In the last week of September, the Brewers Association’s (BA) Technical Department staff traveled to Yakima, Washington during hop harvest to host the seventh annual Hopsource sensory event. The event was held at centrally located Yakima Valley Hops over three days. Hop industry stakeholders and brewers who were in town for selection dropped in and lent their noses to the development of new public hop varieties.

This year, 33 experimental lines from the two United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) hop breeding programs in Oregon and Washington were evaluated using the crowdsourcing sensory application SampleOx. Crowdsourcing is a statistical strategy that harnesses the power of large sample sizes. Each experimental line was evaluated at least 30 times to provide statistical power to the collected data and then provided to the hop breeders Dr. John Henning and Dr. Kayla Altendorf. In total, there were over 1,100 assessments made at this year’s event.

These assessments are turned into reports that the USDA-ARS hop breeders use to make critical decisions in their programs on which experimental lines make the cut and move forward. The initial process starts when breeders use agronomic data, such as yield and disease resistance, to cull down thousands of crosses to a smaller list of hops that have made it to the Advanced Line stage. The next critical piece is to determine interest from the end users: brewers. If the hop does not have what it takes in the sensory department, then its time in the breeding program ends. This is where the BA and Hopsource come in to support public hops.

The BA, in collaboration with the breeders, Hop Research Council, and Hop Quality Group, provides this Hopsource sensory data that is crucial to bringing interesting and valuable public hops to release for use by craft brewers. The data from the assessments includes an average liking (hedonic) score, common hop-specific sensory attributes, and comments that provide more detailed sensory notes, application thoughts (i.e., type of beer style the hop might work best in), and more. With these results, hop lines that show promise are oftentimes brewed with next to see how they present in beer.

The BA Technical Department would like to thank all who were involved in helping host the event and all who stopped by and lent their time to the pursuit of the next great public hop. These efforts lead to success stories such as the Vista hop variety.

Hopsource is always a fun week of connection, learning, and impact. If you are interested in participating, keep an eye out for BA communications in the summer when we will announce the 2025 Hopsource dates.