Breeding

With picking now underway in the Pacific Northwest, there are three debutants at the harvest ball. What might Dolcita, Vera, and HQG4 add to your brewery’s portfolio?

Cuts to the federal workforce are directly hindering programs that breed new hop varieties and work to solve agronomic problems.

It’s rough out there—even for young, freshly developed hop cultivars. Yet while many brewers are buying fewer hops these days, the Help Wanted sign is still out for new ones.

It’s an immensely complex task, but sensory science and chemical analysis are bringing us closer to understanding the relationship between barley genetics and beer flavor.

After years of research, brewer-led efforts to develop more exotic, expressive hop varieties that anyone can plant are beginning to sprout.