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Hop Terroir And Timings With The Hop Professor
409 Plays13 days ago
In an industry with no shortage of hop lovers, Tom Shellhammer’s interest in the wondrous plant goes further than most.
The Professor of Fermentation Science at Oregon State University is an internationally-recognised expert in hop chemistry who frequently travels the globe to provide his insights into all things hops. Indeed, as this podcast goes live, Tom is spending a multi-month sabbatical in New Zealand in order to better understand the industry there.
Taking advantage of his time Down Under, we caught up with him during the Chartered Institute of Brewing and Distilling's 2025 Asia Pacific Convention in Hobart. There, Will and Craig chatted to Tom about his fields of interest, including how terroir and the moment within harvest that hops are picked can impact the flavours and aromas brewers are able to elicit from different varieties.
Ahead of the main interview, James and Will chat about some sobering recent news, with Molly Rose appointing liquidators and Currumbin Valley closing the doors of their Gold Coast operation for good.
We also discuss the IBA’s hopes and plans for the upcoming Federal Election, Pink Boots’ mentorship program, and reveal the latest winner of our Have You Done A Rallings? campaign celebrating good beer citizens.
Start of segments:
- 13:30 – Tom Shellhammer Part 1
- 38:29 – Have You Done A Rallings?
- 41:27 – Tom Shellhammer Part 2
Relevant links:
- Liquidators Brought In By Molly Rose
- Currumbin Valley Closes
- Indie Beer’s Campaign 2025
- Pink Boots Mentorship
- Meet The Hop Doctor
- Nominate a good beer citizen
- Nominate a Bluestone Yeast Brewery of the Month
- The Crafty Pint's beer club: The Crafty Cabal
To find out more about supporting the show or otherwise partnering with The Crafty Pint, contact craig@craftypint.com.
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Transcript
Closure of Molly Rose Brewing
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Crafty Pine podcast. I'm Will. I'm James and it's been a pretty sobering week. Yeah. The world of beer, unfortunately. um I guess, you know, the the roller coaster that's been there for the last few years continues to have its ups and downs. And this week's been a bit of a bit of a downer, I think, for for many people in the beer industry, starting off with the news on Monday with Molly Rose Brewing.
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah, umm just gone into liquidation rather than a voluntary administration or anything like that. They've they've closed their doors immediately. um If you read the story, which will be linked in the show notes, obviously Nick is hoping there's a sort of possibility of saving it, but it's something we've just got to wait and see, I think.
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, and and I guess full disclosure, i'm a good friend of Nick Sandry, the Molly Rose founder. I've known him since the early days of the brewery, probably he'd met met him before before he started on that mission. Our families have hung out together, so you know really wishing him and his family and all the awesome team there well.
00:01:02
Speaker
um But yeah, mean the noise is coming from the brewery that they hope that to have a plan to bring it back. But think we'll wait and see what happens on that front.
Challenges in the Brewing Industry
00:01:11
Speaker
Obviously, it's a sign of just how challenging things remain out there.
00:01:14
Speaker
I think what's been notable to me is that I know this is... you know Every case is slightly different, but it's not VA. We got to the point over the last a year or so whenever we put out a story about someone going to voluntary administration as opposed to liquidation, there'd let's just say, a broad gmutt of responses, including some people going, oh, this has just been done to you know wipe out debt, blah, blah, blah.
00:01:35
Speaker
in this case, everything I've seen has been 100%, you know, just people gutted and yeah very supportive, which I think is testament to what Molly Rose and, you know, what Nick and the team have attempted to do over the years. You know, they've been looking to elevate the the way that beer is perceived, the way, you know, beer and food pairing, not just with beer, you know, they've done some amazing community focused events. They've done some very different events.
00:01:55
Speaker
They presented themselves in a way that isn't traditional for beer, but which I think has been important to try and bring new people in, which they have done. um And I guess, you know, Who knows, it you know, the the four in in in the workings the business. I know they've made some changes over the last year, a year or so trying to find a way through. um But I guess, you know, heavy investment in that amazing, you know, new bar and restaurant next to the old brew pub at a time when cost been going up, you know, and.
00:02:22
Speaker
Very high level quality of food as well. Really, it's a premium offering across the board. Anyone who's been there will know that. And yeah. in this, at this moment in time, cost of living crisis, I think people might still be going to some high end restaurants, but potentially not ones that are in a brewery or. I think so. Yeah. I think, you know, at the very upper end of society, people are still living, living the life of Riley. There's a lot of Teslas on the road. I noticed and that's wrong for a number of reasons. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, but I think, you know, people are probably going to be going to restaurants, but dropping $500 in bottle of wine, as opposed to going, well, let's go and check out this brewery, trying to be some really high end. So,
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, it just seems very unfortunate. you know Maybe there'll be some good news in in the in the the next week or two. It's obviously a high-risk strategy going down this route. But yeah, wishing them all well. we've you know We've done some great events and we've made some beer with them over the years. So we'll see what transpires there.
00:03:13
Speaker
um And another one from another part of the country, which I'm sure left many people pretty sad. And there's been, I guess, some more sort of cryptic posting around this for the last week or two as to what's happened. But you spoke to s Smokey earlier today.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, so Crumbin Valley Brewing's closed. It's it's um sort of temporarily shut last week. The door's shut. um They were hoping to be able to sell the business. There was a sale being discussed and and that's now fallen through. So it's moved into the permanently closed business.
00:03:40
Speaker
category of breweries or the doors don't look like they'll open again. um Yeah, I spoke to Smokey recently. He's obviously gutted, but put a lot into that brewery. Again, there just wasn't enough but money need to sustain it. um They were looking at a whole range of options. They've had it sort of on the market for some time or working with a broker, but um nothing's come through, unfortunately. Yeah.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, you know, they've been hit by all manner of, I guess, um unpredictable things, you know, where Smokey's main brewery is up on them the hillside. He's been hit but by some pretty severe storms over the years. He's lost power, a few you know, on a few occasions. There's just been a number of, you know, external factors. And i think,
00:04:20
Speaker
you can sort of take a number of these cases from recent years and look at it and go well a lot of these things may not have come to a head in the good times yeah whether it was the when there was money flowing through the economy and through the beer world you know potentially it masked whether it was you know business challenges or whether it was you know you could ride out the storm yeah forgive me for time and i think maybe now you know that that sort of that that that masking that sort of that safety net isn't there and you know that's why a lot of people are falling foul Yeah, I mean, talking talking to him, Smokey points out that, you know, not that long ago you'd walk into it into a bottle shop and there would be six fridges, eight fridges of lot of craft beer and now you go into those same places and it's two.
00:05:00
Speaker
like Yeah, I mean, which is probablyly probably partly down to... lot of people do less limited releases. Yeah. You know, coming back to the Molly Rose thing, it's also people going, I'm looking for something affordable, like a cheaper case of beer or whatever, if I want to have a drink. And yeah, it's definitely challenge. So, you know, again, best wish to the team Crumbin. We've had some fun with them over the years. We've both been out to Smokey's Farm at different times. So, yeah, wishing them well. Yeah.
Politics and the Beer Industry
00:05:25
Speaker
um Which I guess puts even of great focus on a story that you ran on Monday. You spoke to Kylie, the CEO of the IBA, Independent Brewers Association, and Evan, the chair, I guess on the back of some of the stuff they presented at the High Country Hops. Yes. Yes. So you may have noticed in your podcast feed as well, there was a special Tuesday episode. um We recorded a number of chats during the High Country Hops and we planned to put them ah out at certain times.
00:05:51
Speaker
But we put the IBA out one out this week because it's very relevant to what they're trying to do right now. And, um yeah, we're in an election campaign right now. um The promises but beer, there have been promises for beer, so in terms of taxation, so that maybe that's something. But they're obviously not...
00:06:10
Speaker
the They're all they're not they' not great, I mean, really. in terms of Shuffling the decks, yeah ti de deck chairs on the Titanic kind moves as to how it feels when there's much bigger, you and you'd think more obvious sort of maybe harder work, more obvious things that could be done in terms of looking at the tax system, looking at yeah market access, what have you. Yeah, which is ah to do. Governments don't really want to um spend a lot of time reforming the tax base, I think, um across a range of reasons.
00:06:38
Speaker
But, you know, you could look at it and be like, well, these are the promises made. It's not going any further. That might be true. But at the end of the day we are in an election campaign at the moment. ah All the polls say it's going to be very tight.
00:06:49
Speaker
ah You can't. going If you live in a marginal seat, I think you're going to get pretty harassed over the next four weeks by volunteers i asking you for to vote for their person. So I think it is a good time to for people, they love craft beer, they work in the industry to to try and reinforce that message, try and get across because... Yeah, thats yeah you know potentially be an important part of their community. It's something that matters to a lot of people. Yeah, yeah absolutely. And a number of politicians have already made commitments. um So we'll see what happens, but I just think while the election's going on there's a whole range of resources on the IBA's website, Campaign 2025, you can draw on those and yeah, share them, even if it's a simple message of why is beer so expensive, what's going on here, get that conversation in front of politicians, because a lot of them really don't understand it as well, I think it's really important to get. like that They don't have a nuanced understanding of what's going on the industry, some people do, in the industry does, so it's about getting that message across. yeah
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah, you know we've got these breweries stepping in as the pubs before the pokies, as David Levin said in our Year in Beer Queensland chat last year. um And you know if they're under threat, then you'd just be left with the pubs and the pokies.
00:07:59
Speaker
you know yeah yeah like you know this These are providing a valuable, and i think, additional asset to lot of communities. um On that note though, how excited are you about the fact it's going to be a very close election as a politician? Well, I love watching elections and it's also Collingwood are playing that night as well. So I don't know, I'm going to have two screens up or something or do I go to the game and have Anthony Green on on my phone? we well We'll see. Yeah, yeah.
00:08:24
Speaker
It's been busy day.
Mentorship and Community Initiatives
00:08:25
Speaker
I'm not running the Alphington Primary School where i fair bar as well. So it's going to be it full-on May the 3rd for us all. yeah i'm And I guess i guess looking some forward a little bit more positive as well, and we ran a brief story last week about Pink Boot Society. yeah um They've launched their search for more mentors and mentees and to sort of work to, I guess, help improve the the quality and the knowledge based within the industry. Yeah, so yeah they're working with Jane Lewis on this, who's a, well, helped found the Australian chapter of the Pink Poot Society and um runs Full Colour Life now so and and spends a lot of her energy on coaching people and and those kind of things.
00:08:59
Speaker
So yeah I think importantly is if you've been in the industry for a long time and you feel like you've got something to give, um they're really looking for mentors as well across all genders um and their mentees. It's... um You know, talking to Joanna who who did it last year, she said, even if you're not sure, even if you think you're on the right path through your career, you're always going to get something out from it. So as well, a lot we we do a lot of sort of competitions and things, and sometimes it's frustratingly hard to get people to apply to anything. So if you're even thinking about applying and you're able to definitely do so. Yeah. Well, anton and talking competitions, they often relate to our beer club, The Crafty Cabal. We've got two events coming up next week for and our beer club members.
00:09:39
Speaker
If you're in Queensland, I'm flying up next week and will be at Heike in East Brisbane doing bit of a cross-pollination of the Crafty Pint podcast and the Pour It Out podcast from the guys at Ossie Beer Voyage and Heike Brewing.
00:09:51
Speaker
We've got Brewer Becky Centino joining us and also Ivy, the venue manager from Netherworld. um Tickets are 10 bucks, get your first beer free, jump onto the Crafty Pint events diary to check that out and if you're a bar member you can get tickets through the Cabal and get some additional bonuses as well.
00:10:06
Speaker
And then the following day, you will be at Rocky Ridge in Brunswick. Yes. And they're doing a special pre-launch event for their new core range Cali IPA, Cabal members only, and taste of the the taste of the new ipa guided tasting of a number of other funn fun beers they've got on at the minute, plus a four-pack of the new IPA to take away.
00:10:25
Speaker
Again, jump on craftycabal.com to grab your tickets for that. Great segue there, James, between competitions, pink boots, it all worked very well. And that brings us to this week's guest. I don't have a smart segue, unfortunately.
Interview with Tom Shellhammer on Hop Science
00:10:37
Speaker
I've been thinking about it yet.
00:10:39
Speaker
with hops and they're releasing Cali IPA and we've now got an American hop professor coming up as our main guest. How about that? i knew I should have let you do it. This is what years and years of journalism gets you.
00:10:50
Speaker
So this week's guest is Tom Shellhammer. um it It's one of our chats we had at CIBD conference recently. So it's Craig and i chatting to him. um Tom is, I mean, he's a world expert in hops. like he is He knows more about hop chemistry, I think I would say. Hopefully this doesn't offend any listeners and and but Just about anyone. He's, um fittingly, for a professor who studies hops, he's from Oregon State University. He's the Nor'wester Professor of Fermentation Science. I hope that's not a typo on their website. and Nor'wester is ah is a real thing. But Tom's been studying hops for a really long time. I first interviewed him in 2019 when he was actually also in Tasmania. I think he...
00:11:27
Speaker
It might have said he's only been to Tasmania in terms of Australian states, but he came over. Then the conversation was very much around hop creep. He was really talking about that a lot. now a lot of his focus is on hop maturity and timing of picking. So, you know, if you've had beers from the Hawkers, did an experimental series with this last year where they had ah early pick versus late pick hops. Range have been in this space. It's really interesting part of brewing um where people trying to see, you know, what impact...
00:11:56
Speaker
say, Citra Hops, which is one of Tom's focus, picked early versus picked late, have on um each other. So it's pretty technical chat. I think I managed to understand it, though, which is reassuring. But yeah, so um he's also, he's on a four-month sabbatical down here. Well, not down here, sorry, in New Zealand.
00:12:14
Speaker
So he's... Yeah. the different lot people Down under, I guess. And he's he's um spending his time sort of understanding the industry there. It sounds like a great job being a professor, the fact that you can just take this leave to sort of study whatever you want in the work. Don't get to the ideas.
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, well, that'll be up after after the break. We'll also have the latest winner in our Have You Done A Rallying's Good Beer Citizen campaign in the middle of that interview. um And that has been a nice reaction to our last Bluestone East Brewery the Month winner, the Social Brewers.
00:12:49
Speaker
So if if you want to nominate um your Brewery of the Month, anyone that you love out there for whatever they do, head to craftypint.com slash bluestone, um which just leaves us so with you, Will.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, so enjoy the chat and don't forget to like, subscribe and review. Cheers. Cheers. All
00:13:13
Speaker
aboard. Get ready to travel the world of beer at 22 pubs, bars and breweries across Melbourne this May. Next stop, Pint of Origin Festival.
00:13:25
Speaker
Visit pintoforigin.com.
00:13:31
Speaker
Tom, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. ah um Now, I've heard you described as a hop doctor, hop chemist, hop scientist. Can yeah you explain a little bit what what you do? What I do? Yeah, actually, there was some folks at Coors used to call me the brewgineer.
00:13:46
Speaker
Or the beergineer, yeah. Because I used to teach, like do a lot of training in brewing engineering. So, yeah, a whole bunch of different names. The beergineer. The beergineer. I love that. That's a great t-shirt. That's a great t-shirt. Yeah.
00:13:58
Speaker
And then I've had other students... after like an exam saying they've been shell hammered. And then there was another one, yeah, being shell hammered is like, um um like being inebriated, but still like the smartest guy in the room kind of thing. These are things I hear from like students later after they graduated. It's kind of hilarious.
00:14:21
Speaker
I'm going to make that a verb that we use in Australia now as well. that's Yeah, okay. very good What are you doing later tonight? Yeah, just so I just got shell hammered. yeah Too many IPAs. Yeah, exactly. But I still feel smart. yeah ah Yeah, so I'm a professor at Oregon State University and I work in a food science department.
00:14:39
Speaker
And so like the, at at a research university like OSU, um we've got three kind of main remits, which one is to like to educate people. and Another one is to carry out research and another one is like to connect with the industry. It's sort of the teaching research and extension. These are the words that within the university we would call that. So from a teaching perspective, I teach students how to brew beer. I teach them about the science and technology of beer making.
00:15:05
Speaker
And it's really about training people to get in the industry. It's not like homebrewing. It's like students that want to, that see themselves as having a career in either the craft industry or the big guys.
00:15:17
Speaker
And so that's been, you know, that's all that science and technology from a really fundamental level up to like applied. And then of course there's laboratory, like hands-on, how do you analyze raw materials in beer from a chemical,
00:15:32
Speaker
biochemical microbiological sensory physical perspective how to evaluate beer and then and then we do some continue continuing ed stuff people that are and in the in the industry um done some work with actually some i did quite a bit of work with ibd i'm here at a cibd conference so i was on their board of examiners for 17 years like writing exams and marking exams for people in the industry so that's kind of like the education part Then on the research part, I study beer and I study hops, kind of made a name for myself in the hop area.
00:16:03
Speaker
would say when I first came to OSU, it was really focused on how hops, like the interplay of brewing and hops. There's a lot of work on bitterness and understanding bitterness quality and how brewing affects bitterness.
00:16:15
Speaker
And then it kind of moved more into aromatics like hop aroma. And I would say for the last 10 years, yeah, eight to 10 years, I'm still doing that, but I'm starting to work my way upstream in terms of the like the whole supply chain, working closer with hop growers.
00:16:31
Speaker
We did work on hop kilning and hop maturity and hop terroir, things that at the grower level that have an impact on hop quality that ultimately manifest themselves in differences in beer quality.
00:16:45
Speaker
And the research is like blends chemistry, like analytical chemistry, deconstructing things chemically and measuring them um and sensory science. I really like sensory, I like statistics.
00:16:58
Speaker
And so it's kind of that those three kind of come together with the chemistry, sensory and and stats. um But also have this background in engineering, so I'm not basically trained as like an analytical chemist throughout school. I was trained more as a food scientist fermentation scientist, food scientist and food engineer.
00:17:13
Speaker
And lately I've grown into becoming an analytical chemist. So that's kind of the lens i look at beer through is like chemistry, sensory, those interactions.
00:17:24
Speaker
and I would say more and more like there's a biochemical element and now even like a microbiological element doing a lot of work on yeast hop interactions, biotransformation. So I'm becoming not a yeast expert, but certainly more cognizant of yeast and the interplay that yeast has with hops.
00:17:41
Speaker
So that's kind of the research part. And I'm training students to basically go out in the industry and be research leaders, heads of departments when I think I got a graduate degree or maybe even like junior professors.
00:17:52
Speaker
not mean They start off as junior. We all start off as junior professors, but as professors. Yeah. And then there's the outreach part. So that's connecting with folks in the industry, doing service for the industry. So I was chair president of the ASBC for a while. I was president of the District Northwest. We talked about briefly about the Board of Examiner stuff.
00:18:13
Speaker
with IBD. I was the chair of the international section of the IBD. So it's like being um a leader in the brewing industry, helping provide like expertise and guidance to the industry on a, call it a service level.
00:18:28
Speaker
But that service also is like the way to connect with folks in the industry. So i'm being visible, being well connected, I mean, it's kind of a circular thing, right?
00:18:38
Speaker
The more I'm connected with the industry, the more I understand what the industrial problems are and that feeds the research part. So I'm not just like at my desk, like, um I wonder what, you know, interesting topic will be. So it's staying closely connected.
00:18:51
Speaker
Like we have a huge pile of hops sitting in inventory and no one really knows like how do these hops age? yeah So we have we can go look in the literature and look at like how like European hops or bitter hops age, like the whole HSR thing's really about hop acid, alpha acids and how those change, but there's really little on hop aroma. So we're doing work on trying to understand how American aroma hops age so that we can give guidance to brewers Like they pull a bag out of inventory.
00:19:22
Speaker
Is it good? And trying to maybe challenge the concept that this kind of last in first out inventory management, that's kind of challenging. Like if you're always wanting just the freshest hops, then what happens is your inventory just gets older and older and older and older. And so being able to manage the inventory appropriately and making like data driven decisions as opposed to just emotional or well-intentioned, but maybe misguided ah decisions.
00:19:54
Speaker
So that connection with industry then is like what is driving this project, understanding that the industry needs some some data or some guidance on how this huge inventory of hops is aging.
00:20:11
Speaker
At what point do you stop using hops, like old hops, or how deep can you go? so yeah yeah because i mean there's an option there isn't the head to um potentially send them to be made into a advanced hot product at a certain time as well so yeah maybe it's like you you kind of have all these decisions like when you have like ah say a three-year-old hop and you've still got more hops coming in like the longer you hang on to it it's the fact that you're i mean there's a like an environmental impact right it's just being stored cold so you're you're burning energy and money to just sit on it and if there's no one intention of using it you need to like like to make a decision you know fish or cut bait kind of thing and either just jettison it or as you pointed out you know maybe try to get some value out of extracted um yeah the whole industry right now is kind of looking at what to do that and trying to
00:21:02
Speaker
um not right size but let's say rebalance demand and supply because right now we definitely have an oversupply yeah and it's not good for the industry right it's like whole um i would call it a ecosystem but it's probably like let's call it an economy needs to have adequate balance so that the growers are making money they can stay in business and the brewers can make money they can stay in business and um You know, just because you have a giant pile of hops, you can't just go to all the growers and say, you know what? I don't want any hops for two years. And then when you come back two years later, you got no industry left behind. So it's an interesting challenge for the for the economists.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah. the um The research side of what you're doing is fascinating. and and I think um kudos for, I think America is really sort of leading the way and in this sort of space. And, you know, just as another example of the kind of work that you're doing, I was lucky enough to attend the session you presented at the CIBD. Yeah. ah Which I think was amazing.
00:22:05
Speaker
probably one of the most specific focused research questions, you you as I understand it, you were looking at the impact of harvest timing on whether it's a late or an early early harvest on the quality of citra hops as an example, and and looking at different fields and and dates and so forth. But like how how does something like that get started? Is it just a curious question in in someone's mind? of that' so Yeah, there's a pretty interesting story to to get to like that talk that I gave...
00:22:34
Speaker
um I guess it was yesterday, right? So for about five years, we did work on hop kilning. So trying to understand how the temperature at which you kiln hops or dry hops impacts hop quality.
00:22:50
Speaker
And most, I would say almost all the research, most of the research was done at commercial scale rather than like little tiny pilot kilns.
00:23:02
Speaker
We wanted to do a commercial scale because we wanted the results to be easily transferable and and and um accepted as opposed to distrusted and rejected by the hop industry. So we worked with hop growers. We had close relationships with them and and they let us in like in the middle of harvest.
00:23:19
Speaker
We're doing these trials on like big kilns many times half side kill and half size comes but the half size kilns are still like 10 meters by five meters by one meter that's it there's like i don't know 10 000 pounds of white hot that's a big pizza oven exactly yeah and we do like multiple reps i'm the third like we go through but But to me, it looks like giant piles of hops. Of course, it's probably tiny in the whole production scale.
00:23:42
Speaker
So one of those ah growers that we worked with was Jason Peralt in Peralt Farms. And Jason Peralt, if you're not familiar your audiences are familiar, he's a pretty well-known guy in the hop industry.
00:23:56
Speaker
He's a multi-generational, like you know son of a multi-generational hop farmer. He's also a breeder. So varieties like mosaic, citra, those are his babies. So it's pretty cool. We're pretty familiar with those ones. Yeah, yeah, I know exactly. Yeah, it was really, i remember one time having before a HOP research council meeting, we meet twice a year to kind of share data with the members.
00:24:19
Speaker
And being at a bar and in Boise, Idaho, and they had this beer on, this is many years ago, called Sam. And stood for Simcoe, Amarillo, and Mosaic. And it was like, wow, I'm sitting, having a beer with Jason.
00:24:33
Speaker
And like, there's two of his hops are in this. And it's like this. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And essentially, that beer ultimately, you was ah made by Ten Barrel, was bought by AB. They couldn't call it Sam because Sam was like, you know, Sam Adams and Boston Lagers. So they decided to call it Joe.
00:24:48
Speaker
But I like the sand part because I could the Simcoe Amarillo Mosaic thing. Anyway, so I'm doing this work with with at at Jason's farm. And what we found is that We would do replicates um these on these on-farm trials.
00:25:02
Speaker
And there was clearly a temperature effect as we increased kilnene temperature, drying time shortened, obvious. um Interestingly enough, the chemistry really didn't change that much. That was really curious because we all assumed that temperature would have a big impact, but it didn't have as big an impact that it as we thought it would.
00:25:20
Speaker
But the one area that it consistently had an impact was on these hop creep enzymes, these enzymes that can break down dextrins and cause beer to re-ferment if you're a dry hot beer with lots of yeast. But all of the reps showed that rep two was either the same as rep one or lower in some cases consistently lower. And the time difference between rep one and what rep two would be like a day to up to like a week.
00:25:45
Speaker
We're just trying to squeeze our trials and in the midst of a commercial harvest. And so sometimes it's like, okay, we do rep one today and tomorrow we do rep two. And other times it's like, oh, we're changing like that kiln they want to use a small, a smaller kiln is going be used for something else. So have to come back later.
00:25:59
Speaker
So that got us thinking maybe there's like a rep effect on this. um I mean, there clearly there was a rep effect, but maybe like a time effect on this hop enzyme. And so after presenting that to the HOC, and we but we would also have like one-on-ones with the hop growers who were participating in their study so they could get more detailed, like deep dive in the research.
00:26:23
Speaker
Jason soon was like, why don't we do like a little trial next year. We'll just do like our own little um kind of harvest maturity study and we'll look at hop enzymes. Cool. It's great. And one of our former grads from our program, Ashley Hale was like, she was in charge of this. So she'd go out every week and pick a few strings of hops, run to the picker, dry them. and And then at the end of the season, boom, we got this package of like seven or six or seven samples hops and looked at the enzyme activity.
00:26:50
Speaker
But since we had them, we're like, okay, let's look at other things. Let's look at the chemistry and let's like smell these and kind of it was like, why not? And we saw like a clear impact on the, with time.
00:27:05
Speaker
And that was really striking. And so that like kind of lit up and shared that back with Jason. And then it was like, okay, let's, let's do this again next year, but let's like actually add more fields.
00:27:19
Speaker
Jason has a number growers that are pretty um science minded or science understanding. Like they understand like a single field, single year one-off. is intriguing, but it's not really sort defendable. Yeah. You need to like, they but at OSU and USDA, we do a lot of work with Jason and other growers like the Smiths, Loftus and Coleman Ag. And i mean, there's a whole long list of growers, but These are folks that are really interested in engaging with us.
00:27:48
Speaker
And I think because they do engage with scientists, they understand, okay, replication is important and having you know multiple sites, whatnot. So Jason said, we'll just we'll do we'll pick three fields.
00:28:00
Speaker
So the study just grew by kind of a factor of three, but actually was obliging. And then we just, okay, let's do that year after year. Like that that one field that we did in 2020, we saw it again in 2021 and it looked really similar. And then we had, you know, two other fields to go with that. And then we did that in 2022 and out of those three fields and we did it in 2023. And it was really cool to see that.
00:28:24
Speaker
And but at that point, we kind of like, ah let this is a chunk. Let's just... stop here from a data analysis perspective the project is still continuing we just had had an email yesterday with ashley like are we going to do 2025 and what we have done since 2022 is we've now kind of shifted to start well we added simcoe we wanted to kind of look at another variety and then we started looking at virus free versus virus infected rootstock so um Jason and Nackamon Chief Ranchers have built this huge state-of-the-art propagation center where they do tissue culture propagating and they can ensure that the material they're starting with when they propagate hops is virus-free. There's viruses on all the hop fields and the viruses get transmitted very easily through like the equipment, like when you when you crown a ah field or trim the top of crown, and you can transmit viruses.
00:29:21
Speaker
And historically the way propagation would work is that a farmer would just go out into the field and and like either cut rhizomes or they might do soft tissue propagation but it's typically happening at a farm base and there was no check on the quality of that like the genetic purity of the material that's being propagated so you could potentially be propagating off types that are mixed in or the virus level but once we started having access to like 100 certified virus-free rootstock Jason said man when you just like go out in the field they look the plants look different he feels like they mature differently and so what we got to was like in one year as we added ah few more fields one of the fields just looked weird
00:30:08
Speaker
And we we we weren't sure what to do. We checked our data. The data looks fine. And so in one of these one-on-ones with Jason, we show him the data. And he was like, huh, that's really interesting. That odd field, that's a virus-free field.
00:30:19
Speaker
So we're like, ooh. So that and that was in, was that two years ago? And we're like, OK, we're going to pivot. We're going take some of the existing citric fields in the study out. i think some of them might even been pulled out because Jason was changing things over.
00:30:34
Speaker
and kind of we shifted our attention to, um a design which is like looking at virus free versus virus infected. So in two years, we'll have another discussion and we can talk about the results of that.
00:30:47
Speaker
guess it's still early on. yeah But anyways, that's long answer to your question. Like how did we get this? So it kind of got started because we were doing kilning work. We were working with Jason and Jason was intrigued by like, we had enough data that we were scratching had like something seems like there's something here. And so that pilot year, that single field was enough to like,
00:31:06
Speaker
And for Jason, he's like, he gets value out of this. And it's kind of cool that he like, he puts in a huge amount of in-kind contribution, like Ashley's time, the picking facilities, drawing, all the stuff. And and it's just like, then gives us the samples and we collect the data from that.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah, and in terms of, it is an area of interest. um Our listeners might have had a range brewing in Queensland. They did beer with a um New Zealand's freestyle hop, Nelson Savon, a couple of weeks apart, I think, or maybe yeah late late March versus early April harvest. Yeah, yeah. Hawker's beer Melbourne has done it as well.
00:31:46
Speaker
I drank all those beers. Folks in Washington, CLS Farms has been doing this as well. So this understanding that late pick versus yeah early pick are different. yeah And so ah it's kind of timely, it's sort of serendipity, this Citroen maturity study we're talking about. yeah But it is sort of timely because um what we've seen is there clearly is a difference in terms of maturity, in terms of the hopperoma expression and it kind of circling back both to the study, the biochemical stuff, we could see that change um occurring every year, like with hop maturity, hop enzymes that go down.
00:32:22
Speaker
but i think what was really interesting was then to look at the chemistry and the sensory like the chemistry street watching that change a lot of it looks similar to what we've seen before then there's some newer stuff because a different variety like citra but like this og character the onion garlic character it's something that if here growers say no you know late picked mosaic or citric can get pretty oniony strata can do that and it was really interesting to see in the data like and And to be like on almost all my studies, I'm on the panel so I can smell and I can relate to the data. That was really interesting. i mean, even though everything's coming at you blind, you don't know everything's blind coded and randomized.
00:33:00
Speaker
There were samples that were just super oniony and other ones that were like very like bell peppery, vegetative. And then to look at the data and go, oh yeah, these early picked ones are clearly like, it's not just like we're changing intensity, we're like changing qualities.
00:33:15
Speaker
It kind of, um that that presentation and the fact that, yeah, the the flavor profile of that hop can change so dramatically. exactly. In just, the depending on the day that you pick it, basically. Yeah, exactly. It's so amazing.
00:33:28
Speaker
it kind of brought home to me just how, I guess, delicate the hop plant is. and and And, you know, i don't know. i Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, for me, wouldn't necessarily call it delicate, but it's certainly dynamic.
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, like like like the picking window is, is it seems like, really narrow, right? You go from this period where it's just, it smells hoppy, it's kind of home, it's kind of green.
00:33:51
Speaker
And then all of a sudden it's like, whoa, okay, it smells great. And then before you know it, you at least for a variety like Citra, you're into like, it smells great, but it smells pretty oniony, pretty garlicky, and it can move really deep into that.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, and is your hope, or it's probably more for the hop growers, but you know, that you might say, well, this is the ideal window or is it more or the change is interesting and it's changed like- Yeah, that's a good really a good question. Some brewers look for different- Right, so hbc the hop breeding company, they, they they for Citra, they set the picking window. I'm not sure exactly how, I should talk to Jason about like how he decided to do that, but HBC, like for the study, and I mean, basically every they say,
00:34:32
Speaker
You can in Washington, if you're growing it's 369, whatever cits ah You can't pick it earlier than September 6th and you can't pick it later than September 15th.
00:34:43
Speaker
So they like a dictate a nine day window. And yeah, ah there are instances where people pick outside that window, like a machine breaks down where you get like a lot of rain, you can't get in the field or there's there are these things that get in the way and you have to get the the hops out of the field.
00:34:59
Speaker
um Or maybe there's like disease pressure. You can see it coming. So let's pick it a little bit earlier. But generally it's like this tight window. So that part isn't, like moving.
00:35:11
Speaker
But the, what I'm hoping is that people understand that it is like your response. It's it hops seem delicate or it seems really dynamic. And what would be interesting to do in the future is rather than doing this that we could apart, like when you get in the window, maybe almost do it daily and kind of see how fast,
00:35:29
Speaker
is that change occurring? That's kind of a scientific curiosity, but it just that would just take a lot of resources in the middle of like the busiest time of the hop growing. But um it's right now it's sort of observational, and but I think the data can be used in a lot of different areas. One is this understanding that that for a variety like Citra, the difference between in late pick, early pick and late pick can be pretty dramatic.
00:35:54
Speaker
And there certainly are a lot of growers We've done some work earlier on, like Daniel Sharpe's work and also Scott LaFontaine's work that kind of points to later picked hop varieties having distinctly different characters in early.
00:36:09
Speaker
And so then growers are, i mean, brewers might be like, oh, I want only early picked or I want only late picked. Well, the early picked, I think is little bit easier proposition. The late picked, like once it starts getting late and it gets later and later, you run into these problems like, okay, now hop can go really OG for a variety like Citra.
00:36:28
Speaker
Not all varieties will do that. um And then you start running into pickability issues and You could run into weather issues depending upon where you are, like where this is grown in Oregon, or it could be an issue. So it helps, I think the brewer, temper the brewer's maybe expectation or perception that like I'm just gonna demand, like late pick like to understand that it's sensitive and that there's only so so far you can go before it can get be really stinky. but I call it stinky.
00:36:57
Speaker
Some brewers like that. Some brewers want,
00:37:01
Speaker
Dankness cannabis quality out of their. That's what I love. it and i fa Yeah. And so, um, not that late pick necessarily moves you into dank, but that, but. Um, there are some aromas that are kind of evocative of, of darkness, but you know, once it gets to really garlicky, okay, now that's just garlic. It's not, it's not weed anymore. It's more garlic. Yeah. I do wonder if you could, um, you know, there's the option for blending as well that you might want late and early harvest because your core range ISPA needs to take a certain way. you might be able to sort of build your beer around multiple, give it more dimensions. I think from a single hop variety. Yeah, you can play both sides of that coin. You can have either more dimensionality, it gives you more like options to create different products from the same hop.
00:37:47
Speaker
It also, the flip side is that it helps you understand that if you're gonna try to create uniformity, that there are different like features that are gonna come up. And like, as you point out, you could make, you could create blends that would help you target that you're not just at the whim of whatever sample comes across the selection table that you you you could know that, okay, if we tend to like the more OG character,
00:38:13
Speaker
Well, then looking for a later picked for it with that particular farm than the early picked stuff. Great. Tom, we might just take a quick break. Cheers.
00:38:30
Speaker
Welcome to our Have You Done a Rowling segment.
Celebrating Beer Community Contributions
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah, time celebrate some more good beer citizens around Australia. um Thanks to our partners at Rallings for helping us put this together. um We've had been through the nominations we've had from, I guess, people around the beer industry and members of the public.
00:38:45
Speaker
However, we're looking at something a little bit different this week to kick it off. and With an honourable mention for Scott Smith at Super Signs. As lot of people will be aware, Gabs kicks off early this year in Melbourne this weekend.
00:38:58
Speaker
We're running our Crafty Crawl sort of festival edition there again, where punters can sign up and try and find some... It's kind of a treasure hunt here, isn't it? yeah Treasure map around the place. And if they find all the signs and complete their treasure map, they go into a competition to win a whole bunch of beer and merch and stuff. yeah We wanted some signs doing, as usual, relatively last minute. And Scott at Super Science stepped up to the plate. And said, no worries, we'll get them done. And also Cal, co-founder of Kaiju, he's actually picking them up.
00:39:30
Speaker
for us and taking them to Gabs. So oh i yeah. but So we've done them and without charge going, we just love what you guys at Crafty can't do. So yeah, huge thanks to the guys at Super Signs. If you are going to Gabs this weekend, keep an eye out for um the big signs with the QR codes on and they'll be on six of the breweries around the festival.
00:39:48
Speaker
There's huge prizes to be won from each session. You'll see Will there potentially on Friday. I'll be there Saturday wandering around with my mum and dad in tow. should be interesting.
00:39:59
Speaker
And that brings us to this month's winner of Have You Done a Rowlings, which has been nominated by Keith Ashley from Running With Thieves in Frio. And Keith has nominated Steve Biscoe from Beer Drawing Services.
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And this is really a heartfelt one. um Keith says that Steve's incredible guy, runs an incredible business, and um he did go through a life-altering motorbike crash. And at the moment, he's trying to raise money for um another local hero, Des Gray from Supergas.
00:40:25
Speaker
who's facing his own health challenges. So, yeah, it's really good to see this sense of community rallying around each other, people looking after each other's health as well. It's really important. Well, Keith goes on to say that, you know, Des from Supergas will help anyone in WA at any time and is struggling at the moment.
00:40:44
Speaker
Steve has talked to the WA Hospo community to raise money for Des and as Keith signs off, Steve is the dictionary definition of a good beer citizen. So um thanks for the nomination Keith, congratulations to Steve, best of luck with the fundraising and wishing Des well with with his health challenges. If you'd like to nominate a good beer citizen, we're always looking for more nominations, it's you nice's good to Good to put it out there, all the good stuff that's happening around the beer industry.
00:41:11
Speaker
So you can nominate those at craftypint.com slash Rallings, which is R-A-L-L-I-N-G-S. And we'll be back with more of them in a few weeks' time. And on with the show. Cheers. Cheers.
00:41:28
Speaker
Welcome back. um Tom, what about location and terroir and hop growing? It's a similar thing to some of those beers I mentioned before with the late and early harvest. I have had some that where brewers really pushed that the the hops were grown on different farms and in the same part of America, same variety that they often taste different to me. I kind of do buy into it a fair bit. Like what's going on there or or do you think that's really important as well? we've done We've done several years of work on regional identity or terroir.
00:41:59
Speaker
And our work got started with interest from Coleman Ag, their largest hop grower in Oregon. And they had a field of, uh,
00:42:12
Speaker
Simcoe, I believe it was. um We did, we did terroir studies with Simcoe and with Mosaic and Cascade. But there's two, I think it was a Simcoe field. And like, brewers would come back year after year and then like, but the you but the blind evaluation of like, at selection would David PhD.: : pick out this one field and say I want that there's something that they really liked about this field and they were like what's going on like like is there a there there in terms of why this field is perceived as being different than others, or is it just a coincidence.
00:42:48
Speaker
And there's other examples where um brewers would have different perspectives on the expression of hop aroma of a particular variety based upon where it's grown, like Yakima grown, whatever cascade versus Oregon grown cascade.
00:43:04
Speaker
I think there's enough anecdotal stuff out there that like place matters. So that Coleman Ag Inquiry, like Liz Coleman called me up and said, do you think there's like a there there? Like, let's find out. So we started a small regional identity study that grew into a larger one the next year, which then like two years later, I think a year or two years later, grew into a really big one where we had 25 different growers, I think. um And we had 40 samples of hops coming from of Cascade and Mosaic. And it was like,
00:43:39
Speaker
Maybe it was 2020, right? So 10 different locations of different farms of Cascade and Valley Valley.
00:43:51
Speaker
We did it for Cascade and Mosaic. And with that, we're doing like soil measurements at the site where these particular fields that we're grabbing samples from and collecting weather data and agronomic data, spraying records, irrigation, all kinds of stuff to try to understand what's happening And then we look at the data from a chemistry and sensory perspective.
00:44:13
Speaker
And what we saw were pretty distinct differences between Wallina Valley and Yakima Valley, which is like not surprising. ah But what we also found was that there are pretty broad differences within each of these valleys. like There isn't much variation of the hop chemistry and hop aroma within the Willanette Valley and within the Ackerman Valley as there is between the two valleys.
00:44:36
Speaker
So it's not like, I'm holding my hands up now, but like, know, two clouds. the clouds are not like overlapping. there They're kind of distinct, but they're not like two distinct little blobs of point that clearly separated.
00:44:50
Speaker
The distance between these two is like the same as the distance within these two and groups. So it was kind of interesting to see. so I would, agree that that place has an importance.
00:45:03
Speaker
um I think it's more nuanced than the maturity stuff that we talked about. i think hop maturity has a bigger impact on the aromatic qualities that you'd find in a hop than the location difference.
00:45:18
Speaker
And one of the challenges with the any terroir-based trial is that you have maturity overlaid on it. Yeah. Right. So yeah it's hard to, since they're being done at commercial scale, well not at commercial scale, they're being done in commercial yards. wherere We're taking small samples um that we then harvest ourselves, dry ourselves to try to control that part.
00:45:43
Speaker
But nonetheless, we got get to get the hop before the grower harvests that field. And the grower is going to harvest that field based upon his or her decisions as to when they want to harvest. So we feel like, okay, it's within the picking range. But as we just talked about, like that picking window could have pretty distinct differences. That's like one of the things that's always in back my mind. Like, okay, to what degree do we have differences in maturity? Yeah.
00:46:07
Speaker
There's not the uniform maturity index. That's one of the challenges. Like every grower has a different set of criteria they used to determine when they pick. A common one that people use is dry matter.
00:46:18
Speaker
And so measure dry matter, like in this terroir study, and we don't see significant differences in dry matter between like the two locations. So that at least tells us, okay, at least it's not like all the Yakima samples were statistically at a different dry matter than the Oregon ones. And then you can just say, aha, okay, maybe maturity is a deal.
00:46:37
Speaker
But nonetheless, um we don't know to degree what that occurs. And so when you have um a beer made. i like these, the beers that are coming from single, like single variety, single farm.
00:46:52
Speaker
Those are really quite cool. We see that in Oregon, like there's a brewery in town that will have like Citra grown at Coleman Egg and then Citra grown at, you know, Peralt farms or wherever the different farms, they're kind of neat to have those laid out.
00:47:07
Speaker
and And oftentimes what we see, not oftentimes, the times I've seen it have not been like a competition. It's more like we're featuring all Coleman egg hop beer and maybe an all Crosby hop farm hop beer, but not necessarily same harvest year, same variety, as if you know, comparison.
00:47:29
Speaker
It's great storytelling and particularly for Oregonians, like you're, you're within drive, short driving distance where the hops are grown. So it feels very local. um But from the standpoint of,
00:47:43
Speaker
like if someone were to give you two beers and say okay this is the same harvest year same variety can you tell which one was grown in Oregon which one's grown in Yakima.
00:47:55
Speaker
India. No. Yeah. And that, I think that's one of the things that people are kind of curious, like, okay, what is the overriding, um characteristics from each of these, um, locations?
00:48:08
Speaker
And we don't have enough years to do it. You'd probably need to do the trial for like a minimum of five years. do that like 10 years to know if year after year, these regions had a similar kind of expression that was statistically different than another region.
00:48:25
Speaker
The fact that we've seen differences within these two fields, maybe two regions and across those regions is interesting, but maybe not surprising because of things we talked about. What would be really interesting is like if year after year after year you see like this particular field at Coleman Ag, year after year after year, people come back to that and they're trying to out why, what is it about that and and how is it it described?
00:48:46
Speaker
So we haven't done enough work to really answer that question because it's expensive and complicated work to do and i found the money and interest to do it. I think some some growers are really keen on terroir stuff because I think it helps them in terms of differentiation. it helps them in terms of connecting with the brewer.
00:49:05
Speaker
But there's other growers that are that don't like it at all because they view it as like winners and losers as opposed to differences which i um i suppose i can see that but you know especially when so many other factors are involved yeah but yeah yeah but it's just like it's like music like okay you can describe like different artists create different sounds doesn't necessarily mean one is better than the other. It's just like, what kind of music do you like? And that's why I think the whole regional identity part offers, I feel like it offers growers more storytelling, more benefits,
00:49:45
Speaker
um about like what's unique about their operation than it does the concern of somehow their location is going to be considered bad or less desirable but i'm not a girl be yeah i'm and not running a business of selling off so so i suppose i can yeah can understand the fear yeah i think the fear is unwarranted yeah but just makes life harder and harder for the hop grower potentially yeah yeah yeah i really have to silo things to that degree degree exactly yeah but yeah i think that thing with with like terroir is that it's different than in wine grapes because hops are just like a portion of ingredient composition yeah and
00:50:30
Speaker
I would say most brewers are not making single hop variety beers, but they're using a particular hop variety in combination with others. In fact, I think it creates a more interesting and complex beer when you do that as opposed to just single hop variety.
00:50:43
Speaker
So it's like, yeah, we can show there's a terroir difference, but in the end, does it like ultimately really matter if like you're going to blend some citra grown in Oregon with some, I don't know, Cascade grown in Washington and some mosaic grown in Idaho to create this really hot forward beer. Are you going to be able to really see these differences?
00:51:10
Speaker
Maybe, but it's, I think it's, you know, it's hard. You have all these other factors. Yeah, and the amount of beers drink that has hops from four continents, potentially. exactly. Three countries, three continents or something like that. Can totally happen. Yeah, exactly. You got New Zealand hop and American hop mixed with of yeah and and a German hop.
00:51:27
Speaker
It's exciting. It still feels like the... there's still so much to learn about hops. Yeah, that's the cool thing. that it's you know You see new products coming out from the hop suppliers all the time, the liquid, the cryo, and the all the different variants. It's not like everything old is new again.
00:51:41
Speaker
It's like this is new stuff, right? We haven't scratched surface yet. Yeah, exactly. so yeah The current thing like on thiols, it's like that's been really interesting to see um explode. Like these are compounds that we could smell, but we couldn't.
00:51:54
Speaker
detect until at least detect very easily until relatively recently and then we're like oh there's this whole non-terpene fraction like for years we've been focusing just on terpenes it's interesting like the cannabis industry yeah it's like they are terpenes terpenes terpenes yeah okay but there are other things in hop oil and hemp oil cannabis oil or aromatic fraction that um are important to aroma that are not tripping derived so that's kind of fun to there's new there's new space and from a scientist that's like
00:52:31
Speaker
It's fun, right? it's it's It's hard work to go back into a field that has been heavily plowed and plow it some more to find something new, you know, or um maybe that's not the right metaphor, but you know, it's like to dig through something.
00:52:43
Speaker
You see these guys out on the beach with like the metal detectors, like these old guys after a weekend looking for watches or whatever. um It's nice when that field is like, hasn't been touched. yeah It's like, oh man, look at what's here. And you can, it's the the questions, I don't know, it just seem,
00:53:01
Speaker
obvious and easier as opposed to going back through and trying to extract more information out of something that has been heavily researched. think scientists in general like to find these sort of greenfield spaces. New ground to till. This is it. Yeah. yeah Tom, and what about, you told us you were on holidays, but I can't help but notice holidays correspond perfectly with the harvest in New Zealand and in Australia, and you've mostly been in New Zealand for the last of while. so right now I'm on a sabbatical leave, and so...
00:53:34
Speaker
ah Sabbatical is kind of an interesting thing that is pretty unique. like Like academic sabbaticals are anywhere from six months to 12 months. mean I mean, I've heard other people taking sabbaticals, but they're often i like and a few weeks or a month. So the idea with sabbatical is that you can step away from like the day-to-day stuff that you do and You can do almost anything, but most of my colleagues kind of like study something new or so.
00:54:03
Speaker
For me, I did one in 2008 and 2009 in Berlin. That was pretty transformative on my view of beer and my connection in that and the international brewing scene. really understand European beer, really understand German beer and understand the science that goes on there, the training.
00:54:20
Speaker
So this year I'm in New Zealand for four months. I started, landed there like December 30th. And the idea is I'm spending the time connecting with the New Zealand hop industry. So I'm living just outside of Motueka, between Motueka and Nelson. So this is in the north part of the South Island, really close to where a lot of the hop growing is occurring and really close to where the New Zealand hop breeding ah energy is.
00:54:47
Speaker
And so it's a time to like make new connections, new professional connections and also new friendships and understand like how does the New Zealand hop industry work? Because I had really no idea and part because I'm brewing scientist, not a brewer. I'm not buying hops. I'm just kind of, I'm kind of sit on that on the sidelines and watch what goes on within the brewing community.
00:55:10
Speaker
So it's really interesting to understand like that New Zealand hop industry is very different than the U.S. industry and different than the Australian industry. So getting to understand geographically where hops are grown, like ergonomically, how are they grown and and and and starting next week, like how are they picked and and processed?
00:55:29
Speaker
What's the relationship like within the hop industry? It's pretty dynamic within the New Zealand industry right now, going from ah historically a single co-op to now a co-op with some individual growers and feels like there's a bit of an arms race as well. There's a lot of new products coming out. Yeah, exactly. And it's bro and it's grown tremendously.
00:55:48
Speaker
And one of the challenges right now is that there's like this huge glut of hops. so And that's a challenge not just for the Kiwis. It's a challenge for the entire global hop industry. as You have all this hop in inventory and there's new varieties coming on the market and there's you know this this balance of like growers needing to make a living and they got all this infrastructure as hops growing but there's not as much demand for some interesting to see how the industry responds to that
00:56:22
Speaker
Yeah, so it's it's time spent in New Zealand understanding what the hop industry is like. And of course, the New Zealand brewing industry, it's very different than the US brewing industry. So those are cool things.
00:56:33
Speaker
Visiting universities as well, understanding how the academic institutions work, how the relationships connect to the industry. So it's a nice opportunity to to kind of understand all that. And like, you know, as a North Northern hemisphere person to spend February in short pants. Yeah. It's just like so awesome. Mid February, February is like the month that our family hates the most. And in the Northwest, it's just dreary, dark, rainy.
00:57:03
Speaker
It's cold. It's just damp, right? it's not much There's colder spots in North America than Oregon. at least in the milot Valley, but it's pretty damp. And so to be like, have it just be intensely sunny.
00:57:13
Speaker
Yeah. And New Zealand. Enjoy the antiquity and Christmas. A summer Christmas. A summer Christmas? We arrived after Christmas. Oh, okay. Yeah, so we were there right before New Year's.
00:57:26
Speaker
Yeah. But we're still, but it was really interesting to to to go to people's houses and it's like they're in shorts, it's bright sunny, and in the corner is a Christmas tree and it's like, this seems like having a barbecue. Yeah.
00:57:39
Speaker
So that's been, that's been really cool. And then just understand, i think when I travel, you really understand the place. like Just the geographical location boom until you're actually in a car driving, you don't really understand like like how far away like Adelaide is from Melbourne.
00:57:57
Speaker
On a map, you're like, oh, okay. They're kind of close to each other when, in fact, they're not really close at all. And there's a whole lot of nothing in between. In between, right. And I haven't done that drive. But you know like in New Zealand, it's like it's kind of just the opposite.
00:58:09
Speaker
It's like 30 kilometers and it's you're in a different part of the... of the country yeah whereas we go to the states and uh i still remember the first time flying in over los angeles and thinking that's the entire population of my country but right there exactly yes you're flying over it right yeah yeah yeah so that's a it's been a ah great experience and i firmly believe that when you reside someplace for a while you really get to understand it at a deeper level you understand its culture you understand its people start making these lifelong friendships that kind of connect you to that place as opposed to a week's day
00:58:42
Speaker
like I'm kind of, I'm i'm at a conference here in Tasmania. came a little bit earlier. We're gonna leave a little bit later so we can explore. But there's plenty of people that have flown in on Sunday, gonna be here for the conference, gonna fly it on Friday. And if they've never been to Tasmania before, their view of Tasmania is just like downtown Harburg, Hobart, and this hotel. I'm like, oh, it's so unfortunate because Tasmania is such a cool, cool part of Australia.
00:59:10
Speaker
Amazing. ah We'll have to wrap up soon, Tom, but I was just thinking, do you have a favourite hop?
00:59:18
Speaker
Oh, no, I don't. I thought you were going to say citra. No, no, no, I don't. I haven't done a lot of work with Cassade. Is it easier to ask if you have a favourite child? Yeah, right. What's favourite beer? and Exactly. like No. um I think that um like kind of like the beer answer, I've got kind like a portfolio yeah of different beer styles that I like depending upon occasion, kind of same thing with hops.
00:59:44
Speaker
I'm intrigued with Citra, like Citra and Mosaic. I like Cascade, do a lot of work with Cascade, think makes great beer. also like German hop varieties. I mean, that that experience living in Berlin for a year and really doing a deep dive in German yellow beer, whoa, man.
00:59:59
Speaker
It really opens your mind, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Exactly. those hops and those, those work so well together. And like, it's, yeah, you can make an interesting Pilsner style beer with Kiwi hops, but it's a totally different thing. They've been, they've been growing for a long time. They, they've got it right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's its own thing. It's not like, I think we were talking before we got on, like,
01:00:26
Speaker
like a New Zealand Sots or there is like breeders for many years, like from the 50s to the 80s were often in other countries trying to develop hops that were like replacement varieties for German varieties.
01:00:39
Speaker
and um And that's probably because of the state of the time, like the the brewers were all making yellow lager bear. yeah And now we're kind of like We have that, but we have the ability to make beers or an interest to make beers that are expressive of all different kinds of aromas. And so rather than trying to hunt for replacement varieties, all the breeders now can look for unique, like unique things that are New Zealand or Australian based or.
01:01:07
Speaker
north american based which i think it would be so much funner for a hop breeder and we're not trying to replicate a czech pills with australian hops you can make like an australian pills great well thank you so much for joining us tom yeah thanks for having me i really enjoyed my first shell hammering yeah okay yeah it's been great highly recommend it to uh first timers cheers yeah
01:01:37
Speaker
The Crafty Pint podcast is produced and edited by Matt Hoffman. You can get all your beer-related news and reviews on the Crafty Pint website, craftypint.com, and can stay up to date on future podcast episodes via our socials.
01:01:51
Speaker
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01:02:07
Speaker
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