A Nose for Hops

When it comes to hops, its good to be nosey.

Silhouetted in the low light, high stool environment of a respectable tap room, we see a beer lover with a fresh pour of top craft brew, nose down over the pint to take in the aroma of a full glass. It’s all hop, baby. Like foreplay for the tongue, this ritual of smell is a short pleasure delay exercise for the taste buds—and when they get there with that first sip, it’s that much better.

While for most folks, their first experience of a hop is in their beer, the barstool imbiber is actually the final nose of our story. In the beginning, it starts here in the Yakima Valley, the number one hop growing region in the United States. Right at this very moment, hop vines all over the Valley are coming down from the trellis and running through picking machines to separate the hop cones from their long and leafy vines of origin. From there they are poured into a giant kiln to be heated and dried out for many hours before being cooled and baled into fragrant 200 lb. rectangles. Only then do they leave the farm.

This is a simplified explanation of a complex harvest process to be sure. While most crops are good to go once plucked and washed, the hop is a diva of sorts. She requires refined picking through expensive machinery and long dry times. Is she worth it? Oh ya. There is nothing on Earth equal to walking into a kiln, and being wrapped in the odiferous humidity only thousands of pounds of drying hops can create. Just standing in the heat, nostrils flared, taking in a long deep breath and seeing the steam rise off the crop makes my Italian nose happy and my heart swell with pride for our farm.

There has been a trend in recent years where the flavor and character of beer has become important to the people, and boy, has the industry risen to the occasion. Apparently people want three-dimensional flavor from their beer, cuz this stuff sure ain’t your daddy’s light beer. It’s a bona fide hop revolution.

The brewers themselves are artisan scientists that love the process as much as the product, and with this emphasis on quality, they are not content to buy their hops from afar, they want to experience them—see them grow, meet the farmer, rub the hops into their palms and smell the nuances in each variety. This time of year, they descend en masse into the Valley for this singular purpose.

In the last few days, Shelley, Aileen and I have had the pleasure to meet with several breweries as they rolled through our farms in Moxee and Toppenish. We accompanied Ken Grossman and Steve Dressler from Sierra Nevada, along with a cadre of their great beer minds, on a tour of some experimental varieties. The talk was thick with all things hop and complemented with many pulls straight off the vine to break the cone open and sample the characteristics of the smell. Remember the artisan scientist comment? These guys are the real deal. Sierra Nevada has been visiting the Yakima Valley hop farms since about 1983, long before it was cool.

We also met Mitch Steele and Jeremy Moynier with a group from Stone Brewing, and John Mallet with a Bell’s Brewing posse. I can’t tell you how much fun it is to watch these guys get excited about the hops. It’s all about the intensity of the smell, and how that smell translates into taste.

They sample by taking in a handful of dried cones and rubbing them vigorously between the hands to release and warm up the oils, then cupping the hands and bringing them directly over the nose several times to really tap into all the subtleties—citrus, pine, grass, herbs—different hops yielding different aromas. Selection is like letting a kid loose in a candy store. They can’t wait to get home and get started on some terrific new brews. I have yet to meet a brewer who did not love his or her job.

Which brings us back to our beer lover on a high stool, nose over the pint. Lot’s of love and hard work went into that tall, cold glass. And lots of noses too.