{"id":32334,"date":"2015-08-12T04:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T08:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32334"},"modified":"2015-08-11T20:21:56","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T00:21:56","slug":"better-hops-through-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/08\/12\/better-hops-through-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Better hops through science<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Wired<\/em>, Katie M. Palmer<\/a> discusses an interesting (if only to brewers and beer fans) development in the quest for better beer:<\/p>\n

For craft breweries, originality is everything. Your favorite microbrew prides itself on the particular combination of grains, yeast, and hops that go into its fermented nectar. Regardless of the magic that goes into the recipe, though, a lot of those ingredients come from the same big suppliers \u2014 bulk barley, high-yield yeast. So when agricultural geneticist Sean Myles was visiting his brewing buddies over at Tatamagouche Brewing Company in Nova Scotia, the conversation turned quickly to the one place where microbreweries can really distinguish themselves: hop varieties.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a craft beer fanatic\u2026a little bit,\u201d says Myles, who researches at Dalhousie University. \u201cI ended up hanging around the hop yard, and we were taking a look at the vines.\u201d In Nova Scotia, brewers grow the same varieties of hops you\u2019d see elsewhere \u2014 Cascade, Willamette, Fuggle \u2014 which add aroma, flavor, and bitterness to a beer while helping to preserve it. But the vines don\u2019t thrive like they do on the dryer, warmer west coast. The region\u2019s high humidity makes the plants vulnerable to mildew. Myles looked at the hops growing in the brewers\u2019 backyard, stunted and suffering from fungus, and had an idea: \u201cI said, well, let\u2019s go get some pollen.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Myles and Hans Christian Jost from Tatamagouche traveled from Nova Scotia to Corvallis, Oregon, where the USDA has one of the biggest hop collections in the world. \u201cIn order to get new varieties you need to let these plants have sex and generate some offspring,\u201d says Myles. The National Clonal Germplasm Repository \u2014 which includes a gene bank in addition to physical collections of berries, mint, and nuts \u2014 is one of the only places where hopheads have access to pollen from male plants. (The pine cone-shaped hops that go into your beer are the flower of female plants, so most growers don\u2019t bother keeping any males around.)<\/p>\n

At the USDA hop library, which has dozens of varieties bred for different taste profiles, disease resistance, and viability in different climates, Myles worked with hop expert John Henning to find four different male mildew-resistant hops. But he couldn\u2019t take the plant material across the border to Canada \u2014 so he stuck baggies over the top of the plants, collected their pollen, and brought it back to sprinkle on top of the female flowers grown by the brewery.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the beginning of what will be a multiple-year process of growing, seed collection, and growing again to select the most mildew-resistant plants that still keep their floral hop character. When the brewers are done, they\u2019ll have a unique variety of hops that they can call their own \u2014 and hopefully grow more of, thanks to its improved mildew protection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Wired, Katie M. Palmer discusses an interesting (if only to brewers and beer fans) development in the quest for better beer: For craft breweries, originality is everything. Your favorite microbrew prides itself on the particular combination of grains, yeast, and hops that go into its fermented nectar. Regardless of the magic that goes into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[210,827,524],"class_list":["post-32334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-beer","tag-genetics","tag-novascotia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8pw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32335,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32334\/revisions\/32335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}