Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the new hop order presented by HPA, our series which explores what's happening at the very forefront of hop innovation from breeding and processing to brewing. You already know that HPA live and breathe Australian hops, but did you know they also supply an amazing range of US products?
Speaker: and European hops. As a proud member of Bathhouse, the world's leading supplier of hop products and related services, HPA get priority at the international selection tables. That means first pick of the finest hops in significant quantities sitting in local cool stores ready to go. Their US partner Haas is one of the country's most respected hop growers and joint venturer in the Hop Breeding Company or HBC.
Speaker: ah To talk more about HBC, its mission and sustainable brewing, I'm joined today by Haas Director of Hop Breeding, Michael Ferguson and Haas Sensory Manager, Jeff Daly. Guys, welcome to the show. Thank you. Happy to be back.
Speaker: Great to have you here, guys. So, um Michael, i want to I want to start with you. i want to give our listeners, i guess, an introduction to the Hop Breeding Company. Can you give me the the spiel on sort of how it came to be, who's involved and i guess what the core mission of the business is?
Speaker: Yeah, HPC formed in 2002. So it joined two private programs that already had been existing. PAWS, which I believe was 1979 or so, and Yakima Chief Ranches, i think somewhere in the 80s it was formed.
Speaker: But in 2002, basically combined all the genetic resources of the two companies into one entity. So we jointly develop genetics together. It's a complete, transparent collaboration.
Speaker: However, once something is commercialized, we are fierce competitors in the market. So you know our biggest competitor when we sell an HPT hop is Yakima Chief hops.
Speaker: So it's a unique, I've worked in three different crops. ah i don't I don't know the whole breeding world, but a joint venture is a pretty unique arrangement because usually proprietary breeding is all about separating yourself in the market, you know, market differentiation.
Speaker: But hops in many in many ways, it is a unique business. It's just, there's nothing. I've worked in many sectors of ag and it's just, it's its own unique beast.
Speaker: Yeah, wow. and it It works because they got citra from us and we got mosaic from them, right? so It sounds wonderful. it's sort of a we're We're partners in in science, research, and development, but as soon as the products are are at that commercial stage, we go out and fight tooth and nail.
Speaker: Absolutely. i mean, it really is, especially now. i came i started I'm in my 12th season now. I started in 2015, which was like peak craft, and amazing.
Speaker: even then you had to do a lot of work to get something up to say 50 acres or you to get a hundred thousand pounds of a hop sold in 2015 was a lot of work. And now it's, it's a lot of work to just find a home for 50,000 pounds hop for two of the biggest world's hop suppliers. That just, it's,
Speaker: not ah a fault of the variety it just shows you where there's already so many amazing varieties in the market to push out something or create space and the brewers uh brewers are already contracted you know so trying to find space in a new hot contract is it's a lot of work and And I guess the the benefits of this joint venture are immediately obvious when you think about the the lineup of hops that have come out of this partnership. So I understand you've you've developed Citra, Mosaic, Crush, any other sort of on the proprietary lineup?
Speaker: Our newest flavor forward variety would be Dulcita. We just commercialized that last year. That was 2016 cross. We moved it it was released really in the peak of craft and the commercial rollout its trial was during covid really ah so uh we're always tinkering with probably at least five new varieties that are out there on small acreage so we we have a very full pipeline maybe two full but we're trying to cover as many options as we can and are our our
Speaker: My kind of story here doing hot birdie now is we can develop hops. It's not hot. Breeding is not a slow. I always read about articles, almost brag. It takes 10 to 15 years.
Speaker: And it's like, well, biologically, the species, you can have it commercially viable in five to six years. But the market piece can take twice that long. It can take five, even 10 years to assess the market because ultimately it's a contracting business and we grow what brewers contract.
Speaker: It's not our call. yeah Maybe alpha acid. Alpha acid will take a stretch because it's a commodity business. But it when it comes to hops or a flavor ingredient driver, it's what brewers will come to us and contract by when the lark. Yeah.
Speaker: When supply needs to end. Yeah, if you speculate in the brew in the hop industry, you will get burned. ah Let's talk about one of the biggest hops out of that that partnership, out of HPC, Citra. It's arguably the most famous hop in the world right now, accounting for nearly 20% of US hop production. Jeff, can you take us back to the beginning and share the story, I guess, of of how Citra went from a small hill plot to this global phenomenon?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. And Michael, I'll need a little help on this because I think we deserve to talk about Gene and like what you've learned from him and and his stories on this too. But Citra came out of Gene's about his 10th season working here because I think he was hired in to lead the the Haas private breeding program in 1980. He crossed in like all that point,
Speaker: They were breeding for high alpha, trying a lot of weird things. I think, what what was the cross for Citra, Michael? i Like inbred fuggles and middle fruit, not expecting, you know, such a flavor pop.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, think the story, as I've been here, wanted to appreciate about Citra is, it is, it's a full-sib cross out of a middle fruit, middle fruit pedigree.
Speaker: And so for that time to be even messing with middle fruit, in an alpha market, you're not going to get one. You're there's no really aroma market for hops at this time.
Speaker: So to think you're going to get something viable out of an inbred cross is really a gamble. So that level of creativity that Jean pursued on that is not often, it's a missed story of the whole set. There's many citrus stories, but that's a If the ownership probably knew what he was doing, they're like, what you know man, what are you doing? This is insane.
Speaker: this is throughou For our listeners, this is Gene Probasco, is his your name? Yeah. And he was the the head of the the plant breeding program at Haas at the time. is that right?
Speaker: Exactly. or For 40-some years at Haas, 45, I think. Yeah, wow. And and but that's like what you're talking about, Michael, is the crapshoot with the breeding because messing around with middle fruit to make a high alpha, which he did. It's, you know, Citra 11% alpha plus or minus.
Speaker: Uh, but at that point it was a failed alpha because he was shooting for higher. He's shooting for like 17, 18. That's like that. That's still been the goal, uh, for the macro brewers at that point, brewing out or bring alpha extract based lagers and things like that.
Speaker: But he hit that out of the park, um, And it sat there for a while, though, because it was in that failed program. But he liked the aroma in the field. He thought it had value, but kept it a small plot until it was Dr. Tang at Molson Coors came by he started doing brewing trials on their pilot. And they loved it. I mean, obviously, didn't go anywhere because there's still the lager market.
Speaker: And it sat there. They had fun. And a couple other places trialed it early on, like Widmer Brewing. I believe they had a dry hop version of their Hevweizen, their wheat beer called X114, which was the experimental number for Citra at that point. And it kept on going, kept on slowly moving. And then after the recovery in the craft brewing market, after the first crash, it was the late ninety s about 2005.
Speaker: It started to pick up with an expansion to, i believe it's like a one acre plot. And that's coincided with the the craft ah brewing boom. And then 2007, 2008, it was released because all of those customer brewing trials feedbacks for those just two or three years, really, that it was on in that test phase with the open market, decided to let it out the gates.
Speaker: And it didn't take very long to overtake Cascade as the the number one hop in the fields. It's kind of a great story of, i guess, you know, on one hand, we're talking about hop development being, you know, there needs to be demand built up to to justify the supply. But I guess in this case, Gene is taking a little bit of a punt, but it still has, you know, taken that that amount of time to for the market to catch up with it.
Speaker: Yeah, at the time when that cross was made the there was probably commercially maybe three varieties being grown and maybe four customers, five, you know, maybe globally, you but pretty limited, nothing like now where there's so many crap brewers. But the Gene, you know, I wasn't here, obviously, but i you hear the stories. I worked beside him for a year, but he kept always a segment of the breeding plots called like Special Aroma.
Speaker: And so he knew he had something with citra, but the market just wasn't ready for it. ah know There just wasn't a home for it, but he knew he had something special from the beginning. It's just...
Speaker: In breeding, you have to keep your options pretty broad. And if you keep at it long enough, you'll eventually... if If you invest in breeding over a decade, I don't know anybody who hasn't really hit on it if you keep at it.
Speaker: Well, let's some change direction a little bit and and and talk about something where we're all sort of grappling with, climate change. um I can imagine this is putting enormous pressure on classic hop varieties. um I'd love to learn, I guess, how the HPC is responding to that challenge and, and I guess, what does sustainability look like in the context hop breeding, Michael?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it's... at the core of breeding, essentially because your boy is chasing yield. mean you want your ah The whole part of plant breeding is to make improvement.
Speaker: And in most crops, the variety turnover is very quick, very quick. You know, variety lifecycle. I came in from strawberries. I mean, it's pretty rare you'll have something that will last. If you have a strawberry cultivar that lasts more than 15 years, that's unheard of.
Speaker: ah So that's what hops, it's I guess it's a blessing that occurs. Brewers really love varieties. But it's almost to both ah everybody's detriment. It's not that we can't replace things, but people get really loyal to varieties.
Speaker: And there are certain cases where it's really tough to recreate a variety like Citra. and you know It's our own variety. I've made a lot of crosses. I get a lot of flavors that are similar to Citra out of the progeny, but I don't get improved yield or I get improved yield, but not the flavor.
Speaker: ah But there are certain styles of beer that mean like the noble, like noble lager hops. We have we have cracked into that crack that nut. We have hops that match that flavor profile.
Speaker: um Certainly in the alpha space, the office space can really turn over fast because it's it's a commodity. ah If I boil it down, it's really brewers really need to recognize how much power they have in this in this discussion.
Speaker: ah Because genetics improve, like we have a lot of options out there that are exciting and they're way better, way more sustainable. But getting brewers have to be engaged. That's the whole piece. And if you're talking about sustainability,
Speaker: I boil it down to don't get too lost in the weeds. It's basically output per unit. Yeah. If no you need the same amount of poles, the same amount of water fertilizer, if that unit of land can produce this amount of hops, that needs to be your core focus.
Speaker: Fantastic. um Let's talk about some of those experimental hops you mentioned because I understand that they are yielding more pounds of hops per acre than their classic counterparts. In particular, HBC 1134 and 1493, Jeff, I think are generating quite a bit of excitement. um Can you talk more about those varieties, I guess their flavour profiles and and how that yield is is coming together?
Speaker: Yeah. 1134, HBC is the most advanced hop in Michael's special lager breeding program. ah Immediately clicked, ah it being bred out of Herzbrugger Pure, along with some other proprietaries within the program.
Speaker: It makes an amazing lager. I think our our first trials, we're working with a couple, comparing it to some European varieties with a couple of brewers here in the States, and internally seeing that It really dialed into the the right IBUs, doing the actual math to make a recipe rather than just throwing hops at it like ah most IPAs.
Speaker: It made a really great ah traditional pilsner with some firm bitterness, slight citrus, slight herbal. So definitely going in that right direction. Despite in you know cone or pellet form having quite robust aromas, ah that citrus is very apparent when you rub the hops or the pellets, but when it dilutes out and there's an efficiency part of this, there's a sustainability part of this where...
Speaker: at its alpha level which is a bit higher about eight to eleven percent um you can use half as much to hit your ibu targets and still get an amazing logger out of it and that's one of the things that we're really excited about with this hop plus you know it's earlier in the season so it doesn't interfere with the harvest of the other aroma hops it's a huge yielder i think it's something like 2600 pounds per acre so what is that that's uh Actually, that would be about the same, maybe 2,600 kilograms per hectare, give or take, ah for your metric audiences down there. It's just it's really a phenomenal, op and we're excited. so It's already in.
Speaker: It's so far along and has such an appreciation by the brewers here. It's already in a number of you know major commercial loggers out there. And we're looking forward to getting some of those for customers here during harvest. Yeah, fantastic. And and I guess um how closely do these the new experimental varieties mirror that that sensory profiles of of their classic counterparts? And what does this progress that you've made mean for the future of brewing?
Speaker: Yeah, and and that that is a really important part of this is that brewers have expectations for these classic varieties. And so it's really important to flavor match rather than having something that's shiny and new and fun. It really has to fit in with something as dialed in as, you know, like a Pilsner Kell or something like that.
Speaker: um In the case of 1134, coming out of Herzbrugger, there's expectations for it to be in that direction. Herzbrugger, maybe Sots, something in that way. ah But with that sort of clear ah citrus characteristic, you know, from our brewing trials and our pellet sensory comparison, Saphir is a really strong match for it. with If you use it right, you know, every recipe is different. Every brewery is different. It can also match for a lot of Sots.
Speaker: ah Sounds amazing, Jeff. I think um that's, I guess, 1134, but you mentioned 1493 as well, which I think is a little bit further along the line. Can you can you tell me more about about that hop in particular?
Speaker: Yeah, 1493, it's further along than a lot of other lager hops during the program, but it's a little bit behind 1134. 1134 was kind of our first generation effort to crack that noble nut, so to speak.
Speaker: 1493, distant relation to middle fruit, but you know direct progeny of Glacier, which is an American lager hop. it ah Whereas 1134 is sapphire and has some very distinct profile to it with that citrus, 1493 makes the most wonderful beer-flavored beer.
Speaker: That's really the the key to it, where it has these classic characteristics that similar to middle fruit and Tet where it's Tet Nanger. Don't want to shorten that, but where it is sort of that muddled herb and spicy little woody, maybe a little bit floral. And we have a couple of beers downstairs that I have to stop drinking. So we actually have some to serve during harvest. It's it's phenomenal. And it's it's more in that expected range for brewers because there's there's some dogma out there that you can't make a good lager if the alpha is above six and 1493 is nailing that pretty darn good.
Speaker: um we're really excited to see what we can do with it in the next couple years. That's fantastic. and And it sounds like sensory plays such a key role in the whole process. Michael, I wonder if you might expand on that in in the role that sensory plays in HPC.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's the real key aspect. Of course, we harp on it, but it's a really, I think nobody matches the brewing. It's the intersection of brewing breeding and hop sensory.
Speaker: So that if youre if a brewer comes to us, a hop that we're gonna show you has been validated by internal research brewing. It's been categorized by sensory. It's like that when we're showing you something, it's not like, hey, rub this. It's like, here's a very well-made beer that we've our research brewery has made and trialed a lot of times.
Speaker: i you know Virgil McDonald, our And brewmaster, who's unfortunately about to retire soon, you know, he's got a, he's really his skill and then his team that he's trained over the years can, if you're going to make a pilsner, a lager, it needs to be well made well. Right. So that's a very important part developing new lager hops is that, you know, you need to know how to make lagers well.
Speaker: and understand them. Yeah, fantastic. Well, guys, thank you so much. It's been so good to learn more about the hop breeding company and the and the work that you're doing to make sure brewers have access to sustainable replacements for classic hops as climate continues to change. Brewers HBC 1134 and 1493 are available now in limited quantities alongside the other proprietary hops, including Citra, Mosaic, Crush, Dulcita, Sabro, Equinot and Talos. If you'd like to get your hands on any of these, reach out to your HPA rep and stay tuned for more episodes in the new hop order series presented by HPA looking at the latest hop innovations. Guys, thank you so much.
Speaker: Thank you. It's pleasure. Absolutely. Happy to here.
