As regular readers of this site will be well aware, the Australian hop industry has been going through very exciting times in the past few years. In particular, Hop Products Australia has been sending many of its hop varieties across the globe since switching some of its focus towards the development of big aroma and flavour hops such as Galaxy And Ella (formerly Stella before the other Stella stepped in). As well as giving many Australian beers their distinctive character, such beer have been cropping up in beers in all parts of the world; when we called into the Robin Hood Beer Festival, run by CAMRA, in Nottingham late last year we found a good number of Topaz and Galaxy sales among the casks lined up in racks and many brewers who were delighted to have discovered them.
Such has been demand that HPA has been turning over ever greater swathes of its land to these new varieties and working feverishly to develop even more new and interesting hops. And the good news is that they’ve experienced a “bumper crop” this year.
A statement from the Tasmania based operation says:
Hop Products Australia has just commenced harvest and early indications suggest it’s going to be a bumper crop, enabling increased supply of proprietary flavour hops to the international craft beer market.
Already, demand is outstripping supply with the majority of the crop committed to pre-orders from Australian brewers and countries such as USA and UK.
Traditionally, hops have been used primarily for bittering. These new varieties of flavour hops, born of HPA’s breeding program, are changing the face of the industry. Amongst the hops being harvested is Galaxy, HPA’s most internationally recognised variety, which exudes passionfruit and peach characters with clean citrus aromas.
Hops Ella, Topaz and Summer are also making waves in the craft brewing scene, with a number of new releases at home and abroad featuring these new varieties.
HPA is one of only a handful of growers around the world who are committed to ongoing research and development of their own cultivars.
HPA Managing Director, Tim Lord says âOver the last few decades we have trialled literally thousands of plant cultivars to arrive at just ten we are currently growing commercially.â
âThe overwhelming demand for our proprietary hops is changing the course of our business. We’ve had great feedback from brewers experimenting with these hops and you just have to taste the beers produced so far to know we’re on the right track.â
While the bumper crop is good news for brewers and craft beer lovers for the year ahead, the fact that it is harvest time means there will be a rash of hop harvest beers appearing soon. We’ve got one of our scribes heading to Tasmania this week to find out more about Cascade’s First Harvest 2013, while there would have been plenty getting sweaty at Red Hill this last weekend as they harvested their own hops.
We are aware that there will be another Wild Hop Ale from the team at Prickly Moses, while Grand Ridge told us last week they would be releasing their WHOA! again. Bridge Road’s brewers have been out to collect the hops for a rerun of the Dark Harvest that was first brewed in collaboration with Mikkeller last year and even newcomers number 7 Cent Brewing are planning a wet hop ale release soon.
In the Victorian high country, Jon Seltin (above) at Bright Brewery is working on another wet hop release for this autumn while in Tasmania Moo Brew will soon release this year’s harvest ale and no doubt Willie Simpson at Seven Sheds will be plundering his own hop farm very soon too.
We’re sure there will be many hop harvest beers that we are yet to hear about, so want to take this opportunity to say: “We’re all ears!”
Aussie brewers: if you’re brewing a wet hop or hop harvest beer this year, feel free to send the details to crafty@craftypint.com and we’ll make sure we get full list up and running on the website ASAP.
