The hot hops of the U.S., 2016 edition.

Yesterday, I published a (brief and incomplete) synopsis of the just released hop reports from the Hop Growers of America and the Baarth-Haas Group. The former, the HGA report, listed the acreage devoted to each hop variety in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho— comprising the Pacific northwest, the region which accounts for 96% of all hops grown in the U.S.

Wanting a better picture of the individual hop variety winners and losers in the U.S., I 'spreadsheeted' together the results from the three states, with percentage gain or loss. Overall, aroma hops are up, way up. Bittering, or high-alpha-hops, are down.

Here you go:

Note that:

• Whereas Cascades, Centennial, and Citra (the new 3-Cs?) are the most grown, Azacca, Comet, and Sterling are the three hop varieties increasing fastest in acreage, by percentage.
• Even though the report reports on the vast majority of hops grown in the U.S., it does not account for those hops grown in the twenty-six states outside of the Pacific northwest. Based on anecdotal evidence, however, I believe that Cascades would make up the lion's share. Maybe next year, state hop-grower guilds could report their data?
• Where a hop is listed as "NEW," it might not be new, but simply not listed in previous years or be planted in trivial acreage. In fact, the HGA report does include acreage for "Other" and "Experimental" which I did not include here.
• Where a hop variety has an asterisk in the "% =/- 2015" column, HGA reports that there is some sort of proprietary BS involved (my words, not theirs), so the figures are probably off. "Limited data" means just that.

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• From YFGF: The state of the American hops industry is strong.
• The report from the Hop Growers of America: here [pdf].
• The Baarth-Haas report: here [pdf].
• In a new book, The Hops List, author Julian Healey lists and describes 254 commercially-available hop varieties. Healey maintains a website of the same name, where he curates a monthly-updated top ten hot hop list, based on searches for specific variety details at the site. The book is available as an ebook and pdf. The format will allow him to update as needed.


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