Hoptrip Day 6

Since few people have ever spent a week smelling hops, it’s hard to appreciate the art of selecting them. Especially in a place like Yakima Valley, where the scent of hops is literally in the air. The hop selection sessions are long and intense. You have to train your brain to pick up on the subtle differences you’re looking for. To prepare, you avoid all coffee and spices; even scented deodorant is banned from the premises. 

For our final hop selection in the Yakima Valley, we head to BarthHaas,

one of the world’s largest hop suppliers. It’s the crack of dawn

And even though we're dying for coffee, we avoid it to spare our noses.

As always with BarthHaas, we are warmly welcomed at the door

and piled high with BarthHaas merchandise. After that, it's all business.

We shut ourselves away in a huge shed in the warehouse and immediately get to work on the hops that have been laid out and are waiting for us.

Paddi, Mike, and Tjebbe have all settled into a routine, each in silence

claiming their space, carefully arranging the canisters of

tasting and sniffing and rating each batch. Sniff, scribble, sniff,

score. When they're done, they compare their notes and eliminate the

the lowest-ranked options on their list. They weigh the pros and cons of the

the qualities they are looking for. It is professional and efficient. They only stop sniffing once they have reached a consensus. If they are still

Unhappy, they ask for more and do it all over again. So it goes

for hours on end until we get the hops we want. 

The session was a success, and afterwards we headed up to

BarthHaas’s Longmire Ranch, a new hop farm and harvest

facility in the Wenas Valley. We toured the greenhouse and the drying

rooms and the truly impressive Perrault Hop Harvester—with a footprint so large it takes up an entire warehouse. Naturally,

We're sampling a few experimental hop varieties. 

That evening, all roads in Yakima lead to the Bale Breaker

for the brewer's annual Post-Harvest Party. The party is packed with

brewers from around the world, as well as local farmers and field workers who made the harvest possible. The Post-Harvest

The party is a wonderful tradition and offers a rare opportunity to

Drink fresh hop IPAs with the workers who grew and processed the hops. It’s the unofficial end of the season. All the farmers we spoke to say

they're done for the season. Of course, in the spirit of solidarity, we

Celebrate this occasion with a fresh hop IPA. 

Our hop tour in the Yakima Valley may be over, but our trip

to the Pacific Northwest is not. In the morning we will head

in separate cars to Bend and Portland to gather more insights and inspiration for our upcoming collaboration with Deschutes.