Hoptrip day 4

Yakima Valley: Bale Breaker and Hopsteiner

After tasting a dizzying number of fresh hop IPAs in Portland, we hit the road. At the crack of dawn we left Portland’s electric green for hop country in Yakima Valley. The region markets itself as ‘The Palm Springs of Washington’ for its remote hedonism, but for craft beer lovers like us it is the Hop Garden of Eden. The drive through the Columbia River Gorge is breathtaking, but Yakima is all agriculture and suburban sprawl. Palm Springs be damned, you visit Yakima for the beer. 

Our first stop was Hopsteiner where we spent half a day combing and sifting and sniffing big hop varieties. For reasons both obvious and maybe less so, we cannot reveal much about the hops we tested and ordered. This was the case at Crosby Hops earlier in the week and will be the case at Yakima Chiefs and Barth Haas as well. (We are assuming the readers of our blog know that Hopsteiner, Yakima Chiefs and Haas are the Big 3 in the hops. If you didn’t, know you do.)

After Hopsteiner, our senses needed a break, and in Yakima Valley our go-to destination is the terrace of Bale Breaker Brewing. Bale Breaker is an outlier in the industry in that it is both a respected hop farm and independent craft brewery. The family has been growing hops since 1932 and opened the brewery in 2013 in route to becoming one of Washington’s most respected brands. This vertical integration of source and output has made Bale Breaker an IPA pilgrimage site as well as a laboratory for new ideas and the exchange of information. Put simply, it is the place you want to be during the hop harvest, and the one brewery you’ll dream about most when you return back home. 

We ate tacos on the terrace with Meghann and Kevin Quinn, and we picked their brains on the state of industry, hop farming and the advantages they have in being a fourth-generation Yakima valley farming family (Meghann’s the farmer, Kevin the brewer). We’ll publish our in-depth interview later on this blog. Of course, after the interview we spent the rest of the day attempting to taste every Bale Breaker beer on tap. 

In the end, we decided the best beer we sipped was their Green Rush Fresh Hop IPA, a fresh hop Indian Pale ate brewed in collaboration with Russian River (fresh Simcoe, Citra Cryo and Krush). Why? It’s hard to beat fresh hop experience with that typical bitterness Russian River does so well. Special mention goes to Kia Ora Fresh Hop XPA (a collab with Mac Hops brewed with fresh Simcoe, Citra, Nectaron, Riwaka, Nelson Sauvin Cryo). Also, in rare defiance of Yakima Valley’s fresh hop gods, we enjoyed Bale Breaker’s Dormancy Breakfast Stout with Simcoe and Ahtanum. 

Whereas Portland is fun, Yakima Valley requires a leveling up. For the next few days Uiltje is bringing our best A game. Tomorrow to Yakima Chiefs, the day after BarthHaas.