YAKIMA — Trucks laden with hop bines are showing up on the roads around the Yakima Valley, and soon the air will be filled with the aroma of this year’s crop as harvest moves into full swing.
Most growers began harvesting this week, a process that will run almost nonstop through September as the beer-flavoring cones are picked, dried and processed.
And with a record number of acres planted, hop growers expect an average or better harvest.
“Things are settling in nicely,” said Ann George, executive director of the Moxee-based Hop Growers of America. “We’re caught up. We don’t have any expectations of shortfalls. We have good contracting in place to make sure we have the most popular varieties.”
Hops were introduced to the Yakima Valley in the 1870s, and through an investment by telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell to set up farming in the Upper Valley, the industry took off. By the 1930s, Moxee became known as the “Hop Capital of the World.”
Today, more than 75 percent of the nation’s hops are grown in Washington, with most of them in Yakima County, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Depending on the variety, hops can give beer either a bitter or a citrus flavor, the latter more popular among the craft-beer industry, a driving force in the hop industry in recent years.
Five years ago, the craft-beer industry was growing at 18 percent a year, George said. This year, she said, it’s slowed to 5 percent, still a respectable number.
While larger craft brewers have seen growth decline, smaller breweries are doing well, particularly those that have local followings. And that means more demand for hops, George said.
USDA data forecasts that hops will be harvested from 39,273 acres in Washington, up from last year’s 38,438 acres. The harvest is expected to be down slightly from 2017, about 77 million pounds compared to 78.7 million pounds last year.
This year’s warm spring may have triggered a “split bloom” in certain varieties, where part of the plant goes into bloom prematurely while the rest blooms around the start of summer, George said. That means farmers have to decide whether to harvest the cones from the early bloom or sacrifice them to get those that develop later.
George said that at this point it looks like it will be a typical year but the picture will be clearer as more acres are harvested.
Once the harvest begins, it’s all hands on deck for the next month.
“It goes 24 hours a day, 30 days straight,” said Sean Benson, manger of Roy Farms’ hop division as he drove among the fields near Moxee on Tuesday.
The harvest begins with a worker driving a “bottom cutter” down rows to sever the bine — as hop vines are called — near the ground, along with the twine the bines grew around to the tops of trellises during the spring and summer. The perennial roots send new shoots out each year, Benson said.
Next comes a truck and rigged with a “top cutter” device that snips the twine at the top of the trellis — about 18 feet off the ground — as two people guide the bines into the bed. The truck is actually pushed down the row by the tractor until it’s full.
But the hops aren’t considered “picked” just yet.
“This is what we’re after,” Benson said, plucking one of the conelike flowers off the vine. Pulling it apart, he pointed to the yellowish portions of the petals, which is where the flavor and aromatics of hops come from.
The trucks deliver the bines to a picking facility, where machines cut them up into smaller lengths and pull the cones off.
From there, the hops are sent to the kiln, a room where hops in large bins are air-dried. It’s a delicate balance, Benson said, to ensure that the water content is reduced without losing the aromatic qualities of the cones.
Once dried, the cones are sent to another facility where they cool down before being bundled into 200-pound bales or turned into pellets about the size of rabbit food.
