In a year of pandemics, civil unrest, economic downturn, and rampant wildfires, nothing should really shock us anymore. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that windstorms in the Pacific Northwest have dealt a blow to the latter portion of this year’s hop harvest.
Yakima Chief Hops—the grower-owned network of farms that is the country’s largest hop company—reports that Labor Day windstorms damaged anywhere from 3 to 5 percent of the remaining, yet-to-be-harvested hop supply in Idaho and Washington.
Alex Rumbolz, a spokesman for Yakima Chief, tells the Brewing Industry Guide that the damage is limited to late-harvest varieties such as CTZ. “Luckily,” he says, “popular hops like Simcoe, Cascade, and Centennial were already harvested prior to the storm.”