Evaluating Hops: Tips from the Pros
Think the big guys have fancy methods of finding the best hops? Well, that may be true, but these three pros say that anyone can pick a good quality hop — you just need a good nose and to know what to look for.
Brewer: Larry Sidor, Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon
Cascade is probably our number one hop and then Nugget. US Tettnang is a favorite as well as Northern Brewer, East Kent Goldings and Centennial.
First and foremost we have 100% whole hop usage. We go to the field and select the hops in the middle to end of September in Yakima, Washington. What we’re looking for is things that are related to the hops that we prefer, such as aroma and alpha. Once we’ve seen the hops, we establish an aroma number between zero and ten, with ten being the highest quality, and a physical number for that hop based on its physical qualities, like the color, how shattered the cones are and how friable the cones are. As for aroma, look for typical aromas like citrus, herbal, piney, spicy, garlic, onion, grassy, tobacco, cheesy, earthy. Some are good, others, like some of the last ones mentioned, are defects.
Evaluating hops is mainly sensory. Look closely at how they are packaged — that’s the single biggest thing. Hops should be packed in a foil oxygen-barrier package — no plastic — and stored dark and cold. The ideal temperature for storing is around 26 °F (3 °C). If you open up a package of hops and they smell like cheese, they should go back — you deserve better than that. For pelletized hops, the pellets shouldn’t be too dense and the color shouldn’t be brown. The pellets should be dull green, not shiny, indicating it was pelletized at a cool temperature. If they are brown and shiny, it means there was too much heat during pelletization, and that will give a burned flavor.
Brewer: Mitch Steele, New Realm Brewing Co. in Atlanta, Georgia
We use a lot of Centennial, Ahtanum, and Magnum hops and smaller amounts of Simcoe, Amarillo, Mt. Hood, Warrior, Columbus and some others.
We get all our hops in pellet form, and as such they are vacuum packed and sealed on arrival. Hop pellets store better than whole hops compressed in bales, and I have more confidence that they are of good quality when they arrive at the brewery. One way we can tell if there’s a problem is by looking at the resulting beer — does it have the hop aroma, flavor, and bitterness we expect? In addition, on brew day, if the hop pellets look or smell different (a different shade of green, more or less stickiness, etc.) we usually start asking questions.
We have an opportunity at times to go to Washington State just after harvest and select hops straight from the bales. In this situation, you look for many of the same things: do the hops look nice and green, is there an absence of windburn or mold (discoloration of the cones), are the lupulin glands nice and bright yellow colored? Then you do what’s called a “rub” where you take some hops and rub them in between your hands to shatter the lupulin glands. Then you smell the hops and evaluate the flavor and select the lots with the most desirable aroma characteristics.
For a homebrewer, I would recommend using pellets, just because they store better. But if you want to use whole hops, look for good looking, uniformly colored hops that are in good condition. Hop plugs are a nice way to use whole hops, because they are so strongly compressed they don’t tend to oxidize as much or break apart. If they are brown or don’t have intact lupulin glands between the leaves of the cone, they have probably seen better days. Make sure you smell the hops, and look for a nice aroma.
Brewer: Dr. Val Peacock, Anheuser-Busch, Inc. in St. Louis, Missouri
With our premium brands, mostly what we use for hops is aroma varieties like Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, of which 2⁄3 comes from Germany and 1⁄3 from the US, some Saaz hops which come from our own farm in Idaho and we also use quite a bit of Willamette grown in Washington and Oregon. Those three make up about about 90% of our hops, but we also use a small amount of Strisselspalt from the Alsace region of France.
We have a lot of acreage contracted for growing hops and we own the hops right there on the farm. We always stay in contact with the farmers and visit the fields to make sure the quality is there for us — to make sure there is no disease or insects.
At Anheuser-Busch, hops are delivered in cloth bales as whole hops in a cold storage warehouse and a sample is taken randomly from a bale. We’ll look at the samples from the lot individually to see if the hops are damaged by diseases or insects and if they have been properly handled by the farmer. The farmer picks the hops and dries them from 80% to 10% moisture and you can ruin hops quite quickly by drying. On the other hand, if you don’t dry them enough there is combustibility — like wet hay — that is a hazard. And if that doesn’t happen, you may spoil them from mold forming, so drying is a key quality problem.
The hops should be green, telling you that they are free of diseases and picked early enough. If they were picked too late they will turn brown and the cones will break up when you bale them. On the other hand, if the farmer picked the hops too early, they’ll be very green and pretty, but won’t have much aroma to them — that might not be what you want.
We are capable of further testing here, but we buy hops based on someone touching, smelling and feeling the hops — basically that is going to tell you everything you need to know about hops. Don’t just look at them, smell them. If you’re buying hops and they are green and the cones are intact, take them and rub them in your hands hard, stick your nose in them and it will tell you a lot about the hops. If you’re smelling something in there that is unpleasant, it’s probably not something you want.
