Hops and science find wedded bliss in Corvallis.
BY EMILY FREEMAN
B
eer without hops would be
something like Kool-Aid with-
out sugar: just plain bad. The art
of hop cultivation, which has
developed over hundreds of
years, began with 10th century era home
brewers. In those days, the most common
brewers were monks, who brewed beer for
their lodgers, and used the wild, often low-
quality hops native to Bavaria.
Hop growing spread to England, where
the plant mainly served as a preservative for
beer on long voyages. India Pale Ale, a local
favorite, was invented when English brew-
ers added more hops and alcohol to their
original ale in order to keep the brew fresh
on the British voyages to and from India.
Within the last 100 years hop cultivation
spread to the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.,
specifically Washington, Oregon and
Idaho, where the climate proved ideal for
hop cultivation. Today Oregon is home to
more than 15 growers, the majority of
which are based in the Willamette Valley.
Oregon is not only one of the major pro-
ducers of hops but also home to one of the
publicly funded hops research facilities in
the nation — the USDA—ARS/OSU Hop
Genetics and Breeding Program, located
right here in Corvallis. As head of the facil-
ity, John Henning is concerned with breed-
ing high-yield and disease resistant hops
that add the unique flavor to your favorite
beer.
But before we get into the importance of
the research Henning and his colleagues are
doing, let’s first explore the importance of
hops in beer brewing and look at the quali-
ties hop geneticists and growers look for
when researching them.
The hop plant (Humulus lupulus) is used
primarily for the purpose of bittering in the
brewing process. Without hops, beer would
simply be a sweet alcoholic drink that tastes
a little bit like oatmeal. Not too appetizing.
A high concentration of alpha acids in hops
is commonly what brewers look for when
analyzing the quality of a certain hop plant.
Without hops, beer would simply be a sweet
alcoholic drink that tastes a little bit like oatmeal.
S ma ll Ba t c h Be e r
Oregon Trail brews with the best.
By Melissa Bearns
I
t’s brewing day Oregon Trail and owner Dave Wills stands enshrouded in a cloud of
steam, stirring a vat of malt with a ladle as long as he is tall. His assistant, Chris
Haveman, keeps running up and down the stairs of the small brewery, checking on a
bubbling pot of wort. And in between sterilizing everything from kegs to little metal fix-
tures, Ken Day, who apparently helps brew in exchange for free beer, periodically checks
out back for the grain truck that’s supposed to be bringing in 10,000 pounds of pale malt.
The truck is four hours late.
It’s just another normal day at Corvallis’ locally owned and operated brewery. Walk into
Squirrel’s and you can sample the Oregon Trail wit on tap, one of the more popular brews.
Better yet, just stop by the brewery for a taste of everything they’ve got on hand including
the wit, kolsch, IPA, brown ale, ginger porter (if you’re lucky) and their seasonals. Or stop
in any day from 4-6 pm when you can get a whole pint for just $2.
Wills started the brewery in 1987. Last year he brewed just 280 barrels, or about 8,680
8 • WHAT’S HAPPENING Corvallis
eties that have a better yield and are more
disease resistant than the current flavor and
aroma hop plants on the market. “My pri-
mary research is the development of supe-
rior hop lines for the American grower,”
Henning says. “I like to say we’re building
a better beer for tomorrow.”
Henning, who confesses that he’d never
seen a hop plant before taking his current
position, says the research he and his col-
leagues do is groundbreaking, especially in
terms of the detailed genetic approach
they’re taking to develop a hop plant that is
both disease resistant and has a high yield.
“We’re determining what is related to what,
and making sure the hop plant has geneti-
cally different parents so that the offspring
that comes from them isn’t inbred. That’s
never been done in the past,” Henning says.
Bet you didn’t know there was so much
science behind your favorite lager or stout.
And although science probably isn’t what’s
on your mind when you sit down to a cold
pint, people like Henning, Wills, and the
researchers at the USDA hops facility are
working hard to make sure you have the
best beer experience possible, one hop at a
time.
■
Dave Wills of Oregon Trail Brewery
MELISSA BEARNS
EMILY FREEMAN
So Hoppy Together
A high percentage of alphas mean that the
brewer can use fewer hops in the process,
thereby lowering their costs. Henning’s
predecessor as project leader of the facility,
Dr. Al Haunold, threw much of his research
effort into creating a hop plant that would
yield this desirable high alpha acid concen-
tration.
Beginning with a standard hop variety
and breeding it with other less extensively
grown varieties, Haunold developed the
Willamette, Nugget, and Cascade hop vari-
eties — just to name a few. The Nugget va-
riety of hops is extensively grown and used
in the brewing process today.
As if to reinforce this point, Dave Wills,
owner of Oregon Trail Brewing, says he
uses the Nugget variety of hops as the stock
hop base for all of his microbrews. Also the
creator of local hop outlet Freshops, a com-
pany that sells a wide variety of hops for
homebrewing use, Wills says he often uses
Cascade, Mount Hood, and Willamette va-
rieties of hops in his brewing process for
their bittering properties.
Haunold laid the foundation for hop re-
search during his 30 years with the facility,
and as current head of research, Henning is
expanding on that founda-
tion while making signifi-
cant progress in the breed-
ing and development of
new hop varieties.
Although Henning’s
team carries out research
and development of high
alpha varieties of hops,
they are also making re-
markable progress in an-
other area of hop usage.
While adding bitterness to
the brew, hops also serve
another function in the
brewing process — they
can add a distinct flavor
and aroma to your beer.
Henning is focusing much
of his efforts on flavor and
aroma types of hops in
hopes of developing vari-
gallons. His concoctions have won
numerous awards including the
People’s Choice award at the
Newport
Microbrew
Festival last October. And
his brown won a silver
medal in both 1994 and
1995 at the Great
American Beer Festival.
Originally
from
Minnesota, Wills, 49,
started brewing his own
beer after he followed his
then girlfriend, now long-term
partner, to England and says he dis-
covered that “over there, there was no
such thing as a microbrew. I started drinking all the
good beer and I learned what good beer was.”
After he got back he moved to Eugene then up to Corvallis to finish his degree. He took
a home-brewing class because Bass and Guiness weren’t cutting it after his European tour
and has been brewing ever since.