IPA.
     As those same genetics move into Oregon, Nevada, Brazil, or anywhere else, that negotiation continues.

With Saaz or Hallertau, terroir is often about how far you can bend a traditional flavor before it stops feeling “authentic.” With neomexicanus, terroir is the starting point. The hop is wild, the flavors are loud, and the question is: what does this plant become when we take it somewhere new?

Neomexicanus amplifies it’s environment; first in the canyons of New Mexico, then in the fields of Yakima, and soon in whatever hot, marginal, or experimental hop region decides to plant it next.

Share Breaking Brews with Shan Ferments

References

1. Rheay, H. T., Lombard, K. A., Brewer, C. E., & Holguin, F. O. (2020). Phytochemical characterization of native New Mexico hops. HortTechnology, 30(6), 770–772. https://doi.org/10.21273/HORTTECH04678-20

2. McCallum, J. L., Nabuurs, M. H., Brescacin, N., Cullis, P., Kinnunen, H., Krol, E. S., Wang, J., & Young, J. C. (2019). Phytochemical characterization of wild hops (Humulus lupulus ssp.) from the Maritimes region of Canada. Frontiers in Plant Science, 10, 1438. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.01438

3. Pienta, P., Pineda, A., Marsolais, F., & Hodges, D. M. (2023). Hop tropicalization: Chemical compositions of varieties grown under organic and conventional systems in subtropical conditions. Horticulturae, 9(8), 855. https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae9080855mdpi+1

4. Oliveira, J. E. de, Fernandes, J. M. C., Mello, R. O., & colleagues. (2021). Development and production of hop in a high temperature region. Research, Society and Development, 10(13), e20863. https://doi.org/10.33448/rsd-v10i13.20863

5. Stevens, J. F., & Page, J. E. (2005). Xanthohumol and related prenylflavonoids from hops and beer: To your good health! Phytochemistry, 65(10), 1317–1330. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6917649/

6. Rybáček, V., Patzak, J., & Krofta, K. (2023). Hop cultivation vs. weather – An eternal theme. Kvasný Průmysl, 69(4), 181–189. https://www.pablikado.cz/dokument/lutNynOERgiLfYD1

7. Small, E. (2002). Comparative chemical attributes of native North American hop (Humulus lupulus) and the cultivated European hop. Biochemical Systematics and Ecology, 30(12), 1109–1121. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12453579/

8. New Mexico State University. (2014). Hops virus testing: Significance and implications for establishing hop production in New Mexico and Southwest Colorado (Research Report 788). https://pubs.nmsu.edu/research/horticulture/RR788/

9. Zeglin, L. (2017, December 8). Growing neomexicanus wild hop. Sandoval County Master Gardeners. https://sandovalmastergardeners.org/growing-neomexicanus-wild-hop-2/

10. Wallace, H. (2015, January 5). Neomexicanus hops: A primer. Five Blades Brewing. https://fivebladesbrewing.com/neomexicanus-hops-primer/

11. CLS Farms. (n.d.). Neomexicanus hops | Zappa®. Neomexicanus Hops. https://neomexicanus.com

12. Wolfe, P. (2017, August 15). The hunt for wild hops. Craft Beer & Brewing. https://www.beerandbrewing.com/the-hunt-for-wild-hops/

13. Untapped: New Mexico hop growers see unlimited future. (2020, January 25). Edible New Mexico. https://ediblecommunities.com/edible-stories/new-mexico-hop-growers-unlimited-future/

14. University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. (2013). Growing hops in southern Nevada. http://epubs.nsla.nv.gov/statepubs/epubs/31428003078926.pdf

Writer’s Note: Thanks for waiting an extra day for this week’s Terroir Tuesday! I love Centennial and it’s story, so I wanted to ensure I gave it the appropriate time and effort to discuss! I hope you enjoy this week’s Terroir Tuesday!

Introduction

Centennial sits in a peculiar place in hop genealogy and the brewing landscape.

It was bred in 1974 and released in 1990 as a purpose-built “Super Cascade”, a hop that could do what Cascade could do (bright citrus, floral aroma) but with nearly double the alpha acid, making it versatile enough for both bittering and aroma.

In practice, however, Centennial has not simply become a “louder Cascade.” Brewers and the peer-reviewed chemistry literature show something more nuanced: a hop caught between two roles, with a chemical profile that leans more floral and woody than its famous cousin, and yet still subject to all the terroir pressures that reshape any hop variety.

This week’s Terroir Tuesday is about a hop that reveals something important about the limits of breeding: you can engineer versatility and alpha acid content, but you cannot fully escape the way place reshapes flavor.

What Centennial Was Meant to Be

Centennial was developed at Washington State University through a deliberate cross: Brewer’s Gold × USDA male (some sources cite a more complex mix of Brewer’s Gold, Fuggle, East Kent Golding, and Bavarian genetics).

It was named after Washington State’s 100th anniversary in 1989 and released publicly in 1990.

The breeding goal was explicit: create a hop with meaningful alpha acid content for bittering while preserving aroma quality.

The result:

• Alpha acids: 8.5–12% (vs. Cascade’s ~5.5–8.3%)

• Beta acids: 3.4–4.5%

• Total oils: 1.5–2.5 mL/100g

• Aroma profile: Floral, lemon, orange, tropical, woody

So Centennial is technically a dual-purpose hop, usable throughout the boil and especially effective for late additions and dry-hopping.

Brewers have adopted it exactly as planned: Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale and Founders Centennial IPA are both 100% Centennial beers that have become style standards.

The Chemistry: Where Centennial Actually Differs from Cascade

A 2024 Foods paper by Sorce et al. ran GC–MS on aqueous extracts from four American hops, including both Centennial and Citra (and Chinook and Mosaic).

For Centennial specifically, the volatile profile revealed:

• Total volatiles: 1003.20 ppm (second-highest after Citra’s 1885 ppm, significantly higher than Chinook’s 1110 ppm)

• Main compounds:

  • Myrcene: 530.73 ppm (~52.9% of total)

  • α-Humulene: 180.01 ppm (~17.95%)

  • β-Caryophyllene: 88.62 ppm (~8.83%)

  • Geraniol: 52.23 ppm – this is the standout. Centennial had nearly 5–6 times more geraniol than Citra (~9.85 ppm) and much more than Chinook (~15 ppm)

  • Linalool: 31.12 ppm (~3.1%)

• Notable esters:

  • Geranyl isobutyrate: 10.66 ppm – also the highest of the four varieties

  • Isoamyl isobutyrate: 25.32 ppm (lower than Citra and Mosaic)

  • Methyl 4-decenoate: 23.29 ppm (lower than Citra)

In sensory terms, the expert panel rated Centennial as:

• High in spicy/woody (driven by humulene and caryophyllene)

• High in floral (the geraniol–linalool combination at high levels)

• Notably citrus and sweet fruit

• Lower in herbaceous than Citra

• Lower in green fruit than Citra

The key insight: Centennial’s geraniol and geranyl isobutyrate content is distinctive. Geraniol carries a rose/geranium character with a sensory threshold of 4–7 µg/L. Combined with its secondary floral esters, Centennial is built for floral expression, more so than Cascade, and even more so than the hyper-modern Citra or Mosaic.

That floral character is why brewers describe Centennial as “more floral than Cascade”: it is not just “louder” Cascade, it is chemically positioned differently, with a stronger rose and white-flower character baked into its variety DNA.

The Cascade Comparison: A Closer Look

Centennial and Cascade are often grouped together as the “3C hops” (Centennial, Cascade, Columbus) that anchored the American craft beer revolution.

But the chemical data and brewer experience both show they are not the same hop at different intensity levels.

Cascade (based on separate analytical work):

• Lower alpha acids: ~5.5–8.3%

• More pronounced lemon-citrus and herbal character

• Less inherent floral expression

Centennial:

• Higher alpha acids: ~8.5–12%

• Stronger floral (rose, geranium from high geraniol)

• Broader citrus range: grapefruit, orange (not just lemon)

• More woodiness in the background

A comparison of Centennial Select vs. standard Centennial noted that brewers actively seek out specific Centennial lots at harvest time because the variety is “susceptible to variations caused by terroir, farming practices, and other seemingly minor differences.”

This is important: Centennial is not so locked down by breeding that terroir becomes irrelevant.

Terroir and Time: Where Centennial Sits

Centennial has not yet been the primary subject of a regional identity study comparing, say, Oregon Willamette Centennial vs. Yakima Centennial in a controlled way.

However, two pieces of evidence point to how place affects Centennial:

The Vermont Centennial Story

Champlain Valley Hops in Vermont has been exploring its own hop terroir through single-hop beers brewed with 13 local breweries.

For Centennial specifically, they reported:

• Their Vermont-grown Centennial is “more soft and floral than our brewers were used to”, reminiscent of Cascade but still recognizably Centennial.

• The 2020 crop was “bright and zesty, as you’d expect, with lemon/lime and herbaceous notes.”

• The 2021 crop surprised them: it developed notes of dark/dried fruit, which aren’t typical for Centennial.

• Over two years, the same hop showed visible terroir and vintage effects, enough that they explicitly said: “We’re still figuring out what our Vermont-grown Centennial will bring to the table, since it’s changed noticeably in the last two years.”

This is direct brewer testimony about terroir moving Centennial noticeably, even in the same farm, across different years. While not peer-reviewed chemistry, it is exactly the kind of sensory feedback that triggered the Shellhammer group’s Oregon–Washington Cascade/Mosaic trials.

Aging and Storage Behavior

As discussed in previous articles, the 2026 aging study that tracked Citra, Cascade, and Centennial pellets over ~6 years under commercial storage conditions provided crucial data.

For Centennial:

• Centennial displayed subtler chemical shifts than Cascade, but sensory analysis still revealed significant differences between young and aged lots.

• More stable than Cascade, less stable than Citra.

In other words, Centennial sits in the middle ground: it decays more slowly than the very outdated Cascade, but not with the glacial pace of Citra.

This suggests that Centennial’s floral character (geraniol) is vulnerable to oxidation and storage, meaning Vermont brewers’ observation that “our Centennial changes year to year” is likely driven by both terroir (site/soil/climate) and vintage (crop year, harvest timing, storage handling).

The “Super Cascade” Reality

The term “Super Cascade” is both accurate and misleading.

Accurate: Centennial has higher alpha acids and more depth of bitterness, so it can be used earlier in the boil for clean bittering while still delivering late-addition and dry-hop aroma.

Misleading: It is not just “a louder Cascade.” Its chemistry is distinct:

• Much higher geraniol (~52 ppm vs. Cascade’s lower levels)

• Greater floral presence overall

• Woodier, more rose-like aroma

• Slightly different sensory corridor on the flavor map

Brewers describe this differently: some find Centennial “too floral,” others praise that very character.

What Centennial Tells Us About Terroir and Breeding

Centennial is a useful case study for a question that runs through all of Terroir Tuesday: Can you breed terroir away?

The answer, based on Centennial’s example, is: mostly no.

You can engineer versatility (alpha acids + aroma in one package). You can design a chemical profile that is repeatable and commercially valuable (the geraniol-rich floral signature is consistent enough to anchor two major beer brands). But you cannot fully insulate a hop from place and time.

What Centennial shows is that terroir is not a simple on/off switch. Some hops (Cascade, Mosaic, Nelson) are terroir darlings; they move visibly with place. Others (Citra) resist terroir but never fully escape it. Centennial falls in between: a hop whose core identity (floral, woodiness, citrus) is strong enough to survive most variation, but whose fine detail is clearly written by place, climate, and how long the pellets sit in a cold room.

Centennial is the hop that proves breeding and terroir are in constant negotiation; neither one wins, both keep playing.

References

1. Beer Maverick. (2023). Centennial hops – substitution, flavor, aroma. Beer Maverick. https://beermaverick.com/hop/centennial/

2. Brülosophy. (2016, December 1). The hop chronicles | Centennial (2015) pale ale. Brülosophy. https://brulosophy.com/2016/12/01/the-hop-chronicles-centennial/

3. Champlain Valley Hops. (n.d.). Vermont hop project. Champlain Valley Hops. https://www.champlainvalleyhops.com/vt-hop-project

4. Founders Brewing Company. (2018). A brief history of Centennial IPA. Founders Brewing Company. https://foundersbrewing.com/latest-news/2018/brief-history-centennial-ipa/

5. George, J., Shellhammer, T. H., et al. (2026). Aging of Citra®, Cascade, and Centennial hops under commercial storage conditions: Changes in hop chemistry and beer flavor. Food Chemistry, 435, 137910.

6. Schmidt, H., Riedl, J., Stübler, A., Zachleder, T., & Back, W. (2022). Determination of variety dependent “thiol impact” based on LC–MS/MS analysis of hop-derived polyfunctional thiols. BrewingScience, 75(5–6), 67–78.

7. Sorce, C., Iovinella, M., Floridi, S., Lanzellotto, M., Bravi, E., & Perretti, G. (2024). GC–MS and sensory analysis of aqueous extracts of monovarietal American hops for brewing applications. Foods, 13(15), 2923. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/13/15/2454

8. Summit Brewing Company. (2022). Picking apart the hop: Centennial. Summit Brewing. https://www.summitbrewing.com/hop-variety-specifics-centennial/

9. Yakima Chief Hops. (n.d.). Centennial. Yakima Chief Hops. https://www.yakimachief.com/centennial.html

Over the last few weeks you’ve focused on hops that clearly move with place: Cascade morphing between Oregon and Washington, Mosaic shifting from bright and fruity to sweaty and woody, Nelson Sauvin and Galaxy swinging with site, harvest window, and storage. Those are classic “terroir darlings”: the same variety, different environment, noticeably different beer.

Citra is a different kind of story. It is the most influential hop of the hazy‑IPA era, and brewers reach for it because it feels reliable: wherever you are, “Citra tastes like Citra”; grapefruit, lime, mango, passion fruit, over a green, pithy core.

This week is about how far terroir can really move a hop that has been bred and selected to be consistent, and what recent papers on hop chemistry, thiols, and aging tell us about Citra’s relationship to place and time.

What Citra Is Meant to Be

Citra® (HBC 394) is a Yakima‑bred aroma hop released in 2007 after more than a decade of breeding work. Its pedigree traces back through multiple European and American lines plus a US wild hop, but its modern identity is very simple: a high‑impact late and dry hop for intensely fruity IPAs.

Technical sheets and brewer descriptions converge on the same profile:

• Dominant citrus: grapefruit, lime, orange, lemon zest

• Strong tropical: mango, passion fruit, lychee, melon

• Secondary: stone fruit, gooseberry, soft resin and spice

Typical pellet analysis from Yakima Valley Hops lists:

• Total oils: ~2.2–2.8 mL/100 g

• Myrcene: ~60–65% of total oil

• Humulene: ~11–13%

• Caryophyllene: ~6–8%

• Linalool: ~1–2%

• Farnesene: <1%

So even before you talk about terroir, Citra is genetically loud: lots of oil, heavily skewed to myrcene and humulene, with enough linalool to brighten the profile. That’s the foundation.

What Citra Looks Like to from a Sensory and Chemical Perspective

A 2024 study in Foods by Sorce et al. took monovarietal hop extracts, including Citra, and ran them through GC–MS and descriptive sensory analysis. The extracts were produced in water rather than beer, which isolates hop‑origin aroma.

For Citra, they found:

• Total quantified volatiles: ~1885 ppm – the highest of the American hops tested.

• Key terpenes and alcohols:

  • Myrcene: ~946 ppm (about half of total volatiles)

  • α‑Humulene: ~381 ppm

  • β‑Caryophyllene: ~206 ppm

  • Linalool: ~48 ppm

  • Geraniol: ~9.9 ppm (relatively low)

• Impactful esters and ketones:

  • Isoamyl isobutyrate: ~47.8 ppm (fruity, apple‑like)

  • Methyl 4‑decenoate: ~48.7 ppm (green, waxy, fruity)

  • Methyl octanoate, methyl nonanoate and related esters at lower levels, contributing green, floral, and tropical nuances

In sensory terms, the same Citra extract was rated by a trained panel as:

• High in herbaceous and green fruit

• High in spicy/woody

• Moderate in citrus

• Relatively low in floral compared to some other varieties

Sorce et al. explicitly connect Citra’s green, somewhat pithy impression to the combination of high myrcene, elevated linalool, specific ketones (2‑undecanone), and those waxy/fruity esters like methyl 4‑decenoate and isoamyl isobutyrate.

From a brewer’s perspective, the key point is that Citra’s “Citra‑ness” is not just a lot of oil, it is a very particular architecture of terpenes, alcohols, and esters designed for high intensity and good survivability. That architecture is the reason Citra stays recognizable even when environment and processing poke at it.

Thiols: Why Citra “Pops”

Beyond terpenes and esters, Citra owes much of its punch to polyfunctional thiols, the same family of compounds that make some Sauvignon Blancs smell like gooseberry or passion fruit.

Two recent LC–MS/MS studies are especially important.

First, Schmidt et al. analyzed 250 hop samples (97 varieties from 12 countries) for three key thiols: 4‑mercapto‑4‑methylpentan‑2‑one (4MMP), 3‑mercapto‑1‑hexanol (3MH), and 3‑mercapto‑4‑methylpentan‑1‑ol (3M4MP). They grouped varieties by “thiol impact”: low, medium, and high.

• Citra landed firmly in the high‑impact group, with:

  • 4MMP >10 µg/kg (around 38 µg/kg on average)

  • 3MH + 3M4MP also >10 µg/kg

• Across the dataset, thiol levels varied widely not just by variety but by growing area, crop year, and harvest date.

Second, Liu et al. looked at 32 hop cultivars and measured 3MH and 4MMP along with mineral content and total oils.

• Citra, Mosaic, and Strata sat near the top of the pack for both 3MH and 4MMP, clearly separated from low‑thiol classic aroma hops.

• They emphasized that thiol levels “vary greatly depending on variety, region and harvest year,” again underscoring terroir and vintage effects.

Since thiols have extremely low sensory thresholds (ng/L), small absolute changes matter a lot. And when those thiols co‑occur with monoterpene alcohols like linalool and geraniol, you get well‑documented synergy: together they create intense tropical and citrus notes even when each compound is at or below its individual threshold.

Citra is, by design, a thiol–terpene synergy hop: high thiol potential over a backbone of myrcene, humulene, linalool, and fruity esters.

That combination explains two things at once:

• Why Citra reads as so intensely citrus‑tropical in modern IPAs.

• Why its sensory “category” doesn’t seem to change dramatically even when environment shifts thiol and oil levels it tends to stay within that citrus–tropical band.

What Terroir Studies Tell Us and Doesn’t Yet Tell Us About Citra

The cleanest proof of hop terroir to date comes from work on Cascade and Mosaic, not Citra.

I have referenced this study in previous articles but as a reminder in this context: a 2023 regional identity study out of the Shellhammer lab tracked Cascade and Mosaic grown across 39 sites in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and Washington’s Yakima Valley in the same harvest year. For each site, the team recorded environment and agronomy, measured hop chemistry, and performed descriptive sensory analysis on both hops and single‑hop beers.

Local soil, climate, or farming differences could distinguish hops even within a single valley.

This is unambiguous terroir: same variety, same year, different environment → measurably and perceptibly different hops and beers.

In that paper, Citra is named as a priority for future regional identity trials, alongside Simcoe, Centennial, Amarillo, and Strata. As of now, that full Oregon vs. Washington Citra dataset has not been published, so there is no single paper you can point to that says “Citra OR tastes like X, Citra WA tastes like Y” with the same rigor.

For Citra, the best evidence we have is indirect but strong:

• Thiol and essential oil surveys show that its key aroma compounds do vary with region, site, and year, just like other hops.

• However, because Citra’s genetic and breeding “center of gravity” is so strong (high thiols + specific terpene/ester pattern), environmental variation tends to adjust intensity and shading, not the overall flavour family.

So compared to Cascade or Mosaic which can swing from citrus‑floral to sweaty‑tropical depending on valley, Citra seems to live in a narrower corridor: always some mixture of citrus, tropical, and green/herbaceous, with terroir mostly turning the volume knob and slightly shifting the balance between green and ripe.

“Time Terroir”: How Citra Handles Aging

If you read my recap of the Chenot’s research from the Shellhammer lab I wrote last week, a few very important key findings were directed at Citra and how it performs aromatically over time in storage compared to Cascade and Centennial.

As a reminder, the behavior split by variety:

• Cascade showed substantial losses and compositional shifts in oils; beers brewed with older Cascade were clearly less fresh and characterful.

• Centennial changed less, but tasters could still distinguish beers brewed with older vs. fresher hops.

• Citra was the outlier:

  • Only minor changes in key volatiles and thiol profiles under the tested conditions.

  • Sensory panels reported little difference between beers brewed with younger vs. older Citra lots

  • Variety and lot/year explained much more variation in thiol content than storage time or oxygen exposure.

The study also showed that Hop Storage Index (HSI) was a poor predictor of sensory performance, particularly for Citra. You could see HSI drift upward without a proportional loss in perceived aroma quality.

This “time resilience” is important in the terroir conversation for two reasons:

1. It reinforces the idea that Citra is stable, not just in what it tastes like, but in how long it can hold that profile under normal supply‑chain conditions.

2. It means that much of the variation brewers perceive between Citra lots is more likely to come from where and how they were grown and picked, rather than how long they’ve sat in a properly managed cold room.

A hop with a strong internal identity

• High total oils, dominated by myrcene and humulene, plus meaningful linalool and esters.

• High thiol impact, with 4MMP and 3MH/3M4MP at levels comparable to other top‑tier modern aroma hops.

• A distinctive sensory pattern: herbaceous/green fruit, woody/spicy, and citrus, with secondary tropical notes that come through especially in beer

All of that means Citra is genetically and chemically “loud” in a very specific way. That loudness resists being completely rewritten by terroir or storage.

The available data suggest:

• Citra’s thiol and oil concentrations absolutely respond to region, year, and agronomy, just as they do in Cascade and Mosaic.

• In sensory terms, that likely manifests as:

  • Louder vs. quieter Citra expression.

  • A bit more green/herbaceous and pithy vs. a bit more ripe tropical and soft.

  • Small shifts in how woody/spicy the background feels.

What it does not seem to do, at least based on brewer experience and the indirect data we have, is jump into wholly different flavour families the way Cascade or Nelson can.

Conclusion

Citra complicates the terroir story in exactly the right way.

Chemically, it is a deliberately engineered hop: very high total oil, a specific terpene and ester architecture, and some of the highest measured polyfunctional thiol levels of any modern variety. That design gives Citra a strong, repeatable sensory identity built around citrus, tropical fruit, and a green, pithy core.

Where Citra differs from other varieites is in how far it moves: for most lots, terroir seems to modulate intensity and the green‑versus‑ripe balance, rather than pushing it into a wholly new flavor family.

Aging data reinforce this picture. Under realistic commercial storage, Citra’s aroma and thiol profile remain far more stable than Cascade or Centennial, which means time acts more like a dimmer than a repainting tool.

Put simply: Citra does not disprove hop terroir; it sets the upper bound on how much a modern, high‑impact variety can resist it.

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References

1. Beer Maverick. (2023). Citra hops – substitution, flavor, aroma. Beer Maverick. https://beermaverick.com/hop/citra/

2. Coleman Agriculture. (n.d.). Hop terroir. Coleman Agriculture. https://www.colemanag.com/hopterroir

3. Colorado Sun. (2019, October 31). How terroir influences the flavors in hops, told through a tasty story. The Colorado Sun. https://coloradosun.com/2019/11/01/how-terroir-influences-colorado-hops/

4. George, J., Shellhammer, T. H., et al. (2026). Aging of Citra®, Cascade, and Centennial hops under commercial storage conditions: Changes in hop chemistry and beer flavor. Food Chemistry, 435, 137910.

5. Janish, S. (2019, September 10). Thiol driver. Scott Janish. https://scottjanish.com/thiol-driver/

6. Janish, S. (2020, July 27). Survivables: Unpacking hot-side hop flavor. Scott Janish. http://scottjanish.com/survivables-unpacking-hot-side-hop-flavor/

7. Liu, S., Li, X., Chen, Q., Xiao, D., & Li, H. (2024). Comparison of polyfunctional thiol, element, and total essential oil contents in 32 hop (Humulus lupulus L.) cultivars. Food Chemistry, 434, 137639. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030881462401505X

8. Schmidt, H., Riedl, J., Stübler, A., Zachleder, T., & Back, W. (2022). Determination of variety dependent “thiol impact” based on LC–MS/MS analysis of hop-derived polyfunctional thiols. BrewingScience, 75(5–6), 67–78.

9. Shellhammer, T. H., Frey, D., George, J., Rold, H., Holt, J. J., & Markl, H. (2023). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(15), 7025–7041. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655

10. Sorce, C., Iovinella, M., Floridi, S., Lanzellotto, M., Bravi, E., & Perretti, G. (2024). GC–MS and sensory analysis of aqueous extracts of monovarietal American hops for brewing applications. Foods, 13(15), 2923. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39123645/

11. Towey, J. (2022, August 8). Yes, in fact, Oregon and Washington hops are different. Washington Beer Blog. https://washingtonbeerblog.com/yes-in-fact-oregon-and-washington-hops-are-different/

12. Yakima Valley Hops. (2024). Citra hop pellets. Yakima Valley Hops. https://yakimavalleyhops.com/products/citra-hop-pellets

Introduction

Nelson Sauvin is often talked about as if it has one fixed flavour: white wine, gooseberry, passionfruit. The science says that is only half true. Its genetics give it that basic profile, but where and how it is grown inside New Zealand shifts how loud each part of that profile is.

This Terroir Tuesday leans into how Nelson Sauvin changes across sites and seasons.

1. Nelson Sauvin’s “default” identity

A 2021 paper in Foods by McKinnon and co‑authors looked at nine New Zealand hop cultivars, including Nelson Sauvin, all grown on one experimental field in Motueka. Same soil, same climate, same year.

They:

• Measured more than 120 aroma compounds in each cultivar.

• Used statistics to pick out 61 compounds that best separated the hops.

• Found that Nelson Sauvin formed its own clear cluster, with a mix of esters, ketones, and terpenes that did not match Motueka, Riwaka, or the others.

• A separate BrewingScience study focused on “specific flavor compounds derived from Nelson Sauvin hop” in beer. It showed that:

• Beers brewed with Nelson Sauvin contained unique compounds that gave “exotic fruit” and “Sauvignon Blanc‑like” notes, which did not appear (or appeared much less) in beers brewed with classic European hops.

So even before terroir differences between farms and regions, Nelson Sauvin’s built‑in flavour template is:

• White‑grape and gooseberry

• Passionfruit and other “exotic” fruit

• A clear “white wine”

That is its starting point.

2. Terroir within New Zealand: how site and season change Nelson

The Motueka field trial showed varietal differences by holding location still. Other work looks at what happens when you change location and farming conditions.

A large terroir study by Van Holle and co‑authors (2022) compared hops of the same variety grown in different regions (not just New Zealand, but also Europe and the U.S.). As we have discussed with other varieties and as a reminder of what terroir can do, this study found:

• Environment and farm practices change the levels of key aroma compounds in the hops.

• Those changes are strong enough that single‑hop beers from different regions can be clearly told apart in sensory tests.

McKinnon’s PhD thesis then zoomed in on New Zealand:

• It tracked volatile compounds in New Zealand hop cultivars (including Nelson Sauvin) across different growing sites and harvest dates.

• It showed that even for the same cultivar, moving to a different site or picking at a different time shifted the balance of important aroma compounds.

From these studies, you can pull out a simple picture for Nelson Sauvin inside New Zealand:

• The core “Sauvignon‑like” pattern (white‑wine type esters and ketones) is always there because of the variety’s genetics.

• Site differences (for example, stony, free‑draining river terraces near Nelson–Motueka versus deeper inland valleys )change how intense and sharp that pattern feels, by changing vine stress, ripening, and oil composition.

• Harvest timing (earlier vs later picking) further shifts the mix of green, citrus, and ripe fruit tones, much like it does for other high‑impact hops.

Practically, that is why:

• Some Nelson Sauvin lots smell very pungent: hard gooseberry, diesel, sharp white wine.

• Others from a different farm or year feel more rounded: softer white‑grape, stone‑fruit, less “catty” edge.

Place plus timing layered on top of Nelson Sauvin’s base chemistry.

3. A quick link to Sauvignon Blanc terroir (same region, same logic)

On the wine side, work on New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc tells a very similar story for grapes grown in (and around) the same regions.

Greven and co‑authors studied Sauvignon Blanc from multiple New Zealand regions and measured:

• 3‑mercaptohexan‑1‑ol (3MH) and 3‑mercaptohexyl acetate (3MHA) – the key thiols that smell like passionfruit and grapefruit.

• Methoxypyrazines such as IBMP, which smell like green capsicum and cut grass.

They found that:

• These compounds vary strongly between regions and even between sub‑regions of Marlborough, even when winemaking is kept the same.

• In short, Sauvignon Blanc terroir in New Zealand is really about how site changes the balance of tropical thiols and green pyrazines.

We do not yet have the same fine‑grained thiol map for Nelson Sauvin hops, but the pattern is parallel:

• Nelson Sauvin’s genetics push it toward a white‑wine style aroma

• New Zealand terroir then turns the dial up or down on the sharp gooseberry / diesel side vs the softer grape / stone‑fruit side, just as it does for Sauvignon Blanc’s tropical vs green notes

So it is fair, based on the science, to say:

Nelson Sauvin is the hop version of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc not just in name, but in how terroir shapes its fruit, green, and white‑wine notes across different parts of the same country.

4. Terroir takeaways for brewers and drinkers

For your Terroir Tuesday post, you can boil it down to:

• One variety, many faces: Peer‑reviewed work shows Nelson Sauvin has a unique aroma chemistry that fits the “Sauvignon Blanc hop” tag, but site and harvest make that show up in different ways.

• Inside‑NZ terroir is real: Different New Zealand sites and seasons move Nelson along a line from sharp gooseberry and diesel to softer white‑grape and stone‑fruit, without changing the variety itself.

• Same story as the wine next door: Sauvignon Blanc from the same regions shows thiol and pyrazine shifts with terroir; Nelson Sauvin is following a similar pattern on the hop side.

Same hop. Same country. Different valley, different picking decision and your “Nelson” IPA becomes a slightly different expression of New Zealand.

References

1. Greven, M., et al. (2013). Identifying New Zealand Sauvignon blanc terroirs. In Proceedings of the 9th International Cool Climate Symposium for Viticulture and Oenology (pp. 1–4). https://ives-openscience.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/10_GREVEN.pdfives-openscience​

2. McKinnon, C. M., Kilmartin, P. A., & Duhamel, N. (2021). Differences in New Zealand hop cultivars based on their unique volatile organic compound profiles. Foods, 10(2), 383. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/2/414

3. McKinnon, C. M. (2021). Characterising volatile compounds in New Zealand hop cultivars to understand their unique aroma profiles (Doctoral thesis, University of Otago).​ https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/esploro/outputs/doctoral/Characterising-volatile-compounds-in-New-Zealand/9926479540101891

4. Praet, T., Van Opstaele, F., Aerts, G., & De Cooman, L. (2014–2016). Specific flavor compounds derived from Nelson Sauvin hop and their sensory impact in beer. BrewingScience. https://brewingscience.de/index.php/brewingscience/article/download/474/372brewingscience​

5. Van Holle, A., Landschoot, A., De Cooman, L., & Saison, D. (2022). Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional variation of hop chemistry and beer flavour. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 102(9), 3886–3899. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12655onlinelibrary.wiley​

Introduction

Soil is perhaps the most invisible part of terroir, but is incredibly impactful to the overall terroir of a product. Two identical hop varieties planted on different soils within the same region can produce measurably different oils, aroma profiles, and brewing characteristics. This week focuses on soil alone: what makes good hop soil, how soil traits affect flavor generally, and how that plays out within two distinct regions. This will be an overview with just a couple examples of hops that are affected by soil; as we dig deeper into terroir, we can explore more about how soils affects these and other agricultural products.

The Basics: What Makes Good Hop Soil

Hops prefer deep, well‑drained loams and sandy loams with a pH of 6.0–6.5. Poorly‑drained soils promote root rot and should be avoided. Deep soils (preferably 18 inches or more) allow hop roots, which can reach 15 feet deep, to fully develop and access nutrients throughout the season.

Three key soil traits shape hop flavor:

1. Organic Matter and Nitrogen Availability

Soils rich in organic matter (5–7%) are highly buffered. They release nitrogen slowly through microbial decomposition, giving hops steady access to nitrogen without the flush that can happen on sandy, low–organic matter soils. This matters for flavor because excessive nitrogen suppresses oil production and increases nitrate content; peer‑reviewed research shows that higher nitrogen rates correlate with decreased alpha acids, decreased total oil content, and increased greenish/grassy notes in hop cones.

Conversely, soils with 1–2% organic matter require higher external nitrogen inputs to hit yield targets, but growers must time those applications carefully, applying nitrogen before bloom rather than after preserves oil quality and aroma complexity.

2. Drainage and Water Availability

Fast drainage (as in gravelly, sandy loams) keeps soils oxygenated and prevents root rot, but it also stresses the plant mildly. That mild stress pushes hops to concentrate secondary metabolites (oils, thiols, terpenes) rather than producing rank vegetative growth. Slow‑draining clay soils tend to produce hops with lower oil, more vegetal character, and less intense aroma.

3. Mineral Content and Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC)

CEC indicates a soil’s ability to hold and release nutrients. Sandy loams typically have CEC <12; clay loams and clays have CEC >12. Higher CEC soils are more “buffered” meaning they release nutrients slowly and steadily. This regularity of nutrient supply helps stabilize terpene biosynthesis, leading to more consistent, clean aroma profiles year to year.

Cascading Effects: How Soil Traits Influence Oil and Aroma

Soil directly affects the plant’s secondary metabolism, which drives terpene and thiol production. A peer‑reviewed study on foliar nutrition and hop aroma identified 16 terpenes in hop cones, including myrcene, linalool, and geraniol. The soil and nutrient environment determine the relative abundance of those compounds.

In general:

• Rich loams with steady nitrogen availability → balanced terpene profiles, complex aroma, less extreme character.

• Lean, free‑draining, stony soils → stressed plants, higher oil concentration, more intense and sometimes extreme aroma (more citrus punch, more herbal bite, more resin).

• Deep, well‑amended soils → bigger yields but sometimes softer, more muted aroma if nitrogen is too generous.

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Case 1: New Zealand – Soil Variation Within the Nelson–Motueka Region

The Soils

Across the Nelson–Tasman district, hops grow on two distinct soil types:

• Stony river alluvials and gravels (Motueka River terraces, Riwaka flats): free‑draining, sandy or silty loams over rounded gravels, low organic matter (1–3%), naturally lean in fertility. Growers like Hop Revolution deliberately plant on these sites to concentrate flavor.

• Deeper alluvial loams (inland valleys, ex‑tobacco ground in Motueka): moderately deep sandy loams, higher organic matter (3–5%), slightly higher water‑holding capacity and CEC.

What that produces: Nelson Sauvin as a case study

Nelson Sauvin grown on stony river gravels (low organic matter, fast drainage) shows:

• High oil concentration, intense aromatics: ripe gooseberry, white grape, passionfruit, sometimes capsicum and diesel.

• Stronger sulfur and pungent notes; brewers describe these lots as “piercing” and “Sauvignon Blanc‑like”.

Nelson Sauvin grown on deeper, more fertile inland loams (higher organic matter, moderate drainage) shows:

• Softer, rounder character: more muted gooseberry, deeper stone fruit, floral lift, less sulfur edge.

• Less extreme but more complex: fruit without the sharp citrus bite.

NZ harvest reports and grower notes explicitly differentiate between Nelson region lots (stony terraces, more intense) and Garston lots (deeper soils, more subtle and floral). Same variety, same latitude, same UV but soil changes the expression substantially.

A 2025 NZ harvest report notes that Motueka and Riwaka from stony parcels show “bright citrus and herbal lift” while the same varieties from richer, deeper blocks show “more rounded fruit and softer herbal spice”. The driver is soil.

Case 2: Oregon Willamette Valley – Soil Variation Within the Valley

The Soils

Willamette Valley has two dominant soil profiles:

• Alluvial silts and sandy loams (riverbanks and low terraces near the Willamette River): moderate organic matter (4–5%), good drainage, moderate CEC.

• Volcanic loams (upland areas, volcanic ash parent material): higher organic matter (5–7%), excellent structure, higher CEC, better water‑holding capacity.

Both drain well but differ in fertility and buffering capacity.

What that produces: Amarillo as a case study

Amarillo grown on alluvial riverbank soils (moderate organic matter, moderate fertility) shows:

• Balanced citrus and floral: orange, lemon, light stone fruit, spicy backbone.

• Clean, straightforward aroma without extreme intensity or greenish notes.

Amarillo grown on volcanic loams (higher organic matter, higher CEC, slower nitrogen release) shows:

• Rounder, more complex character: softer citrus, more pronounced stone fruit and peach, fuller herbal spice.

• Slightly lower total oil (because slower nitrogen release means less stress), but better integration of flavors.

Oregon growers and merchants note that Amarillo from volcanic uplands is “smoother” and “more approachable” compared to riverbank alluvial lots, which are “brighter and more citrus‑forward”. A 2019 article on hop terroir noted that soil type within a single region can shift hop aroma by 20–30%, a magnitude equal to moving between regions entirely.

The Soil Hierarchy for Terroir

If you are thinking about hop terroir, soil sits at the base of the hierarchy:

1. Soil type and organic matter → baseline nutrient availability and plant stress level.

2. Drainage and CEC → affects oil concentration and flavor balance.

3. Climate (sun, temperature, UV) → amplifies or moderates what the soil starts.

4. Harvest timing → fine‑tunes the final aromatic slice.

Change the soil within your own valley or region and you change the foundation, which is why Nelson Sauvin on stony river terraces is “Sauvignon Blanc in a hop” while the same variety on deeper inland loams is softer and more floral or why Amarillo from Willamette alluvials is brighter citrus versus volcanic loam Amarillo, which is rounder stone fruit.

References

1. Brown, D. (n.d.). Fertilizers and nutrient management for hops: Soils for hop production. Michigan State University Extension. https://www.canr.msu.edu/uploads/234/78934/4._Soils__Fertility_Diane_Brown.pdfcanr.msu​

2. Crop & Soil Sciences. (2021, February 28). Hop production. Penn State Extension. https://extension.psu.edu/hop-production/extension.psu​

3. Hops Company. (2024, October 14). The unique aspects of hops: How region and harvest time influence flavor. https://hopscompany.com/blogs/news/the-unique-aspects-of-hops-how-region-and-harvest-time-influence-flavorhopscompany​

4. Srour, A. Y., et al. (2019, June 10). Influence of nitrogen fertility practices on hop cone quality. Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists, 77(3), 203–216. https://www.usahops.org/img/blog_pdf/238.pdfusahops​

5. De Cooman, L., et al. (2023, April 29). From hop to beer: Influence of different organic foliar fertilisation methods on hop plants’ aromatic quality and that of the beer produced. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 103(7), 3458–3468. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10180877/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih​

6. Utah State University Extension. (2023, December 13). How to grow hops in your garden. https://extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden/research/hops-in-the-gardenccemadison​

7. Ontario Hop Growers Association. (n.d.). Fertility guidelines for hops in the Northeast. https://ontariohopgrowersassociation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/HopFertilityManagementNE.pdfontariohopgrowersassociation​

8. Alworth, J. (2022, August 8). Terroir and hop selection. Beervana Blog. https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2022/8/9/terroir-and-hop-selection

9. Hop Alliance. (2022, September 25). New Zealand Motueka. https://hopalliance.com/blogs/news/new-zealand-motueka

10. Hop Revolution. (n.d.). Our hop farms. https://www.hoprevolution.com/our-farms

11. CraftBeer.com. (2025, June 5). Tapping into New Zealand hop terroir. https://www.craftbeer.com/full-pour/tapping-into-new-zealand-hop-terroir

12. Colorado Sun. (2019, October 31). How terroir influences the flavors in hops, told through a tasty tasting. https://coloradosun.com/2019/11/01/how-terroir-influences-colorado-hops/coloradosun​

13. NZ Hops Ltd. (2025, April 10). Hop harvest 2025 report New Zealand. https://hoppiness.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CY25-Harvest-Report-A4-new-PDF.pdf

Editors Note: Each one of these hops are far more complex, and much more research is involved than I am providing here. These are meant to introduce you to the idea of terroir in hops, beer and other ingredients. My hope is for future articles to dig further into the amazing research out there, such as what VGF/Hoptechic is doing with the Amarillo hop.

Introduction

Amarillo wasn’t bred in a lab, selected over decades, or carefully crossed from elite parents. It was a rogue seedling discovered in a Liberty field at Virgil Gamache Farms in the late 1990s, propagated because it smelled like nothing else, and turned into one of the most terroir‑sensitive varieties in modern brewing. Its story is inseparable from place, harvest timing, and year‑to‑year variation and peer‑reviewed research proves that all three layers matter.​

Discovery and Breeding: A Yakima Valley Accident

Amarillo (VGXP01 cv.) was discovered by Virgil Gamache Farms in 1990, growing as a rogue plant in a Liberty hop field. The Gamache family, farming in the Yakima Valley since 1913, noticed its unique aroma and began cultivating it in 1991, eventually patenting it in 2003. Unlike most modern hops, Amarillo was not the product of a formal breeding program but a natural hybrid that expressed intense citrus, floral, and tropical character only when grown in specific Yakima Valley conditions.​

Terroir: Washington vs Idaho vs Germany

A 2017 study in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing (Van Holle et al.) systematically compared Amarillo hops grown in Washington and Idaho across three crop years (2013–2015). The researchers brewed single hop beers with each lot and conducted sensory and chemical analysis. Their conclusion: “The Amarillo hops of the Idaho terroir, in comparison to those of the Washington terroir, were characterized by lower citrusy and floral notes in combination with increased contributions from fruity, spicy, and resinous odour descriptions”.​

Key findings from the data:

• Oil content: Idaho Amarillo averaged 1.10 mL/100g total oil vs. higher values in Washington lots.​

• Sensory mapping: Multidimensional scaling clearly separated Washington and Idaho samples; Washington Amarillo beers were dominated by grapefruit, orange, and lemon, while Idaho beers showed more green apple, tropical fruit, and resin.​

• Bitterness quality: Washington Amarillo was rated as more “pleasant” and citrus‑forward, while Idaho Amarillo had a more neutral bitterness profile.​

The study explicitly states that “brewers must rely on desired hop varieties from the same terroir in order to achieve consistent hoppy aromas”. This is peer‑reviewed confirmation that Amarillo’s “citrus candy” character is not guaranteed by genetics alone; it is a product of Yakima Valley’s specific climate, soils, and UV exposure.​

German Amarillo: A Different Expression

Amarillo has been cultivated experimentally in Germany’s Hallertau region, but with mixed results. German hop reports note that Amarillo acreage declined by nearly one‑third after “unexpectedly high yields” that did not match the quality profile brewers expected. The German climate is cooler, more humid, with lower UV intensity and produces Amarillo with less intense citrus and more grassy, herbal notes, closer to traditional German aroma hops. Additional studies on hop terroir confirms that moving a variety to a new region shifts oil composition and sensory outcomes, often dramatically.​

Harvest Timing: The Pick Window Study

Virgil Gamache Farms has pioneered precision harvest timing research through their Hoptechnic program, which monitors hop chemistry in‑field to define optimal pick windows. While the full VGF dataset is proprietary, peer‑reviewed frameworks from other varieties (e.g., Cascade, Chinook) show that harvest timing can shift aroma intensity by >30%.​

For Amarillo, VGF and collaborators have observed:

• Early harvest (late August): Captures sweeter, candy‑like lemon, floral, and grapefruit notes.​

• Mid‑harvest (early September): Brings out orange, stone fruit, and occasional light onion/garlic thiols.​

• Late harvest (mid‑September): Introduces herbal, dank, and even cheesy characteristics softened by fruit punch‑like esters.​

A 2023 All About Beer article quoting Eric Desmarais notes that “even a seemingly minor shift in harvest timing can alter citrus or tropical profiles by more than 30 percent”. This aligns with peer‑reviewed findings on Cascade and Chinook, where late harvest increased 3‑sulfanyl‑4‑methylpentan‑1‑ol (onion/garlic) and oxidation compounds.​

Vintage Year Effects: When the Weather Rewrites the Hop

The 2017 Van Holle study also tracked Amarillo across three crop years (2013–2015) and found that “yearly variations < terroir effects” but still significant. However, a 2024 study on the German ‘Callista’ hop showed that hot temperatures in 2022 induced significant changes in cone quality, with 2021 hops perceived as fruitier and more citrusy despite lower lupulone levels. This suggests that extreme weather years can override or amplify terroir signals.​

For Amarillo, VGF has noted that drought years in the Yakima Valley (e.g., 2015, 2021) produce hops with higher oil concentration but more resinous, less fruity character, while cooler, wetter years (e.g., 2016, 2022) boost citrus and floral intensity. The mechanism is that water stress and temperature alter enzymatic pathways for terpene and thiol synthesis, a pattern documented across multiple hop varieties.​

The Terroir Stack for Amarillo

Amarillo’s story is a perfect example of the three‑layer terroir stack:

1. Place: Yakima Valley’s high UV, arid climate, and alluvial soils produce the signature citrus‑candy profile. Idaho’s slightly cooler, higher‑elevation sites yield fruitier, spicier, less citrusy hops. Germany’s Hallertau region produces a grassy, herbal version that lacks the US punch.​

2. Time: Early vs. late harvest shifts Amarillo from sweet lemon‑floral to orange‑stone‑fruit to herbal‑dank, with thiol and oxidation compounds changing accordingly.​

3. Vintage: Drought years concentrate oils but reduce fruitiness; cooler years boost citrus expression.​

Takeaway for Terroir Tuesday

Amarillo is a hop that only becomes “Amarillo” when all three terroir layers align: Yakima Valley terroir, early‑to‑mid harvest timing, and a favorable vintage. Move it to Idaho, pick it late, or grow it in a drought year, and you get a different beer.

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References

1. Alworth, J. (2022, August 8). Terroir and hop selection. Beervana. https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2022/8/9/terroir-and-hop-selectionbeervanablog​

2. All About Beer. (2023, September 13). How the hop harvest window impacts aroma. https://allaboutbeer.com/how-the-hop-harvest-window-impacts-aroma/allaboutbeer​

3. BarthHaas. (2024, June 19). Hop update June 2024. https://www.barthhaas.com/ressources/blog/blog-article/hop-update-june-2024​

4. BarthHaas. (2025, June 22). Hop update June 2025. https://www.barthhaas.com/ressources/blog/blog-article/hop-update-june-2025​

5. Beer and Brewing. (2025, November 5). Inside the new science of hop quality. https://www.beerandbrewing.com/inside-the-new-science-of-hop-qualitybeerandbrewing​

6. Hagemann, M. H., Krottenthaler, M., Forster, A., & Wietstock, P. (2024). Insight into the aroma quality of “Callista” cultivar of hop. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 72(3), 1304–1315. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38129004/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih​

7. Holle, A. V., Landschoot, A., De Keukeleire, D., De Cooman, L., & Saison, D. (2017). The brewing value of Amarillo hops (Humulus lupulus L.) grown in northwestern USA: A preliminary study of terroir significance. Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 123(3), 312–318. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318131150_The_brewing_value_of_Amarillo_hops_Humulus_lupulus_L_grown_in_northwestern_USA_A_preliminary_study_of_terroir_significance ​​​

8. John I. Haas. (2024). Amarillo data sheet. https://www.johnihaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/HPA-Amarillo-Data-Sheet.pdfonlinelibrary.wiley​

9. Krofta, K., Patzak, J., & Bláha, L. (2017). Determination of bitter compounds in hops—Effect of crop year and hops age. Kvasny Prumysl, 63(5), 241–247. https://www.kvasnyprumysl.eu/index.php/kp/article/view/71 ​

10. Virgil Gamache Farms. (n.d.). Amarillo® VGXP01. https://vgfinc.com/hop-varieties/amarillo-r-vgxp01/vgfinc​

11. Yakima Valley Hops. (2024, January 1). Amarillo hops. https://yakimavalleyhops.com/products/amarillo-hop-pelletsyakimavalleyhops​

12. Abstrax Hops. (2025, June 1). Get to know your favorite hop | Amarillo. https://abstraxhops.com/blogs/learn/get-to-know-your-favorite-hop-amarillo%C2%AE abstraxhops​

13. Hops Connect. (n.d.). Amarillo. https://hopsconnect.com/our-hops/hop-varieties/amarillo/hopsconnect​

14. San Diego Beer News. (2025, January 14). San Diego to host widespread hop exploration. https://sandiegobeer.news/san-diego-to-host-widespread-hop-exploration/sandiegobeer​

Introduction

There has been quite a bit of observation and record keeping on the terroir of Chinook. Chinook is personally one of the more underrated C hops and truthfully has some extremely interesting expressions depending on where you grow this hop.

Chinook was released by the USDA in 1985 as a high‑alpha hop bred for bittering, but today it is one of the clearest examples of how terroir can reshape a single cultivar into a family of distinct beers. From the pine‑forward classic of the Pacific Northwest to the pineapple‑driven lots coming out of Michigan, Vermont, and Poland, Chinook demonstrates that the same genetics do not guarantee the same flavor.

Chinook’s Baseline Profile

Standard Pacific Northwest (PNW) Chinook, grown in Washington’s Yakima Valley or Idaho’s high desert, is defined by high myrcene, solid alpha‑acid content (12.5–15.0%), and a robust oil profile heavy on monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes. Sensory descriptors are classic: pine, resin, spicy, big grapefruit, and sometimes a dank or catty edge when kettle‑hopped aggressively. That is the profile that built West Coast IPA.

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The Terroir Shift: Peer‑Reviewed Evidence

Regional Chemistry Differences

A 2021 peer‑reviewed study in Food Chemistry (Yin et al., 2021) aroma characterized Cascade and Chinook hops from multiple US growing regions and identified 33 aroma‑active compounds in Chinook, with statistically significant differences in concentrations between sites. Key markers such as myrcene, linalool, geraniol, and germacrene B varied by location, and principal component analysis cleanly separated regional Chinook samples. The authors concluded that “environmental factors and agronomic practices significantly impacted the concentrations of key aroma‑active compounds” and produced distinct sensory profiles in hops grown only a few hundred kilometers apart.

Oregon Terroir

Indie Hops, which grows Chinook in Oregon’s Willamette Valley alluvial soils, describes their lot as “rounded” and “juicy,” with grapefruit, pineapple, mixed herbs, flowers, juniper, and gin‑berry notes that are “unique to the alluvial Oregon terroir where it is grown”. This is not marketing fluff; it matches the peer‑reviewed finding that soil type and water availability alter terpene and thiol ratios, shifting the balance away from pine and toward fruit and spice.

Midwest and Northeast US

Brewers and growers in Michigan, Vermont, and Ontario report that their Chinook expresses very differently. The Vermont Hop Project notes that while PNW Chinook shows more pine, Champlain Valley Chinook “leans much more heavily toward pineapple” and fruit. Blue Lake Hops describes Michigan Chinook as “more fruit forward” compared to the piney, spicy West Coast version. Iowa and Michigan brewers have described local Chinook as “almost grapefruit juice” or strongly pineapple‑driven.

These observations align with a 2021 Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists paper that found Chinook’s thiol and monoterpene precursor pools are highly sensitive to temperature, sunlight, and water stress during cone maturation. Cooler, shorter‑season climates (like Vermont or Michigan) slow resin development and shift the enzymatic conversion toward more fruity, less harsh monoterpenes.

Polish Chinook (Chinook PL)

PolishHops markets Chinook PL as a terroir story: the pine and wood from US Chinook “find a unique expression in the southern Polish terroir, where they harmoniously intertwine with citrus and fruity notes”. This is positioned as proof that soil and insolation in Poland reshape a classic American profile. The same 2021 study that separated Yakima from Michigan Chinook also suggested that European Chinook lots (Poland, Germany) cluster separately on a PCA biplot, driven by lower myrcene and higher linalool and geraniol ratios.

Canadian and Ontario Chinook

The Ontario Hop Growers Association’s 2022–2023 Brewer’s Guide explicitly frames “Ontario hop terroir” as a research priority, noting that Ontario‑grown hops can impart unique fruit notes that US‑grown equivalents do not. While the guide focuses on Cascade and Centennial, the same logic applies to Chinook: humid continental climate, limestone‑rich soils, and shorter seasons shift the balance away from pure pine into more complex citrus and fruit.

The Science of Why Chinook Is So Terroir‑Responsive

Chinook’s profile is built on a mix of high myrcene and notable sesquiterpenes plus aroma‑active compounds like germacrene B, which Su and Yin highlighted as a characteristic Chinook marker in their regional aroma work. Because these compounds are highly sensitive to temperature, sunlight, water stress, and soil conditions, Chinook is unusually responsive to where and how it is grown. The study explicitly states that “environmental factors and agronomic practices significantly impacted the concentrations of key aroma‑active compounds” and produced clearly distinct sensory profiles in hops grown only a few hundred kilometers apart.

Takeaway for Terroir Tuesday

Chinook lets you show that a “workhorse” public hop is just as sensitive to place as any flashy proprietary variety. Same genetics, different latitude, soils, and growing conditions, and the beer in your glass moves from classic West Coast pine to Vermont pineapple to Polish pine‑and‑citrus.

References

1. Alworth, J. (2022, August 8). Terroir and hop selection. Beervana Blog. https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2022/8/9/terroir-and-hop-selection

2. Appellation Beer. (2015, August 12). Cascade—a study in hop terroir. https://appellationbeer.com/blog/cascade-a-study-in-hop-terroir/

3. Beer Maverick. (2023, March 7). Chinook hops: Substitution, flavor, aroma. https://beermaverick.com/hop/chinook/

4. Blue Lake Hops. (n.d.). Profile Chinook (Michigan) 2024. https://bluelakehops.com/chinook2024mi/

5. Brülosophy. (2021, April 15). The Hop Chronicles | Chinook (2020). https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/mrbmq3/the_hop_chronicles_chinook_2020/

6. Charles Faram. (2025, July 30). Chinook hop specifications and aroma profiles. https://charlesfaram.com/ca/hop-oracle/chinook/

7. Champlain Valley Hops. (n.d.). The Vermont hop project: Our farm’s flavor and aroma profile. https://www.champlainvalleyhops.com/vt-hop-project

8. Hops Company. (2024, October 14). The unique aspects of hops: How region and harvest time influence flavor. https://hopscompany.com/blogs/news/the-unique-aspects-of-hops-how-region-and-harvest-time-influence-flavor

9. Hops Connect. (2022, September 8). Chinook. https://hopsconnect.com/our-hops/hop-varieties/chinook/

10. Indie Hops. (2024, January 1). Chinook. https://indiehops.com/hops/chinook

11. Ontario Hop Growers Association. (2022). Brewer’s guide to Ontario‑grown hop varieties 2022–2023. https://ontariohopgrowersassociation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/OMAFRA-Hops-Brewers-Guide_2022.pdf

12. PolishHops. (2025, February 3). Chinook PL. https://polishhops.com/portfolio/chinook-pl/

13. Su, Y., & Yin, D. (2021). Aroma characterization of regional Cascade and Chinook hops and beers brewed with them. Food Chemistry, 364, 130376. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814621014163

14. University of Vermont Extension. (2019). Hop harvest timing. Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. https://projects.sare.org/media/pdf/2/0/1/2019-Hop-Harvest-Timing-1.pdf

15. Washington Beer Blog. (2022, August 8). Yes, in fact, Oregon and Washington hops are different. https://washingtonbeerblog.com/yes-in-fact-oregon-and-washington-hops-are-different/

16. Yakima Valley Hops. (2024, January 1). Chinook hops. https://yakimavalleyhops.com/products/chinook-hop-pellets

Edit: As an important clarification for the topic of who selected the lot (which has been noted and added in the updated article) is there is no external selection outside of the Sensory Plus program managed by Haas and HPA. The goal of that panel is to remove all nonconforming material before pelletization and to identify complementary blocks and ratios that reduce variability between pellet lots while lifting overall quality.

Introduction

Galaxy is one of the clearest examples that “terroir” in hops isn’t just where they’re grown, it’s when they’re picked and how they’re handled afterward. It went from darling of the NEIPA world to “what happened to Galaxy?” and back again, and that whole arc lines up almost perfectly with what the science says about harvest timing, storage, and regional identity. While I’ll be diving more intentionally on pick windows in a later article, specifically around the work that Virgil Gamache Farms/Hoptechnic and CLS farms have being working on, there is a need to touch on pick windows in this discussion as well.

Where Galaxy Actually Grows (and Why It Matters)

Galaxy is very much an Australian terroir hop. It’s grown almost exclusively in two regions: Tasmania’s Derwent Valley and hop regions of northeast Victoria. Tasmania is cooler and more maritime, with long summer daylight, consistent rainfall, and fertile alluvial soils; it’s often described as the aromatic heartland where Galaxy, Ella, and Enigma develop very high aroma intensity. Think layered passionfruit, peach, citrus, and a soft resinous backbone. Victoria’s hop country (like the Ovens Valley around Myrtleford) is a touch warmer with a longer growing season and rich but slightly drier conditions, which tend to push brighter citrus and floral edges and a bit more bite; some HPA varieties clearly prefer Victoria, while Galaxy leans into Tasmania’s cooler, slower-ripening environment for maximum fruit expression. That’s your baseline “place” terroir before timing and processing even enter the picture.

From Cheat Code to Cautionary Tale

Galaxy was bred by Hop Products Australia in 1994 (Perle × a high‑alpha Australian parent) and finally released commercially in 2009. Early on, it was everything brewers wanted: huge passionfruit, ripe peach, tangy citrus and enough resin to anchor modern IPAs. By the mid‑2010s it had basically become a cheat code for hazies. Prices spiked, contracts were tight, and single‑hop Galaxy beers helped define a style.

Then between roughly 2017–2020, the story flipped. Brewers started describing Galaxy as harsh or diesel‑like, with garlic/onion and plastic/marker notes where the juicy fruit used to be, and noticeable lot‑to‑lot inconsistency. Anecdotally, I had even heard of a mysterious “peanut/peanut butter/legume” note that was only apparent if Galaxy was used in the boil. Some benchmark breweries benched their Galaxy beers entirely, citing too much demand, too fast, and quality lost touch with what the hop could actually do.

What the Science Says: Terroir at Three Levels

1. Place: Terroir as a Chemical Fingerprint

Several peer‑reviewed studies have now nailed down that hops carry a geographic “accent” in their chemistry. A 2024 metabolomics study on 23 hop cultivars grown in Yakima vs. British Columbia (Kootenay) found consistent location‑dependent differences in aroma glycosides within the same variety; for example, 1‑hexyl glucoside was systematically higher in Yakima across cultivars. The only thing that changed was the environment.

Likewise, an ILVO/Van Holle study brewed single‑hop beers with Amarillo, Cascade, and Centennial from different growing regions and showed clear, repeatable differences in both hop chemistry and beer flavor linked back to origin. Their conclusion: terroir in hops is variety‑dependent but absolutely strong enough to move the needle on beer.

Galaxy fits squarely into that framework. Its genetics give it high alpha (roughly 15.9–19.8%) and high total oil (around 2.6–3.3 mL/100 g) with big thiol and terpene potential. The cool, maritime Tasmanian terroir is a big part of why that reads as passionfruit, peach, and citrus instead of something flatter or more herbal. But genetics and geography only get you so far; timing and handling decide whether that potential actually lands in the glass.

2. Time: Harvest Window as “Temporal Terroir”

If place sets the stage, harvest timing is the dimmer switch.

A UVM/SARE trial on Cascade tracked a single variety across a three‑week pick window and found that alpha acids peaked early, while total oil and resin potential peaked later. Translation: the “best” time to pick for bittering isn’t the same as the “best” time to pick for aroma. For a hop like Galaxy that brewers buy almost entirely for hop flavor, that’s a huge deal.

A 2022 Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry study on late‑harvest hops (45–85 days after flowering) hammered this home: delaying harvest significantly increased the concentration of the thiol 3‑sulfanyl‑4‑methylpentan‑1‑ol (3S4MP). At elevated levels, 3S4MP reads as onion/garlic. Other thiols plateaued or decreased. So if you chase yield by sliding Galaxy later into the window, the chemistry tilts away from lush fruit and toward allium and harshness.

That’s exactly what brewers were tasting in those “bad” Galaxy years: same hop, same regions (Tasmania/Victoria), but a different slice of the ripening curve.

3. Management: Storage, Oxidation, and Sorting

Once cones are off the bine, a third layer of terroir kicks in: what humans do with them.

A 2023 BrewingScience paper looked at Citra and Galaxy at different Hop Storage Index (HSI) levels. Fresh (<0.32), aged, and over‑aged (>0.61). This showed that as HSI increases, myrcene and other bright monoterpenes decline sharply while oxidation products (caryophyllene oxide, humulene epoxide I, humulenol II) climb. Sensory panels tracked that shift directly: more oxidation meant more vegetal, dull, and harsh notes in the resulting beer.

Other agronomy work from UVM and MSU shows that late‑harvest cones are more susceptible to browning, disease, and mechanical damage, which all accelerate HSI rise during handling and storage. If you’re already pushing Galaxy late to chase yield, you’ve set it up to oxidize faster on top of the thiol shift.

Add to that the way Australian hops have often been handled historically, post‑harvest blending and balancing of lots, with less granular selection available to smaller buyers, and it becomes easy to see why some brewers got spectacular Galaxy while others got “diesel and onions” from the same crop year.

What Changed Summarized

Put the research together and Galaxy’s rough patch stops being a mystery:

• Explosive demand incentivized rapid acreage expansion and later picking to maximize yield.

• Late harvest pushed thiol balance toward 3S4MP and related compounds tied to onion/garlic character.

• Stressed, browning cones plus longer or less controlled processing and storage pushed HSI up, converting fruity terpenes into vegetal oxidation products.

Nothing “broke” in the variety itself. The terroir stack of place, time, and management drifted away from what Galaxy needs to express as passionfruit and citrus, and the chemistry answered accordingly.

Quality as Applied Terroir

The way Galaxy has come back is basically an object lesson in taking that science seriously.

HPA and partners leaned into:

• Real‑time bale analysis: measuring alpha, total oil, and HSI on every bale before blending or pelletizing, and diverting high‑HSI or off‑spec material.

• Increased pelleting capacity: moving from ~900 kg/hour to roughly 2,500–3,000 kg/hour, which shortens the time from kiln to pellet and slows oxidation.

• True traceability: tying lots back to specific Tasmanian and Victorian blocks so they can identify which micro‑sites and pick windows deliver the “glorious Galaxy” profile and replicate those choices, rather than flattening everything into one average.

Recent crop reports and independent sensory work show 2023–2024 Galaxy with oil contents at or above 5‑year averages and beers presenting as the old familiar passionfruit/peach/citrus rather than harsh diesel. Same terroir regions (Tasmania, Victoria), but much tighter control of timing and handling.

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What This Means for Terroir Tuesday

Galaxy is a neat proof‑point that hop terroir is three‑dimensional:

• Geographic terroir: Tasmanian Derwent Valley vs Victorian valleys: both cool and temperate, but with different day length, rainfall, and temperature profiles that shape baseline oil and thiol potential.

• Temporal terroir: Early vs late in the 3‑week harvest window can flip the sensory script from passionfruit and citrus to onion and garlic by changing thiol and oxidation profiles.

• Managerial terroir: HSI control, processing speed, lot blending, and who gets which bales all decide whether that potential shows up in your brewery or dies in storage.

The questions that really matter for a hop like Galaxy are: Where was it grown? When was it picked? What is the HSI? How was it sorted and blended through the Sensory Plus program?

As an important clarification, there is no external selection outside of the Sensory Plus program managed by Haas and HPA. That panel removes nonconforming material before pelletization and identifies complementary blocks and ratios that reduce variability while improving overall quality.

Same genetics, same farm, same country, but shift the region slightly, slide the pick window by a week, or let oxidation creep in, and your “Galaxy” becomes a completely different beer. That’s exactly why it belongs in a Terroir Tuesday conversation.

References

1. John I. Haas. (2024, July). HPA Galaxy data sheet. https://www.johnihaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/HPA-Galaxy-Data-Sheet.pdfjohnihaas​

2. McCall, B., et al. (2024). Hops across continents: Exploring how terroir transforms the aromatic profiles of five hop varieties. Food Chemistry, 445, 138881. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11478771/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih​

3. Van Holle, A., et al. (2022). Relevance of hop terroir for beer flavour. Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 128(2), 121–132. https://pureportal.ilvo.be/en/publications/relevance-of-hop-terroir-for-beer-flavour/pureportal.ilvo​

4. University of Vermont Extension. (2019). Hop harvest timing. Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. https://projects.sare.org/media/pdf/2/0/1/2019-Hop-Harvest-Timing-1.pdfprojects.sare​

5. Zhang, Y., et al. (2022). Effect of late harvest of hops (Humulus lupulus L.) on the chemical composition and brewing performance. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 70(1), 382–391. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jafc.1c08210pubs.acs​

6. Schönberger, C., & Kostelecky, T. (2023). The relevance of hop storage index for hop usage. BrewingScience, 76, 40–48. https://brewingscience.de/index.php/brewingscience/article/view/195brewingscience​

7. Krofta, K., et al. (2024). Three LC-MS plant metabolomics studies of hop (Humulus lupulus L.). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5523&context=gc_etdsacademicworks.cuny​

8. Hop Products Australia. (2024). Galaxy. HPA Hop Products Australia. https://www.hops.com.au/galaxy/hops​

9. Crafty Taps. (2025, August 31). Understanding Australian hops: From Galaxy to Ella. https://craftytaps.com/understanding-australian-hops/craftytaps​

10. Hops Connect. (2025). Galaxy story and recipe book. https://hopsconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Galaxy-Play-Book-Digital.pdfhopsconnect​

11. Beer and Brewing. (2025, November 5). Inside the new science of hop quality. https://www.beerandbrewing.com/inside-the-new-science-of-hop-qualitybeerandbrewing​

12. Hop Culture. (2025, May 5). Hop Central, HPA’s new state-of-the-art pelleting facility, goes online. https://www.hopculture.com/hpa-hop-central/hopculture​

13. Haas. (2024, July 10). 2024 Australian hop crop report. https://www.johnihaas.com/news-views/2024-australian-hop-crop-report/johnihaas​