Hop Wranglers on Notorious Fruit Row

Cue the theme music from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly—wah wah wahhh—tumbleweeds silently blow past. It’s a sultry Friday evening as the desert sky fades from orange to blood red. Two thirsty hop slingers sidle up to a rough-hewn bar inside an old warehouse within the concrete canyons of Yakima’s notorious fruit row. Except wait, one of them is wearing a pink polo shirt. This isn’t some band of dusty outlaws, but Jeff Perkins and John Snyder of Yakima Valley Hops, and it’s just another night in the wild west of Yakima.

Yakima Valley Hops is a unique establishment that has evolved organically over its 3-year existence. It’s part business and part local culture hub—combining hops, home brew supplies, craft beer, and live music. The business side of things is comprised of three entities: The Hop Shop, Yakima Brew Supply, and Yakima Valley Hops. The Hop Shop is an event space and music venue. Yakima Brew Supply is a bodega where one can purchase everything from local Yakima Valley hops and craft and home brew supplies, to beer themed socks and hop scented air fresheners. However, the bulk of the business is done through a thriving online trading post; two actually—a retail and wholesale website.YVH is like a pony express for hops grown in the valley, sending them to locations all over the world, from Central America to Ireland, and many places in between. And business is booming.

The culture hub part manifests itself in the uppermost reaches of the warehouse known as the Hop Shop. It’s a place for revelry and gatherings. This rustic, renovated old warehouse is also a place where local non-profits hold fundraisers, and people host, birthdays, baby showers and high school reunions. But the music is really what draws most people here. Depending on the night you might catch a hip-hop, folk, indie rock, or metal show, all while throwing back craft beer, wine, or cider. The Hop Shop is one of the coolest and most unique spots to catch live music in the whole valley.

So what is it that spurs these two on? They are agreed in their thoughts on the following points. “It’s part of the experience of growing up in the valley”, says Jeff. “You drive past the hop fields in the summer and early fall and you just get hit with this wall of scent, there’s nothing else like the smell of hops under the sun.” John explains, “Hops are cool now, but historically they’ve been an important part of this valley’s agriculture for a long time.

It’s only since the craft beer movement started taking off that people really started to promote the novelty of it all—but they’ve always been here.” Our hop slingers are also proud of the fact that they are giving home brewers the same quality hops that the bigger guys are getting. From the same farms, the same crop year. “We are helping them produce a higher quality product, even if it’s only for their friends and family,” says John, “from farm to foil to kettle.”

So what does the future hold for Yakima Valley Hops? One idea is to open a taproom that showcases craft beers, a place for people to fill a growler and congregate with their friends. And of course the hop and craft beer industries themselves show no sign of slowing down, so that business thing can keep rolling along. We look on as our two hop wranglers stare off steely eyed into the fading desert night. There are big things on the horizon for Yakima Valley Hops, that is for sure…

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Contributed by Malissa Gatton. Malissa practices the crafts of marketing and graphic design when she’s not curating rocks, bones and tumbleweeds. She resides in the Yakima Valley.