Hops

At times, Odell Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado, has flirted with becoming a major national player. These days, McGivney as COO and Smitty as CEO are looking instead to dig deeper locally, appealing to a broader base of drinkers in their regional market.

In the first of a three-part series focusing on hop products that weren’t available to 20th-century brewers, Stan Hieronymus zooms in on all the potential of a pellet.

As usual, the recent Craft Brewers Conference was a chance for hop suppliers to unveil new products and projects relevant to brewers—pelletized wet hops, concentrated Nelson Sauvin, the arrival of Luminosa, the hop harvests Down Under, and more.

The pandemic streamlined the process of selling beer to accounts—and some of those changes are here to stay. While many embrace a return to in-person meetings, others prefer texts or online. To succeed today, sales reps need a more customized approach.

Fresh-hopped beers are becoming an increasingly viable option for breweries located far from harvest. Here are lessons from some wet-hop veterans on using the fresh, the green, and the unkilned.

Hops are an international crop. Here, we’ve charted the inflows and outflows of the U.S. hop market, as suppliers ship to brewers around the world and as American brewers import mainly from Europe, Oceania, and Britain.

From Anchovy to Vista, here are some interesting hop cultivars on the immediate horizon—plus a couple of experiments that may be the next to get names.

While hop harvest commences in the Southern Hemisphere, field work is already under way on many hop farms in the North. Here are some things that brewers should know about the season to come.

In this first installment of a series focusing on the long-term outlook for hops—and issues likely to affect brewers beyond 2022—Stan Hieronymus considers hop stunt viroid, as well as the future of the hop upon which American craft was built.

Relying on the spot market is no reason to accept hops that don’t meet your brewery’s standards. Here are tips from the hop-sensory pros on making sure you get the traits and quality you need.