Fresh-Hops

Our Hop Freshness Program | Seasonal Fresh Hop Schedule

ABOUT OUR HOP FRESHNESS PROGRAM

OUR HOP FRESHNESS PROGRAM is designed to ensure that all the hops we sell are of the highest quality.  In our ongoing effort to give you access to quality beer making supplies, we know that the hop characteristics you seek in your homebrew are important to you.  It's important to us, too! 

Here are some of the key elements of the program that we believe ensures the quality of our inventory stock.

  1. We contract for hops in the same way that breweries do.  This means we receive the bounty of each harvest as soon as possible, and make that  accessible to you.
  2. We maintain different SKUs in our system for each crop year, not just the hop varietal or form.  This allows you to select the freshest hops possible, when that's most important, or perhaps save money on the prior crop year when that's appropriate.
  3. All our hops are kept under refrigeration.
  4. The hops we package are put into mylar bags for ultimate oxygen protection.
  5. Communication by email - we plan to send emails as each hop crop arrives for each varietal and form (pellets, whole cone).  If you watch out for these emails, you will know when the freshest hops arrive.

Our Hop Storage Refrigerator

Take note about the potential longevity of hops.  When pelletized and stored in oxygen-barrier bags at cold temperatures to reduce oxidation, hops can remain in good condition for 3 to 4 years.  Often, we open bags of well stored hops that are 3 or 4 years old and they smell extremely fresh and fill the room with aroma!  The hop distributors generally sell hops in bulk by crop year making several years available at any given time.  It is incorrect to believe that hops must be from the most recent crop year to be aromatic and excellent quality.  This is why we allow more than one crop year in our inventory.  But to ensure the highest level of confidence, we aim to maintain only the two most recent crop years in our inventory.

  

ABOUT THE ANNUAL CYCLE OF HOP CROP RELEASES

You can plan for fresh hop crop releases in Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.  This may not seem intuitive.  If hops are only harvested from the hop yard once a year, how is this possible?  Consider a couple factors that make it so.

  1. Northern Hemisphere hops from USA, Germany, England, and Czech Replublic are harvested in the summer.  Late August harvest is common.  Southern Hemisphere hops from New Zealand and Australia are harvested in their own summer, which is opposite of ours.  That harvest is commonly in March.
  2. It takes months for the fresh crop of hops to be kiln dried, pelletized, and distributed.  There is typically a period of months before the fresh crop of pellets are released.  This creates two releases of the new crop - the whole cones are released in the late fall and winter, while the pellets are typically released in the winter or even early spring following the harvest.

So, watch for our hop release emails throughout the year, and plan on fresh hopped beer throughout all the seasons!