STORAGE AND HANDLING

Maintaining the quality of our growers' hops throughout the various processes on their way to the brewer is a high priority.

Warehouse receiving - as soon as the hops are received from the growers, the lot is checked for moisture content, aroma and general condition. Samples are pulled from the first and every following tenth bale for laboratory analysis. In most cases, these analyses are for alpha-acid, beta-acid and the Hop Storage Index.

Specific customer may require State of Washington analyses for brewing values or leaf/stem content. These samples are taken by independent state inspectors either in the YCI yard or at the grower's yard before deliver to the warehouse.

Yakima Chief warehouses are exceptionally clean at all times. Hops are stored at temperatures between 26° and 32° F (-3° to 0° C). Relative humidity is maintained at 70-75 percent. These conditions are inspected and recorded daily, and any deviation from these specified settings will result in immediate action by our warehouse staff to restore control by identifying and eliminating the cause of the deviation. These strict controls reduce alpha and hop oil degradation, and result in a lower Hop Storage Index, allowing the hops to retain more of their original qualities.

Once the hops are sampled and inventoried, they proceed immediately to cold storage. In most cases, the hops are in cold storage within 12 hours of delivery. With nine large cold storage warehouses with a capacity of over 16.5 million pounds of baled hops, Yakima Chief has the ability to cold store over 1/5 of the total U.S. hop crop. Cold storage facilities are also contracted at other locations worldwide.

Because of our large storage capabilities, we have the ability to blend hop varieties - brewers can specify a blend of hop varieties to meet their specifications.