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my occasional rants and raves about what is going on in the industry.
Hop Guru Stan Hieronymus recently wrote about a newly named hop, Thora (pronounced Thawr-ah) from the collaboration between the Hop Quality Group (HQG) and the USDA public breeding program.
According to the press release about the new hop, “Thora stands out with its intense and complex aroma, bursting with notes of passionfruit, guava, grapefruit, and stone fruit, underscored by resinous and dank undertones.”
As a final nod to hop harvest 2025, lets stop and watch the process unfold…
…it is a five year old video but still covers the basics.
Each Friday, I watch the weekly video from the Beery Godmother and in a recent installment she explained the difference between a wet hop and a freh hop beer. Now in my little brain, I thought the two were interchangeable marketing tools and I was somewhat vindicated when hope educator Stan Hieronymus weighed in separately to make a better naming distinction. Hieronymus prefers unkilned and kilned since that is the technical difference. With kilned translating as fresh and unkilned as wet.
I have a feeling that wet / fresh has a leg up and just sound more in line with marketing talk. Kilned though it has that old timey lilt may not win the media battle.
It is way more helpful and will be what I use though.
Time for good news before my beloved Portland Trailblazers take the court for the upcoming NBA season, their Rip City Reuse program with partner Bold Re-Use has now “officially kept over ONE MILLION single-use cups out of landfills.” That is also a lot of Oregon beer.
Right up front, gonna say that I know what is being talked about is both way in the future and not for bottles or cans but craft beer fans need to be also recycling fans and the news about a possible new way to break down plastics is great news.
You can read the science of it all HERE. (yes, some people out there are still doing science in the U.S. just don’t tell RFKjr). Any step that can make recycling easy is much needed. And by easy, I mean for the people tossing the stuff into bins and for the people that take it.
Those are the main choke points. People don’t recycle because there is a bewildering amount of rules and business won’t go into recycling business, see above.
Now if we can get something that strips labels of both cans and bottles, then we can really get going.
I am always on the lookout for good beer podcasts and I have found another one, this time from the folks CAMRA, called Pubs. Pints. People.
The schedule seems a bit haphazard so now is a good time to catch up on past episodes whilst also checking out the two new episodes from July and August.
Boomtown Brewery made the hoppy trek to the Yakima Valley this hop season and came back with this….
Very cool to see the continued interaction of farm and brewery.
Admiral Maltings has gone all hoppy with a partnership with Goschie Farms to release Goschie Promise, “a new floor-malted barley variety that brings Oregon Promise barley into brewers’ and distillers’ hands for the first time.”
Now craft beer fans can taste a 100% Goschie Farms beer with “barley and hops from the same pioneering, Salmon-Safe certified farm.”
Goschie Promise is a pale malt excellent “for all lager styles, modern IPAs & hop forward beers, Belgian-style ales, and Saisons.”
The hop formerly known as HBC 1019 is now Dolcita™. This hop was fast tracked by a partership of Yakima Chief Hops (YCH) and Yakima Chief Ranches (YCR).
Here are the characteristics to look for in a Dolcita-fied beer: “Rich in tropical stone fruit and sweet aromatics, Dolcita delivers hop character that brewers and beer drinkers love. Its pineapple and cream notes layer perfectly into a Hazy IPA, while its pronounced peach ring attributes make it well-suited to punch a vibrant pop into any beer recipe.”
This new varietal was crossed first in 2016 and bypassed the traditional ‘Single Hill’ stage which is how we are seeing it named in under ten years.
News came over the wire (from Brewbound) yesterday that Boston Beer Co. is in the process of either selling or closing Angel City Brewing in the heart of the Arts District here in L.A. when their lease term ends. This also goes for their strange Truly Hard Seltzer lounge.
The shopping and dining neighborhood will still have a good craft beer presence with Arrow Lodge and Arts District close by and Boomtown a short walk away as well but Angel City was a bridge brewery from the dark times with no breweries where there was no good beer to be had minus a couple small oasis’s dotted here and there.
It went from a small operation run by home brewer Michael Bowe to the gentrifying starting point for the Arts District business area. Then it became part of the consolidation and mergers trend and finally, now falling victim, like so many other breweries in town to the whammy of Covid, Taco Trump and Hollywood’s economic decline. Angel City has seen a lot.
It is a great space that houses a cool, faded art deco vibe and is super tied to the city and it’s art scene but it is a whale of a building that needs a lot of money love and a new brewing kit too.
I cannot picture the space being sold for anything short of even more condos though a car park might also be the ultimate fate for a grand and historical Los Angeles property that once made the cables for the Golden Gate Bridge way back when. Maybe, there is a billionaire out there who can save the space and not give it a Chobani like false hope that Anchor Brewing fans are feeling now.