Special Report
Yakimania II: A Tour of Hop Heaven

A band of intrepid home brewers visited America's premier hop country during the harvest season. One member filed this report for BrewingTechniques.

It all began, as many resolutions do, over a good pint of beer. John Farver and Phil Crane, two of the more enthusiastic members of the Yakima Enthusiastic Ale and Stout Tasters (YEAST) homebrewing club, had come up with a great idea. After exchanging notes with other home brewers at Washington's Herbfarm Microbrew Festival in June, 1993, John and Phil organized Yakimania, a hop country tour and homebrew club event designed to coincide with the harvest in the Yakima Valley, by far the nation's greatest hop growing region.

Responding to requests from home brewers all over the Pacific Northwest to sponsor a look at the inside of hops operations, the organizers decided to do it all on one big weekend in late August. In one day, participants could tour the oldest Northwest craft brewery (Grant's), visit one of the largest hop processors and brokers in the world (Hopunion USA), and tour a working hop ranch in mid-harvest, topped off with an evening barbecue at the local apple orchard of fellow member Eric Berghoff.

Anticipation mounted as word got out to all Northwest homebrew clubs. The sponsors were lined up: Grant's Yakima Brewing Company, Hopunion USA, Roy Farms, and the Hopstract extract plant. Volunteers were mobilized to help as guides, and directions were sent out to brewers all over the map.

When it finally happened on 28-29 August 1993, the response was impressive: nearly 50 home brewers and friends from more than half a dozen clubs in the United States and Canada converged on Yakima for a memorable weekend. As John Farver, well known for his oratory powers, put it: "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we did here today: but damn, it was fun, wasn't it?"

A tradition was born, and the event was repeated this year. Yakimania II was held 20-21 August 1994, and this year's attendance swelled to 70 people from 11 clubs in Washington, Oregon, ldaho, and British Columbia. Even professional brewers Rande Reed (Thomas Kemper Brewing Co.) and Brian Johnson (Fort Spokane Brewery) joined the enthusiastic crowd. Although hot weather had delayed the l994 hop harvest, the timing was again perfect - the early ripening varieties were just beginning to come in. The tour began with a look inside the Yakima Brewing & Malting Company, hosted by pioneer craft brewer Bert Grant himself. The Scottish-born Grant worked for more than 20 years as a hop specialist for Carling O'Keefe and other Canadian breweries before deciding to brew his own in 1981. Grant's was the first true brewpub in the United States; it opened in 1982.

Grant entertained his visitors with many anecdotes about the brewing business, including his well-known battles with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) over such issues as posting the nutritional contents of beers on labels, making a hard cider that the feds considered wine, and using the image of an Irish stone cross (a "religious symbol") on his Celtic Ale label. He has long been the lightning rod for small brewers' concerns about federal overregulation and anti-alcohol laws that needlessly inhibit their business. With his Scottish clansman's sword proudly displayed in his office, "to enforce the brewery's no-smoking rule," Grant makes no bones about being a fighter, a position that has won him the respect of brewers and consumers alike.

Ralph Olson, the genial vice-president of operations of Hopunion USA, is less confrontational but equally adept in his field. He oversees the handling of millions of pounds of hops annually (Yakima accounts for over 70% of all American production). The sheer scale of Hopunion's facility filled Yakimania II participants with a sense of awe. Walking from bright sunshine into a dark warehouse maintained between 26°F and 32 °F (-3 to 0 °C) and piled floor to ceiling with 10,000 bales of fresh hops was nearlya religious experience. The pungent aroma was a whiff of heaven to many a Yakimaniac.

Like nearly every other hop processor in Yakima, Hopunion is German-owned. The parent company was founded by Johannes Scharrer, the mayor of Nuremburg, in l809. It has other holdings in Australia, the Czech Republic, England, and France. The truly international nature of the hop business was revealed when Olson told us that he has now shipped hops from Yakima to every continent on Earth. "I sent some to home brewers at the South Pole this year!" Olson said. "It was a group from Purdue University who evidently like their beer cold." Olson, who has been with Hopunion since 1986, is now in charge of marketing and sales for small brewers. Although the company services Budweiser and other brewery giants, he has made a specialty of working with craft breweries in the United States. Hopunion currently buys from over 30 growers in the Yakima area and owns two ranches with about 650 acres of its own.

After a further tour of the warehouses led by Ralph Woodall, the company's traffic operations manager, we carpooled to the neighboring town of Moxee, about 10 miles to the east. Here Yakimaniacs met Leslie Roy, one of the owners of Roy Farms. This large hop ranch of several hundred acres was just beginning its harvest of Tettnanger hops, an activity that would continue 24 hours/day through mid-September. Another huge operation, Roy Farms is fairly normal for Yakima. "In Germany, there are over 3000 hop growers for their 40,000 acres," Roy told us. "Here we have only about 40 growers for 30,000 acres, so the ranches tend to be quite large."

Roy showed us how the 18-ft plants are trained on coconut-fiber rope, three or four vines per strand. The hops are irrigated and fertilized daily for maximum growth. At harvest, workers with machetes cut the vines at top and bottom, dropping them into the scoop-shaped beds of trucks. At the warehouse, these are unloaded onto an assortment of hooks, conveyors, pulleys, and drums to shake the cones free of stems and leaves. We braved the deafening racket of the building ("better than a ride at Disneyland," according to one Yakimaniac) to watch the hops move to the drying rooms. Here, in a separate building heated by boilers to over 140 °F (60 °C), the hop cones are dried in long floor bins. Workers with special pitchforks designed to minimize damage to the hop flowers turn the piles often for uniform drying. A few hopheads could not resist the opportunity to take the plunge, swearing it might be the best way for a brewer to die.

When the moisture level of the hops drops to 7-10%, they are conveyed to a third building for baling. We watched as simple hydraulic pressure in a gravity-fed box press converted the loose flowers into tight bales weighing about 200 lb each. Finally, the bales were wrapped with the traditional burlap (or polypropylene, as specified by some breweries), marked, and shipped to warehouses for storage or pelletizing.

The process of converting dried hop cones into uniformly compressed pellets (Figure 1) has revolutionized the hop and brewing business, allowing for long-term storage at cold temperatures with very little drop in alpha acids. Although some oxidation of the hops takes place (according to Olson, usually involving no more than a 0.3% drop in alpha levels), the benefits of stability and compactness far outweigh the drawbacks.

By this time most Yakimaniacs had developed a thirst that needed to be satisfied. After a brief stop at Grant's Pub to sample his just-released Perfect Porter and some cask-conditioned Scottish Ale, we drove to the Berghoff Orchard at the western edge of town. As the sun set on a perfect summer day, over a dozen kegs of homebrew were tapped and the sizzling barbecues were lit. The revelry continued into the night under a full moon as specialty brews emerged from the shadows. Meanwhile, a forest-fiery brown ale from the Leavenworth Brewery called "Dante's Infernal" made its auspicious debut. A cauldron of fresh corn on the cob was enthusiastically received. An impromptu medley of sea chanties was bravely launched.

Someone known only as "Old Bob," who claimed acquaintance with Michael Jackson, made a brief but noteworthy appearance. As the bright applewood bonfire faded to ashes, Yakimaniacs retired to their tents or vans to sleep under the stars.

Does it get any better than this? Was this a foretaste of home brewers' heaven? We'll have to wait at least until Yakimania III to know for sure.