What is the future of cascade hops?

Cascades are still the single largest hop variety grown in the US according to the 2016 Hop Report of the Hop Growers of America.



With Cascade acreage increasing in the 3 largest hop growing states (ID, OR, WA) over the past 5 years (pg. 5-6).

 

There are applications for Cascade in big brewing, no? I think we've all seen the Heineken Light ads proudly stating that it's brewed with Cascade.

 

I recently had an pale ale from South County Brewing in PA that would make you rethink that cascade hops are old news. In my opinion, this hop is ripe for being reframed in the modern pale ale styles. And it's plentiful.

 

Cascade is a delicious aroma and flavor profile and therefore never be dead. It's like trying to say chicken wings will go out of style.

 

Yeah, whether they're touted or just used are two different things .

 

I think many new breweries have kind of forgotten a lot of classic varieties in favor of new exciting varieties. On top of that, the quality of Cascade varies more than any variety that I know of. I've posted a few times about my first experience selecting hop lots for contracts and the variability of the 4 different lots that I smelled. You would have thought each one was a different variety. The Cascade that I think of as premium lots are incredibly aromatic and can rival the new hyped varieties easily. I also think that with how some of the hyped varieties are being grown more and more, the variability of those has gone up too and that the premium Cascade lots are FAR better than the average Citra lots which have been frequently oniony in the last two years. The premium Citra lots though are what has given it the reputation that it has, but it's harder to acquire and requires some connections to the right suppliers. Cascade isn't going anywhere though, it's just not being advertised and hyped like some other varieties. Every time I drink a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale I enjoy the hell out of it and I wish that all Cascade tasted the way their's does. I would love to see them brew a limited edition Pale Ale recipe that is basically the same thing but with modern pale ale hopping rates.

 

Cascades are awesome. Just because they aren't used (much) in hazy IPAs doesn't mean that they aren't a fantastic hop.

 

This! Sierra Nevada has been buying Cascade hops for a long time, and will select the best based on sample aroma.

YCH Hop School showed a chart that had Cascade data for AA and Oil %. It was a scatter plot, much variability was seen, and they attributed that to it being an old variety, and drift and other varieties getting into fields as a problem. The plot for Simcoe was tighter and had a trend line, as it is newer and highly managed.

 

Per what NPH has told me, Heineken Light uses Cascades

 

They wouldn't have happened to mention variance due to being grown in different regions/microclimates?

 

The had farms separated out (different symbols), and farms appeared several times indicating fields. No indication of region (Moxie, Topponish, Lower Valley). There was field to field scatter, but that was less than farm to farm scatter (usually), from what I remember.

 

Thanks for sharing that, man.

 

There was an interesting presentation given at the 2016 CBC which addressed the topic of:

“Q: Does hop oil content correlate with hop aroma intensity in a dry-hopped beer?”

Daniel Vollmer, a PhD Candidate at Oregon State University studied this question using a number of different batches of Cascade hops: 3 farms in Washington state and 2 farms in Oregon (and from multiple plants per farm).

The results of his analyses were that hop oil content (amount of oils) does not correlate to aroma intensity.

His take away message was:

• Hop oil content doesn’t correlate with OHAI

• More oil doesn’t necessarily result in more hop aroma

• Oil composition –

• use to this to predict hop aroma performance

• Elucidate markers for Cascade quality in hops

• Oil Quality over Oil Quantity

Cheers!

 

This is an interesting question, if only because the haze craze seems to eschew some of the classic hop varities. And the ones that are used (thinking of Tree House's Sap, which is all Chinook) typically aren't the ones gushed over by beer nerds (like Galaxy, Citra, etc.).

Based on the acreage/production stats listed by @jesskidden and @hopfenunmaltz, it certainly sounds like Cascade is here to stay, and the continued presence of high volume Cascade users like SNPA has play a big part in that, but I definitely am interested to see what happens to the role of some of these classic hops as IPA palates/trends shift.

I have another line of thinking, which may be distracting to this conversation, but it centers around the estery yeast a lot of these hazy IPAs use, and how that works with certain hop varieties. To my palate, sometimes those yeasts are so dominant and expressive that they overshadow certain hop varieties' characteristics (i.e., piney notes, that old-school grapefruit pith note, etc.). I digress, but I think it's nonetheless something I think about when it comes to hop varities (like Cascade) in this new age of hoppy beer.

 

Curiously, how are you delineating the difference between yeast derived characteristics and hop derived ones?

 

The takeaway, then, was that oil composition was is much more important than oil quantity? So, types of terpenes versus total amount of them? Did the presentation go into which percentages of which ones created which characteristics?

 

My son has some growing on an old swing-set in his backyard. They do well with the limited light and the cooler environment up against the big woods behind his house. They smell amazing!

 

Our hop farmers share that with us anecdotally as well. But what this chart doesn't tell you is that some of the largest customers from Cascade hops now are coming from overseas, and are from the large brewing conglomerates.

 

Shane, that is an interesting point. For non-US brewers who are producing 'craft' beer Cascade hops is likely a 'new' hop for their customers.

Cheers!