Hops used to be such an obscure crop that 15 years ago an annual convention for the commodity attracted about 100 people at a Holiday Inn Express in the Yakima area.
In contrast, just before the pandemic started in 2019, about 700 people attended the same gathering. It had moved to California, where the entire Monterey Bay Aquarium was rented out for one of the events.
The proliferation of craft breweries has sparked an elevated demand for hops, which are responsible for bitter and crisp flavors in beer, said Doug Walsh, a professor in Washington State University’s Department of Entomology and also works with the school’s extension agency.
Walsh, who works at WSU’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser, is the principal investigator for a $4.8 million, four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative.
The money will support wide-ranging hops research by a team of more than two dozen professors, scientists, graduate students and technicians from the USDA, WSU and other institutions, including the University of Idaho and Oregon State University.
Their work comes at a critical time for U.S. hops producers, many of whom are concentrated in a 30-mile radius around Sunnyside, Wash., on land irrigated by the Yakima River and its tributaries, where about 75 percent of U.S. hops are grown, Walsh said.
In the past decade and a half, a number of Washington state farmers have replaced concord grapes with hops, helping push the state’s total hops acreage from 30,000 to 54,000, he said.
The transition is caused by demand from craft breweries, Walsh said.
“We’ve had this renaissance of beer brewing,” he said.
Producers of small-batch beers typically use about 8 pounds of hops in every 32-gallon barrel, Walsh said.
“The craft brewers are always looking for that next unique flavor,” he said.
In contrast, makers of high-volume, American-style pilsners such as Budweiser and Miller Lite, use about half a pound of hops in every 32-gallon barrel, Walsh said.
“They’re kind of like a McDonald’s,” he said. “They want it to be consistent every time.”
The team will complete numerous projects to help the evolving industry, Walsh said.
Kayla Altendorf, a new hops breeder at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, for example, will work on developing varieties of hops resistant to spider mites and viruses in cooperation with Walsh and Scott Harper, a WSU virologist.
Spider mites feed on the leaves and flowers, the part of the hop plant that is harvested, decreasing the quality of the beer brewed with them, Walsh said.
“If the damage is great enough, it can lead to rejection by the hop merchant,” he said.
Walsh will also explore the potential of predatory mites in limiting spider mites, a technique pioneered in the California strawberry industry. If that works, it could help any other crop damaged by spider mites, Walsh said.
Another issue in the hops industry are two hop-latent viruses, one from Europe and one from America, Walsh said.
The viruses are transferred by aphids, which are so prevalent the viruses are in all hops because there’s no way to limit their spread, he said.
Researchers would like to know if farmers can get better yields in plants not infected by the viruses.
Some of the other work involves looking at 12 years of input and output data from one hop merchant to identify what combination results in the best yields, quantifying the carbon footprint of hops and measuring the willingness of consumers in Europe and the United States to pay more for sustainably produced beer.
Lena Le, director of the WSU Social and Economics Sciences Research Center, will do surveys to see if hops farmers changed their practices because of the research, which will help the government understand if it invested its money wisely, Marsh said.
Marsh expects that farmers will be receptive to the project’s findings.
“The hops industry has been very supportive of us as scientists,” he said.
Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.