WSDA Blog

Date: Friday, October 4, 2024

Author: Karla Salp

Hidden behind a windowless door in an unassuming government building in Yakima hides one of the secret keys to enjoying Oktoberfest and better beer: the WSDA Hops Lab. But for the bits of green plant matter on the carpet outside the door, little evidence is seen of the hop graders hard at work for a few short weeks during hop harvest.


_{As a truck leads the way as a tractor follows, hops are cut and fall into the truck bed.}  

But open the door and you are immediately overwhelmed by two things: 1) the smell of new-crop hops, which, while not exactly unpleasant, is extremely powerful, and 2) the almost unnatural quiet of numerous hop graders working elbow-to-elbow in near silence. It’s almost like watching a beehive with well-ordered industrious workers barely making a buzz.

While Washington grows some of the world’s best hops and about ¾ of the nation’s supply, hops need to be free of leaves, stems, sticks, or seeds to be top-quality for brewing your favorite beer.

It starts in the field

Growing and harvesting hops is like nothing else. Hops need lots of room to grow as hop bines can grow up to 10 inches per day and about 25 feet each season. Planting a hop field (at a whopping $70,000 per acre!) comes with the installation of strong poles and trellis wires that must support up to 20 pounds per plant.
Harvesting hops is a fascinating process involving a coordinated dance of a truck driver and tractor operator working together — the tractor using an implement to cut the bines and twine that they climb and allowing the bines to fall into the bed of the truck.

Watch a short YouTube clip of hop harvest

 

Getting the cones

Once cut in the field and loaded in the truck, the bines make a short journey to the farm’s hop processing facility. Hops are somewhat unusual in that every farm typically also processes, packages, and ships its own product, ensuring quality from planting to delivery, when the hops are ready to make beer.


_{Hops being offloaded and processed to separate the hops from the other vegetation.} 

After arriving at the plant, the hop bines are offloaded and the process of separating the hop cones from the bines and leaves begins. The bines are run through a series of machines and blowers intended to separate the cones from the rest of the vegetation. Farmers have various machines to choose from and even modify their equipment looking for the optimum balance of speed versus getting as much non-cone vegetation out of the product as possible.

Next, the cones head to an on-farm kiln to dry while the waste vegetation is hauled back to the farm to compost and be reapplied to the field. Waste not, want not.


_{Hops are dried in a kiln for several hours to reduce the moisture content.} 

Finally, the dried cones are sent to the packing facility where they are usually compressed into 200-pound bales, though they may also be turned into smaller products such as pellets.

Enter the (very strong!) inspectors

It’s at this point that WSDA’s hop inspectors begin their work. WSDA’s hop inspectors touch every bale of hops that is harvested in the state. They randomly take core samples from at least 10% of the bales.


_{Two WSDA hop samplers take "cores" from compressed 200-pound bales.}

Getting that core sample requires some muscle! Using a special tool, the samplers must push a cylinder several inches into a highly compressed bale. (I gave it try and it was a challenge, even for this six-foot former farm girl!) The samples are then emptied into tubes with barcodes, logged, and sent to the lab for inspection.

Sort, sift, and shake

Back at the (very quiet but pungent) lab, the tubes are scanned into the system and dumped into tubs. The tubs then go to trained inspectors who sort through the samples looking for leaves, stems or sticks, seeds, or any other foreign material.


_{Hop graders painstakingly sift through samples to look for leaves, stems, and other foreign objects.}

The sorting is done in various ways, from visual inspection directly from the tubs, mechanical sifters that shake the hops, and even further dehydrating and sifting the cones to then look for seeds.


_{Looking at additional samples for leaves and stems.}

All this work takes place in an open room with about a dozen people but virtually no talking. The seemingly eerie silence is required to ensure proper focus on the task at hand of inspecting hops. While there is silence in the room (except for the sounds of some limited machinery) inspectors do have the option of listening to music with earbuds while they keep their eyes on the hops they are inspecting.
 

See an inspector's expert sifting technique on YouTube!

 

Aiming for zero

The detailed, focused, and accurate inspection work is critical to the success of Washington’s hop farmers. It provides a reliable, independent verification of the purity of the hops they provide to customers.

Grading hops is just like golf: the lower the score, the better. The best score is zero — indicating there is at most trace amounts of foreign material in the hops. For the customer, this means a cleaner product. For the farmer, it demands a higher price. Hops with higher scores are still marketable, they just won’t demand a premium price (premium being relative to the overall market conditions).


_{Leaf and stem bits from a sample.}

Prost!

Whether it is for Oktoberfest or any time of year, each time you enjoy a tall one, raise a glass and think of the farmers and hop inspectors who all work together to make sure you enjoy a great beer.