Even before the first beers produced with this year’s Bushy Park hops have arrived, it’s looking like a successful harvest for Hop Products Australia. An auction of the first 100kg bale of this year’s Galaxy crop has raised $10,000 for beyondblue’s Man Therapy program. Brewers were invited to bid for 10kg bales, with the highest bid coming in from Crown, who paid $1,510 – six times market value. Malt Shovel made the second highest bid, $1,500, with other 10kg bales of the hop heading to breweries including Stone & Wood, Bright and Bootleg.
This was the first such auction by the Tasmanian-based grower but not the only first this harvest. For the first time, Galaxy was their biggest crop – taking a full five days to harvest – thus continuing the transformation from a supplier of alpha acid varieties to the major breweries to a grower of aroma and flavour hops. It was also the first harvest at HPA for former Moo Brew head brewer, Owen “OJ” Johnston, who moved from the brewery last year after eight years at the helm with the aim of helping brewers get the best from the new wave of hops coming out of Tasmania and the Victorian High Country.
“It’s been a really interesting move to get out of the role of running a brewery but still travel around to breweries talking hops,” he says. “I tapped [HPA managing director] Tim Lord on the shoulder. I said I’d been looking in from the outside for years, thought they had a pretty exciting future in terms of new varieties and a new generation of flavour and aroma hops.
“But I didn’t think they were supporting themselves as well as they could in the market. I was a consumer in Hobart, 15km away, and just didn’t feel I knew them well enough. It was a feeling throughout the craft brewing industry, [a legacy] from when they were producing alpha acid for the big brewers.”
So, after building two breweries from scratch at Moo and gaining a reputation for the quality of his beers throughout the Australian industry, OJ has set about changing brewers' perceptions while also looking to help them get the best out of their hops. As the “customer coalface” he’s advising on which, how, when and in what quantities brewers might wish to use the likes of Galaxy, Ella and Vic Secret in different beers while taking their feedback on board too, particularly when it comes to new varieties.
HPA will develop varieties they believe have potential over a number of years, producing simple trial batches of the best or most interesting each year in house (in a very straightforward, mildly hopped Australian lager style beer) but also seeking feedback from brewers. It’s where experiments such as Bridge Road’s annual Harvest Ales come in handy as they are brewed with unreleased varieties and used in quantities well beyond those of the trial batches at HPA, thus giving a different type of feedback on a hop’s viability.
“There’s a big demand from the US for quite a number of our varieties,” says OJ, admitting that what was once HPA’s main crop, Pride of Ringwood, “is almost done”.
The first bale of 2014 Galaxy, with, left to right, Tully Hadley of Crown, Greg Barns, Tim Lord & Brad Rogers of Stone & Wood.
He says Vic Secret is showing great potential for IPAs with its resinous character, while Ella [formerly Stella] “can present quite differently in beer depending on dose rate or when it goes in. It’s got a beautiful rounded, stewed fruit character, that you get when it’s used in Little Creatures Pale Ale, or can be floral and spicy as well [such as in Stone & Wood’s Garden Ale].”
The latest release is Enigma, which is just a tiny crop this year but was a variety hurried through the lengthy development process faster than any other. Brewers are coming back with a range of feedback on its characteristics, some rather specific; “French Chablis” when used for dry-hopping says one.
The aim, ultimately, is to fill the spaces in the extremities of the company’s Hop Flavour Spectrum, which was launched last year – to find hops that offer something different to brewers rather than producing Galaxy clones.
As for his first few months outside the brewery, OJ says: “The challenge had changed [at Moo]. I built two breweries in eight years and put the brand at a certain point and had the production capabilities to go forward. It was about getting it done, shifting to a logistics and sales role and driving the sales team.
“I miss being able to drink the fruits of your labours but I don’t miss being responsible for 12 full time wages and 12 mortgages. Sometimes hard decisions are made harder because of the human impact. I like to run my brewery with as much humanism as possible.”
The ‘Man Therapy’ charity that is benefitting from the auction was created by beyondblue as a âplace for men to deal with manly issues in a manly way.’ Through programs such as Man Therapy and Men’s Shed, beyondblue is working to reduce the impact of depression and anxiety in the community by raising awareness and understanding, empowering people to seek help, and supporting recovery, management and resilience. If you, or someone you know might need the help of beyondblue, please call 1300 224 636 for support.
