As most beer enthusiasts know, hops play a vital role in the brewing process. The cone-shaped flowers impart distinct aromas that help distinguish, say, a pilsner from a pale ale.
Oregon is one of only three states, along with Washington and Idaho, that commercially grows hops. Oregon and Washington are also the only two states that have their own USDA-supported breeding programs to develop new varieties of hops.
But only Oregon can lay claim to the Strata hop, a variety that was developed by Indie Hops, bred at Oregon State University and released in 2018. Nearly all Strata hops today are being grown at just nine family farms in the Willamette Valley.
But this quintessentially Oregon hop is about to get a lot more exposure thanks to Oregon Homegrown, a statewide beer collaboration launching on May 23. For two weeks, more than 20 Oregon breweries will showcase the flavor versatility of Strata to create an array of beers, from a Vienna lager to a hazy IPA to a fruited ale.
Jeff Alworth is a journalist, author of several books on beer and the executive director of Celebrate Oregon Beer, a nonprofit he created last year that’s organizing the event. Gayle Goschie is a third-generation hop farmer and the co-owner of Goschie Farms in Silverton. They join us to share more details about Oregon Homegrown and what makes Strata hops so special.
Editor’s note: During the interview, one of our guests incorrectly stated where the founders of Indie Hops, the company that developed the Strata hop, went to college. Co-founder and CEO Jim Solberg attended Stanford University, and co-founder Roger Worthington attended University of Texas at Austin. They both grew up in Corvallis.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Celebrate hops and beer drinking will follow. That seems to be the hope behind a new statewide beer collaboration called Oregon Homegrown. The two-week effort launches this coming Friday. It will highlight more than 20 Oregon breweries that each made beers featuring the Strata hop. This variety was bred at Oregon State University and was released commercially in 2018. Right now, nearly all Strata hops are being grown at just nine family farms in the Willamette Valley.
Jeff Alworth is a journalist and the author of several books on beer. He’s the executive director of Celebrate Oregon Beer, the new nonprofit that organized this event. Gayle Goschie grows Strata hops among about a dozen others. As one of the co-owners of Goschie Farms in Silverton, she’s continuing the hop-growing legacy of her grandparents who first planted hops in the Willamette Valley in 1904. Jeff Alworth and Gayle Goschie, welcome to the show.
Jeff Alworth: Thanks.
Gayle Goschie: Thank you.
Miller: Jeff, first – why did you start Celebrate Oregon Beer?
Alworth: Oregon has one of the most special beer cultures in the world. As a writer, I realized that only when I started traveling around the world, and I looked at places like the Czech Republic and Bavaria, and saw what really deep beer culture looks like. We all knew that they had really deep beer culture and it reminded me of Oregon.
I felt like there are a lot of breweries in the United States, many wonderful breweries in the United States, but Oregon’s beer culture is pretty special. It includes things like these hops that have been grown in the Willamette Valley since, I think, the 1860s. We’ve had brewing here, continuously brewing in Oregon since the 1860s. But more people drink local beer in Oregon than anywhere else in the country and you’ll find local beer in more places than anywhere else in the country. The theater pub started in Oregon, and bowling alleys, grocery stores – you can find beer everywhere. So, that’s just not typical.
Miller: Would you have thought that this effort was as necessary, say, 15 years ago, when the craft beer industry seemed like an unstoppable force, as you think it’s necessary now?
Alworth: I think Oregonians are by nature fairly proud people of their local culture. And Oregon has had such good local beer for so long that I think we’ve kind of forgotten that it’s special. Everybody has beer, so you go visit your relatives out of state and there’s good beer there.
Miller: Although that wasn’t necessarily true 20 years ago.
Alworth: Yeah, that’s right. It seems like when you travel anywhere in the country that everybody has good beer, so it must all be the same. And I know people like Gayle, who grow these awesome hops, and I feel like, no, actually we have something special here and we need to start telling that story. When people taste this beer that is made here locally, they can actually taste Oregon hops or Oregon yeast – it’s also a part of our project – and even a little bit of Oregon barley, which Gayle also grows.
Miller: I do want to talk about yeast, because we’ve talked about hops before and I don’t think we’ve ever talked about brewers yeast or different strains with their four-digit numbers after them. But Gayle, why did your grandparents plant hops 121 years ago?
Goschie: My grandfather’s family came from Germany, so I think there was something to that. They came in 1885, his parents and uncle as well. And the period of 1885 to 1904, it was clearing the land and just living as bartering. It was in 1904 when, to our area, hops were the first cash crop. So that was fascinating. I think there was certainly some sort of a sentimental reach to Germany and where they came from.
Miller: Sentimental, but cash maybe trumps sentiment, if you’re a farmer who’s just getting by.
Goschie:That’s very true. And it was a decision point when farmers then were settling their ground and deciding, would they go ahead, make this investment and start to go into growing hops.
Miller: So let’s zoom forward 110 years or so. How did you decide to plant Strata hops?
Goschie: Well, it came because I met two very interesting gentlemen at Oregon State a few years prior to that, and they were starting this new company, Indie Hops. I was fascinated, because I love to meet people that don’t really come through the traditional years and generations of agriculture. So here were two guys that were Oregon State grads. They wanted to give back to the university that they attended and they loved beer. So that’s where it all started.
We became one of two farms in Oregon that planted the experimental plots for what was coming out of this new company. And one of the first that really proved to be successful and got to be released was Strata.
Miller: What had to go right in order for it to be successful? Because I imagine a lot of things, from the growing end on your side to the market end, it all had to work. So what’s on that list?
Goschie: Well, the first thing was having a hop breeder that was very curious and was looking at different materials. And then there was a lot of luck involved, because the cross itself … You’re taking a female hop and you are having open pollination with Strata. So it was hop pollen that was just blowing in the wind …
Miller: So literally, then, by chance?
Goschie: By chance, yeah. And then being able to take that, grow it out in a greenhouse, making sure it survived there, growing it out in one, two or three plants in a field, making sure it survived Oregon’s wet climate in the springtime. Making sure that the structure of the plant was something that a grower could work with, so that there was enough sunlight that was penetrating in the bind to be able to make those hops bloom … and it just goes on and on. There’s a lot of strings and a lot of different interests that are pulling a plant breeder that’s breeding hops as to what is successful.
Miller: But a big part of that, Jeff, is the ultimate flower and the flavor that brewers can extract or soak out of it. What makes this hop special? Why did it catch on? I mean, it’s something I’ve seen on beer cans and beer bottles a fair amount, even though it’s only been commercially available for seven years. So why do brewers like it?
Alworth: Yeah, it’s an unusual hop. It has really three components, I think that a taster might recognize. One is a kind of a gentle, citrusy quality, which is pretty common in Northwest hops. It’s what characterizes American hops, this little citrus quality you’ll find that in a lot of hops. It also has a little cannabis note, which is a savory note. The hop plant is distantly related to the cannabis plant.
Miller: That sort of dankness, earthy dankness?
Alworth: Yeah, dankness is a term that you hear in the craft beer market that confuses a lot of people, but it points to that cannabis quality. So that makes it work really well in traditional ales and lagers where you want a more herbal quality. And then it has this really big bright strawberry note, and it is the only hop that has a strawberry note that’s as bright and as clear. It just tastes like strawberry.
So you combine these, and brewers have techniques of pulling out different flavors from the hops through the brewing process. So they can really work with different hops to pull out different flavors and arrange them the way they want to.
Miller: You brought some samples here. I was thinking you might bring beer. Instead, you brought these plastic bags … or maybe they’re foil packets?
Alworth: They’re foil. Hops, if they’re stored well, will last years. But you do want to store them well because oxygen is doom.
So let’s start with another Oregon hop. This is the Sterling hop, which was bred back in 1990 to replace Czech Saaz.
Miller: This hop is now old enough to drink beer itself.
Alworth: That’s right, yeah. So, these are pellets and we can talk a little bit about how they’re packaged if you’re interested, but it’s basically just ground up hop.
Miller: Can I have one of those? So, what do I do here? It looks like rabbit food.
Alworth: Yeah, you could press it between your fingers, thumb and smell it.
Miller: OK, now it’s sort of crumbling …
Alworth: Now smell that. That’s Sterling.
Miller: Whoa, OK. What does it smell like to you? I’m out of words right now.
Alworth: It’s a little bit … for hops, there’s a hop smell, and all hops have this in common. You could tell if someone just held it in your nose that’s a hop.
Miller: It’s tangy, it’s a little sweet.
Alworth: Maybe earthy …
Miller: Yeah. I’ve made a gigantic mess in my palm right now.
Alworth: Yeah, sorry, that’s what happens. When you have the whole cone before they’ve been pelletized, you do a thing called rubbing, which is basically what you’re doing. So here are ...
Miller: Do you have another one now? OK.
Alworth: This one’s the Strata. So good luck with that.
Miller: [Laughs] Good luck to the people who … I’ll say this to our engineers, I will clean up all this dust before I leave. It’s an absolute mess right now.
OK, but now I have the Strata one, which already I can tell is way funkier.
Alworth: Yeah, it’s a lot brighter.
Miller: Wow, it smells amazing. It actually smells a lot like a lot of beers that are on the market right now, much more so than the other one. This smells more like serious New England-style IPAs.
Alworth: Yeah, this hop that you’re smelling right now is an American hop, and it comes from a lineage that is very expressive and very bright. And when American brewers started making beer, they had these really loud, brassy hops and they didn’t know what to do with them. It took decades before they started realizing that they should lean into them and make beers that really accentuate these hot flavors.
So the IPAs that came out of America were really facilitated by the hops. We, the brewers, started to realize, we want this brassiness that you’re smelling, this really intense flavor. Let’s accentuate that and see what we can come up with.
Miller: Gayle, we’ve talked in the past, maybe even with Jeff, about the changing tastes of American consumers. Some people have said, “Oh, I’m sick of super hop-forward beers.” Other people have said, “I’m gonna drink hard seltzer” or “no hardness.” “I’m gonna drink a lot less alcohol.” What’s it like to be a hop grower now, when tastes are changing and maybe fewer people want to put hops in their drinks?
Goschie: You know, I think it’s a time of challenge, actually. It’s a time of competition. That’s what’s happening. There’s so many other options that hop growers need to be a part of, that brewers need to be a part of going forward, and that is, making beers that are as sophisticated as the drinkers that are out there today, to appreciate them. So you’ve just had … and the hop smell is quaffing my way. Thank you, I appreciate it. [Laughs]
Miller: I believe it. You’re only six feet away, I imagine … because I’m embroiled in it right now. I imagine you’re getting your own high, here.
Goschie: So you’ve had this short lesson in being able to identify two different hops and the aromas of each one of those. Think of brewers as they’re putting more than one variety of hop in a beer, and in doing that, putting layers in. So, as the consumer becomes more sophisticated, those beers need to be sophisticated as well, and well balanced. It can be that what is characterized as a “hoppy” beer is maybe just too “hop forward.”
Miller: Gayle Goschie and Jeff Alworth, thanks so much.
Goschie / Alworth: Thank you.
Miller: Jeff Alworth is the executive director of Celebrate Oregon Beer. Gayle Goschie is a third-generation hop farmer, co-owner of Goschie Farms.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
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