Slow-Dancing in a Burning Room — The Cost of Climate Change on Beer’s Favorite Crop

On August 4, 2021, the temperature across Washington’s Yakima Valley peaked midafternoon at 99° Fahrenheit. It had been a hot summer. In the month preceding, the daily high temperature dropped below 90° just four times. The mercury surpassed 100° six times. The dip from triple digits on the 3rd to double digits on the 4th provided little relief.

Overnight, a storm system swept through the northern Cascade Range and through the Naches Ranger District. A lightning bolt ignited a fire that would latch itself onto the timber and wood that had been—and would continue to be—dried by the record high temperatures. 

The Schneider Springs Wildfire would last two months, and go on to consume more than 107,000 acres of woodland, brush, and grass. And it would do so on the doorstep of the country’s largest hop-growing region, where 75% of all U.S. hops are cultivated each year.

The changes to our climate can seem like a litany of little, seemingly insignificant notches on a dial that eventually lead to cataclysmic events. It’s that hovering specter of disaster that pushes many away from the topic entirely. The pessimist wonders why, if we’re already plummeting over the waterfall, we’re concerned if our life jacket is tight enough. 

For those working in agriculture, scorching temperatures, extreme weather patterns, a decreasing water supply, a growth in the number of pathogens, and changes within soil and the plants themselves are all products of climate change that, when isolated individually, seem almost manageable. But of course they’re not isolated—they’re intimately linked, recursively circling back to the original issue. Solutions to one issue can cause collateral damage elsewhere.

Manifested in the hop industry, the scorching temperatures create higher risk of wildfires, which leads to damaged crops and smoke taint. Higher temperatures lead to less snowpack in the mountains and, thus, less water. Warmer nights and earlier springs lengthen and complicate growing seasons. Growing pathogens add additional complexity.

For now, this constellation of issues has yet to be fully felt—but it’s foolhardy to pretend it won’t have an impact. In the meantime, hop scientists, farmers, sensory specialists, and other experts are scrambling to learn more, and develop new tools and strategies, to ensure the industry’s long-term survival.

WHERE THERE’S FIRE, THERE’S SMOKE

Kevin Quinn could only watch as the smoke from the Schneider Springs Wildfire hovered over the horizon. Quinn is the owner and head brewer at Bale Breaker Brewing Company, which was born in Yakima in 2013. The brewery sits in Field 41 of his family-owned hop farm, Loftus Ranches, less than 50 miles southeast of the fire’s point of origin.

When the smoke didn’t touch his land, Quinn knew that location had helped this time, but so had luck. “We know that we can’t control [wildfires], and speaking just on behalf of Loftus, haven’t seen a negative impact on the quality of hops that were grown,” said Quinn. “But we also know that with more fires, that risk keeps going up and up. We don’t want to see any wildfires.”

Global warming is a phenomenon of such sweeping enormity that it can sometimes feel like it makes a mockery of individual action. As much as farms and breweries are quick to mention their own attempts to reduce carbon emissions, eliminate waste, shift to solar energy, and minimize water usage—and as much as these changes are cumulatively necessary—it can be challenging to battle the feelings of powerlessness when destructive forces of nature are bearing down.

“Last year was interesting,” Quinn says. “It was such a hot June.” A record-breaking one, even: On June 29, the thermostat climbed to 113° Fahrenheit. “The farming industry is a generational thing, so you had the farmers talking about how they haven’t seen anything like it. The consensus early was that it was going to have a negative impact on yield and quality.”

Just as the heat influenced hops, so did the smoke from the wildfires around Yakima. Smoke taint can affect the quality of the hops, though it doesn’t always present as the expected campfire aromas—it can also mean a suppression of positive attributes, like the citrus or tropical characteristics beer drinkers love. (Growers and vintners in places like Napa and Sonoma Valleys are increasingly grappling with their own issues around smoke taint.) 

Sensory testers in Yakima Valley have used numerous descriptors for smoke-tainted hops, including soy sauce, tar, barbecue flavoring (like on Lay’s Potato Chips), and burnt toast. This is complicated further by added “curveballs,” says Jeff Dailey, associate sensory scientist and sensory program manager at John I. Haas, Inc. Factors like hop variety, how far along the hops are into their development, how much smoke is present, and the day’s heat index can all play a role in how a hop is affected.

Yakima Chief Hops’ sensory manager Tiff Pitra says the grower-owned hop supplier is still uncertain about how events like a late-season heatwave or nearby wildfire might affect crops. “Whether or not that had an impact, we don’t know,” she says. “We want to explore, we want to learn.” Simply put, it’s difficult to control something uncontrollable, though industry professionals are grappling to learn more about hops’ outcomes as the climate crisis worsens. 

“[We’ll wonder if we] can let hops hang later, can we kiln longer or shorter, or can we put filters to prevent smoke intake,” says Pitra. “But then we often have these short windows to set up trials. It comes down to, is it worth changing how we build kilns, making major infrastructure changes? These changes need data to show making those changes worth it. Every single breeder is breeding disease-resistant, drought-resistant hops. They know the time is ticking.”

Levi Wyatt, the corporate social responsibility manager at Yakima Chief Hops, maintains that most growers enter each spring with the wide-eyed idealism that typically accompanies the season of rebirth. There’s an overwhelming sense of optimism that springs from having done something over and over again. These days, the trepidation only comes along later.

THE MARRIAGE OF EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE

It’s tempting to classify the entirety of the Pacific Northwest as a place blanketed by perpetual rainfall. This would be inaccurate. While the Pacific-facing side of Washington, cleaved from the rest of the state by the Cascades, has an oceanic climate, conditions are strikingly different in the eastern side of the state. Summers are hotter, winters are colder, and rain falls far less frequently. The rich volcanic soil and dry weather create advantageous conditions for agriculture: In addition to all those hops, over 300 other crops are grown here, including wine grape varietals.

The first hops were put into the Yakima Valley’s soil in the late 1860s, as westward expansion neared completion. At the time, still two decades from statehood, what is now eastern Washington was known for its apple orchards. The name “Yakima” is derived from Yakama, a federally recognized Native American tribe, whose reservation remains south of the city.

Upon completion of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883, more growers took advantage of the long, moderate summer days that were complemented by cool winters. Since then, Yakima’s hop industry has flourished, owing to careful land stewardship and learned understanding of what the soil and the plants need.

“Farming is multi-generational, so there’s this sense that they’ve seen these weather cycles for years,” says Wyatt. “If growers weren’t doing this in a sustainable way, these crops wouldn’t still be here in 2022. It’s a great time to be a grower.”

Hops are hardy plants that can withstand a lot of environmental pressure, Wyatt notes. “Big windstorms have happened here. Big rainstorms have caused fields to fall before they needed to be picked. They can withstand adverse weather and still hold their value. Amazing to see these hops take on what we’ve seen them take on.”

The myriad challenges posed by global warming are a fraught new test, however. There’s a growing sense that wisdom gleaned from the old ways of doing things can and should be mingled with the younger generation’s new technological savvy.

“It’s a very challenging time,” says Pitra. “Growers have very long histories in the valley, and those folks in the field have strong knowledge and have experiences harvest over harvest, but only anecdotal evidence. Some of the solutions are impossible to know with mobilizing a team of grad students.” 

The future of hop production—not just in the Pacific Northwest, but across the globe—is going to be determined by how new technologies can help farmers become less reactive and more proactive. Data collection will be crucial in understanding which variables influenced crops in the past, as well as how they may affect future yields. Artificial intelligence can help identify health concerns within the soil. Improved and precise irrigation techniques will create a more efficient and Earth-friendly way to grow hops. 

“Some of the older growers are reaching a point where they’re ready to turn the keys over, and we’ve seen more of the younger generations coming back to the farm,” says Wyatt. “[The new generation is] focusing more on composting and utilizing resources, as opposed to additives, but they’re also listening to stories and learning about farmer ingenuity. It’s fun to see that play out in meetings.”

There’s a fallacy in thinking that what has worked before will always work, but it’s also fallacious to believe that we should ignore historical or anecdotal evidence completely in favor of new, shiny things. The best approach is somewhere in between. Often a little human ingenuity can complement technology just as a well-calibrated instrument can confirm what we already knew.

CHANGING TASTES

For all the technological innovations and interventions available, however, the plants themselves won’t remain static. Hops respond to their growing conditions, and have different sensory traits and characteristics depending on where they’re cultivated. (Take Cascade: It was renamed Taiheke when planted in New Zealand because the hops cultivated down under differed so dramatically from Cascade’s classic flavor profile.)

So what happens when weather patterns and soil and even the bugs in that soil change irrevocably? And what happens when those planting conditions happen earlier in the spring, later in the spring, during a drought, during too much rainfall? The resulting taste of the beer made with those hops will be different, says Colleen Doherty, an associate professor of biochemistry at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.   

“We don’t know anything about [climate change’s potential impact on] hops,” she says. “All we can do is make inferences.”

Doherty studies temperature stress in plants, and before that she was in a women’s homebrew club while she earned a doctorate at Michigan State University. While yield is often discussed when talking about climate change and hop production, Doherty stresses what she calls her “obsession with clocks.”  

“We don’t know what the changes [that climate is producing] are going to bring,” she says. “What we do know is that patterns are changing. Plants can anticipate rain or a long, cool summer. Timing is important. That’s what’s changing. Timing.”

Put simply, plants are adaptable. In response to hot temperatures, for instance, they can optimize photosynthetic efficiency. Hop producers and farmers, armed with data and past experience, have been able to maximize production from seed to harvest, but Doherty suggests this is becoming more of a challenge. “Patterns are changing so fast and so dramatically that we can only hypothesize [how hops and farmers will adapt] to those changes,” she says.

Another cause for concern is the increased level of carbon in the atmosphere. “Plants use carbon,” Doherty says. “Carbon drives temperature, and helps a plant decide what to do with sugars. They could put it into the defense system. That’s what a lot of the hop flavors are, defense compounds. So the plant could stress defense compounds, but it could also put it into growing taller or wider, or place it in its reproductive parts.” 

The third way that climate change will alter hops as we know them is that earlier springs, warmer nights, new bugs introduced into ecosystems, and the pesticides used to combat them effectively will move pathogens into new regions.

“Pathogens—organisms that produce diseases—are moving more polar,” Doherty tells me. “They’re moving higher into Oregon. These plants are seeing more pathogens they’ve never seen.” 

To kill pathogens, it needs to be cold—not just for snaps, but for prolonged periods. That’s not happening the way it used to—and these pathogen migrations are only adding pressure to growers. “There are new insects, new caterpillars,” says Doherty. “[Growers will have to] introduce more pesticides, fungicides, and add more chemicals to the hops. Some of these are even running out of efficacy. It’s going to mean more cost to growers, more chemicals, and it’ll add more cost to the environment.” 

When it comes down to it, what does this mean for drinkers who like to savor styles where hops are predominant?

“The taste of beer is going to change, literally,” says Doherty. As alarming as that sounds, It’s important to note that change doesn’t necessarily mean a bad outcome. It’s possible that such changes could yield hops with new flavor profiles that offer their own interesting potential.

“We don’t know it’s going to be worse; it could be better,” Doherty says. “But things are going to change.” 

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN

In terms of future-proofing the beer industry—and its hops—beginning at the farm level is important. But there are also key changes that brewers can make to reduce the demand for hops, and ensure a resource that may become more scarce can still be shared.

Charlotte Cook is a brewer at London’s Coalition Brewing Co. Her recent dissertation, “Sustainability of Hop Product Usage in the Brewing Industry and Implications of the ‘Dry-Hopping Revolution’” for the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham, implies a world where that’s possible. When I asked her if the way we’re using hops is incorrect, she responded in kind.

“It’s not wrong per se, but it’s not intelligent,” she says. “Saying, ‘I use 40 grams per liter of hops in my beer’ is pretty much the brewing equivalent of driving a stupid car—it’s a dick-waving contest that no one wins. You can get the same results by using fewer hops and intelligently using them in different ways […] layering them or using them in different ways depending on the particular chemistry of hops. Just dumping a load of hops in is wasteful.”

Cook cites a 2019 study that demonstrated just how wasteful some brewing practices can be. The study showed significant levels of compounds with brewing value are left behind in spent dry hops, with 77% of alpha acids left behind, as well as other aroma-active compounds. 

“This study confirms that by simply increasing hop dosage rates, the perceived hop aroma in beer is not increased linearly,” she says. “The hop quality also changed, with the beers assessed tending to present with a stronger tea/herbal quality at the highest dry-hopping rates, thus the authors do not recommend dosing above 800g/hL. There does appear to be a maximum limit on the dry-hop dose, but methods can be employed to increase aroma whilst still using fewer hops.”

Among other ideas to combat wastefulness, Cook suggests the mixing of hop varieties in a way that unlocks a powerful aroma potential without using large volumes. The re-use of hops for bittering purposes is also strongly backed by research. Additionally, understanding terroir’s effect on the biochemical makeup of various hop varietals could impart useful knowledge about how to maximize a hop’s desirable qualities without “relying upon expensive imported varieties,” she says. 

Lastly, Cook cites research that the timing of harvest could dictate just how hops are used within a brewery setting. Late-harvest hops of certain varieties may perform better in a dry-hopping context, while hops harvested earlier may be better utilized in the kettle or whirlpool. This theory is limited in practicality because this is all dependent on their commercial availability.

From the grower side of the issue, so much relies on the give-and-take between education and experience. “Everyone is learning,” says Wyatt. “A lot of practices are highlighted in those monthly meetings. We’re continually asking one another, ‘What are you interested in? How can we do this better?’ Farmers are always looking to best practices like natural resource management. They’re utilizing organic and conventional growing, and I believe those percentages will shift, which will make less of an impact on the environment.” 

Many farmers are interested in experimenting with techniques like expanded harvest windows, but often meet hard boundaries in the way. 2021’s June heatwave “dried up a lot of things,” says Wyatt. These unexpected outcomes are tricky to plan around.

“It’s shifting a little bit,” admits Wyatt. “That research is being done. If temperatures keep going [in those extremes], there could very well be some shifting schedules.”

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE REALITY

On October 21, 2021, the last official update on the Schneider Springs Wildfire was made by InciWeb, an interagency all-risk incident information management system designed to democratize information in a singular and standardized reporting tool. Crew were “no longer fighting the fire,” but were cleaning and repairing the site. There remained a slight concern that smoldering within the interior of the fire would persist until the first substantial snowfall. And ambient worries about just where the next fire will take hold—and how damaging it will be—remain.

The difficulty in dealing with the unbiased chaos of natural disasters lies in our helplessness in controlling their occurrence and strength. There’s a prevailing notion, too, that individual contributions are not being matched by the collective, which breeds inaction on the part of both.

“Everything is changing so fast,” says Doherty. “We can’t keep up with it. It’s overwhelming. I feel a real fear of inaction. Doing something would be better than doing nothing. Inaction is the pessimistic take.”

Dailey expresses what he calls a “mid-level, Millennial-driven” concern. “We’ve seen what’s happened. We can only assume it’s going to be a continental trend. I’m optimistic about money spent on climate change in the Cascade Range. Hopefully we’ve learned and will continue to learn, so we can be more cautious about what we can do better.”

Pitra doubles down, noting that craft beer producers (and to an extent, consumers) are increasing visibility into the supply chain, which has opened up a more collaborative environment in the hop community (for their part, Pitra and Dailey hold the same positions at rival Yakima companies, yet they collaborate often). “The goal is the same,” she says. “To have brewers buy hops from the Pacific Northwest. Because they’re awesome.”

“Farmers are competitive in nature, so naturally there is a bit of competition to be the best—and for this application, that is a great thing for the farms and a great thing for the planet,” says Wyatt.

There is reason for some optimism, as a new generation reaches for the reins of public policy. Pew Research Center released a May 2021 report that shows that Generation Z (those born after 1996) have a determined and marked interest in climate issues. Overwhelmingly—and on both sides of the aisle—this younger generation is pushing away from the dependence on fossil fuels, and believes climate scientists need more input on policy decisions. 37% of Gen Z adults call climate change their “top personal concern.”

“I see a turning point [with this younger generation],” says Doherty. “I’m a 100% believer in human ingenuity and how we can see a problem and solve it. We can survive, we can have good crops, and wonderful things. We don’t need to give up everything.”

Moreover, we can find a way for our quotidian pleasure to survive, too, says Doherty. “I believe we can drink beer, enjoy beer, and do so without damaging the climate.”

Words by Matt Osgood
Illustrations by Colette Holston