The Once and Future State of Craft (& Hops)

I just got off the phone with a buddy, a former brewer who now sells hops. We were discussing the state of the beer industry, and I shared my thoughts with him about thinking we were at a potential inflection point. I believe things have gotten so challenging that I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a significant sloughing of breweries and beer-related companies. ?

He told me about working with brewers who need hops like Cascade but don’t care where they’re from. I was perplexed by this. Craft beer, to me, speaks of brewers who have an intimate relationship with the ingredients and the process. They embrace the minutiae that makes a beer great and will settle for nothing less. The idea that a brewer would order an ingredient as if from a Summer catalog without regard to anything beyond the tracking number and still call him or herself a craft brewer challenges my definition of craft. To me, that’s a commodity. They are neither good nor bad, but let’s not confuse the two.

If we can learn anything from our grape-growing and wine-making brethren, it’s that the same ingredient that comes from somewhere different will be different. We’ve learned by now that the same hop grown in different places tastes different. A Cascade from Oregon and one from Idaho or Argentina are going to be different. Even a Cascade hop picked early will be different compared to one picked late. I don’t personally know what those differences are, but I’m grateful to the brewers who do.?

As you read this, we are finishing the hop harvest season in the Northern Hemisphere. I think it serves us to remember that hops are an annual plant. Much like wine grapes, they are harvested once per year in the fall. Whatever hops we grow and process will be the hops we have available for brewing for the rest of the year. If, for some reason, we lose a massive percentage of our harvest and don’t have hops left over from previous years… we won’t have beer. ?

Pause.

Think about that for a second.?

Imagine making a homemade marinara sauce. If you have the choice between dried basil or fresh, I’ll bet you a beer that most people will go with fresh. If we don’t have fresh basil, dried will work in a pinch. But with no basil, there’s no real marinara. Sure, we can substitute something else, but then the sauce will be something else entirely.?

Hops are this way. We now have access to fresh hop beers. This is how nature intended beer to be. Fresh hops are the true essence of the hop flavor experience. The sheer fact that hops are harvested once a year necessitates that we rely on dried versions. This is what we have become accustomed to. Dried hops are our sense of normal.?

Getting back to that nameless brewer who cares only about hop-flavored hops. He or she isn’t doing anything wrong per se, but I’m not interested in seeking out those beers. I also believe that consumers will eventually go down the road where the beers are better. They may not know why the beers are better, and they don’t have to. But, consumers are savvy enough to know that better is better.

I’m interested in the beers meticulously carved from the sense of duty to the ingredients. The brewer who has gone to the farm, rubbed and sniffed the hops, has determined that they want hops from only this lot and picked early vs. later in the season because they taste differently. That’s the brewer who captivates me. Those are the beers that I want to spend the time to taste. I want to see if I can experience the vision the craft brewer intended. I especially love to taste a fresh hopped version of one of these beers because now is the only time I’ll get to taste it until next year.?

We do this with great indie musicians, local upcoming chefs, and professional rookie athletes who show a boatload of promise. These are the artisans. These are the ones who inspire. To me, this is what craft was all about… and should be once again.?

Your brother in beer,

Jeremy