The hop harvest is coming. From mid-August to September, hop yards all over America will be picking, bailing, kilning, processing and packaging hops into a variety of products that range from whole leaf hops and pellets to cryo hops and hop extracts. Most of the hop growing and thus harvesting is done in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon and Idaho), and it’s always a magical time of year to visit these hop yards in late summer and early fall when the harvest is in full swing (brings back memories).
To get you hyped for the hop harvest — like you need any extra hyping beyond fresh and wet hopped beer — Yakima Chief Hops (one of America’s biggest and best suppliers) has shared a report from the field as it prepares for the upcoming harvest. Joe Catron, director of grower services at Yakima Chief Ranches, gives us a pre-harvest update from Gasseling Ranches in Wapato, Washington, in the video above.
“This year is a little funky,” Catron says. “A lot of things seem to be a little bit early. We’ve got several growers in Oregon and a few up in Washington already picking Centennial.”
Catron goes onto to sample hops to determine which fields and bines need to be harvested when and in which order. He notes he expects this harvest to be quality, but…
“Certainly yields might be a little below average on a lot of brands due to just kind of a cool spring followed by a really rapid heat up and then a cool back down,” says Catron in the video. “It kind of tricked the plants into blooming early on a lot of varieties, so yields will be a little down but disease pressure has been really low. Mildews and mites really haven’t been too big of an issue on most farms this year, which has been excellent. To be able to reduce the chemical inputs to raise a crop is always a good thing.”
Learn more in the video above or by visiting Yakima Chief Hops online.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.