Joe Catron, Yakima Chief Hops Experimental Hops Manager, is sharing a crop update from the hop fields of the Yakima Valley. We are about 65% of the way through our Pacific Northwest hop harvest. Simcoe® and Citra® are all picked, with Mosaic® just about wrapped up. Talus®, Idaho 7® and HBC 586 are next in line and currently being harvested. As we finish up harvest for aroma hop varieties, growers are letting the alpha hop varieties continue to develop. Some growers are in a unique position this year where they will actually have a couple days off between aroma hop harvest and alpha hop harvest.

Recorded September 22nd, 2022

 

"It's another beautiful morning here in the hop Mecca of the world. We are about 65% of the way done with Harvest so far. Things have been going awesome. We are moving through all the aroma varieties real quickly. As we talked about before, the yields are going to be down, the overall cone size is down, but quality has been exceptional. So for all three of our big brands, Simcoe®, Citra®, Mosaic®, quality was really awesome across the board.

So it's September 21st this morning. Mosaic® is getting finished up late last week. Early this week into Talus®. Going to start picking Idaho 7®. Right now we've got the HBC 630 baby yard here being harvested, smelling fantastic. We've finally started getting some cool nights which has hastened ripening, which is really helping. We're still a little behind on the Alpha crop. In Aroma crops obviously it's crucial to hit all those Harvest windows for all the different brands. With the alpha crop you're really farming that Alpha acid. Alpha continues to develop within those cones the longer they hang, so we might actually be taking a couple days off of harvest this year to allow most of the remaining Alpha acreage to continue developing. Not something we typically have during Harvest, it's typically once you start you kind of keep going until it's done, but it's what's best for the quality of the crop this year.

Overall, it's been a fantastic Harvest. None of this would be possible without all of our hard-working Crews on the farms, all of our colleagues at YCH working hard, all of our Brewing customers coming in from all over the World and bringing your energy and passion. Really makes an awesome experience for all of us, so thank you very much.

We keep it up we might be able to do this again next year!

We'll see you after harvest."

- Joe Catron