Editor’s note: We’re excited to share that our videos documenting the 2021 Hop Selection trip have been awarded a Platinum Crushie Award for “Best Original Video/Series” by the Craft Beer Marketing Awards. We’ll raise a Perpetual to that! Watch all the videos below.
Every fall, two teams from Tröegs head to the Pacific Northwest for one of the most critical steps in brewing: hop selection. Nailing next year’s batches of Nugget Nectar, Perpetual IPA, Nimble Giant and more all starts in the hop fields.
“We go to the Yakima Valley every year to make sure we get the best hops we possibly can,” says brewmaster John Trogner. “We walk the fields, we talk to the farmers. To me, it’s the most important ingredient selection we do.”
Follow along with these daily updates.
Preview: Listen in as Tröegs brothers John and Chris talk about why the annual trips to Yakima are critical to the quality of our beer.
Day 1: Get the perspective of Mike Via, a first-timer on the Yakima trip.
Day 2: We had a busy day in Yakima, hitting two ends of the hop-selection spectrum. We found Chinook, El Dorado and Centennial that’ll be perfect for brewing Tröegs favorites like Perpetual IPA, Blizzard of Hops and Field Study. And we also got a look at some experimentals at Roy Farms.
Day 3: These trips to Yakima are about hops, and they’re about people. Today, we hear from our brewmaster John why building these cross-country relationships is so important.
Day 4: Over the years, we’ve developed a shared language around hop selection – the appearance, the texture, and of course, the aromas. And having multiple brewers in Yakima helps us play off of each other’s strengths and sensitivities.
Team 2: The window for harvesting hops runs pretty much through the whole month of September. Two weeks after our first team heads out, we send a second team of brewers to Yakima for the late-harvest hops.
We’re feeling the peace of mind that these trips offer. “We have so many hop-forward beers, so the stakes are high,” says brewmaster John Trogner.
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