Prior Year Hops

While the Pacific Northwest has been cutting back on acreage amid an ongoing hop surplus, the international picture is more complex. Here’s a look at 2024 acreage in various countries versus the previous year.

There’s a hop surplus now and a flush spot market, but that won’t always be true. What do hop merchants say brewers should be asking, to ensure quality and spend wisely?

In today’s hop-forward beers, whirlpool additions contribute many of the IBUs—yet the results are less clear-cut than adding to the boil. Research—some new, some not so new—may provide direction.

Brewer’s Gold established the viability of hybrid hops, and its offspring include some of modern brewing’s biggest aroma stars. Don’t call it a comeback, but Russian River is exploring what it may contribute today.

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.

Brewers share strategies for reducing costs on craft beer’s most competitive style.

As growers hunt for better visibility into the hop market’s future, researchers are looking into how brewing and growing practices might change in ways that directly affect the character of beer.

By making direct connections with farmers, wherever they are, brewers can improve the quality and variety of hops they get—even at the smallest breweries.

Recent experiments at New Belgium could help smaller breweries decide whether the benefits of mid-fermentation dry hopping are worth the potential costs.

There are hops in abundance, but beer sales are unpredictable—it’s no mystery why many small breweries are relying on the spot market. Yet many suppliers are aiming to lure brewers back to more flexible contracts that better suit today’s market.

Having a sensory panel to regularly evaluate your beer is good practice—but what about one to evaluate your hops? Brewers and hop-sensory experts share their best tips on starting up a specialized panel—and careful hop evaluation is something that even the smallest breweries can do.

Research into the aroma compounds that best survive the brewing process—and which hops are high in them—has changed how brewers add hops to their IPAs and other beers. As more research emerges, so do more opportunities to improve hop aroma.

While the numbers are far from final, there were modest steps toward rebalancing the market for U.S. aroma hops. Centennial and Simcoe had a rough year, while rain helped Germany and Czechia avoid a second consecutive disastrous harvest.

As hop growers and the brewing industry manage an ongoing hop surplus, farmers this year planted fewer acres. But will that mean fewer hops? Here, we sketch out the past 15 years of hop acreage, as well as hops kept in stock over that time.

Kevin Ashford, the award-winning brewmaster at Central California’s Figueroa Mountain, has some thoughts on the future of lager and New World hops. Are we already looking at the next pivotal moment in the evolution of craft beer?

Growers have reduced acreage, but that’s only part of a complex story. As the 2023 harvest approaches, balancing the market means reducing surpluses and figuring out how to do a better job of measuring true demand.

In a market with no room for error, neither is there room for avoidable off-flavors—including diacetyl and other issues caused by hop creep. Research continues into its causes and how best to avoid or eliminate it before beer leaves the brewery.

The 2022 harvest in Central Europe was historically bad, but the Pacific Northwest also had an off-year, with aromas of many varieties more muted than usual. Here’s how to make adjustments so you can brew the best beer from what you’ve got.

Last year’s disappointing harvests in Czechia and Germany were marked not only by substantially lower yield, but also by lower alpha-acid content, among other differences. Here’s the context and what you need to know to make adjustments in the brewhouse.

Many hop growers are cutting back on acreage this year, aiming to re-balance supply and demand while a large surplus sits in inventory. Here is some context on the situation and what it will mean for brewers.