Tops in Hops
by John Gever
Alfred Haunold told his bosses in Corvallis that he wanted to retire this year, and beer brewers around the world started to get nervous.
Haunold, you see, is the only full-time breeder of hops in North America and is probably the world's leading developer of new hop varieties. He is almost single-handedly responsible
He has several breeding programs still in progress, closely watched by brewers and growers. Who would complete them? Who would begin the next phases? Haunold works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which now has a hiring freeze in place, making it impossible to bring in a replacement. The clientele began to sweat.
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Call Haunold at his office in the USDA complex adjacent to the Oregon State University campus, and you're greeted with the single word "Haunold," delivered in a clipped Austrian accent. Instantly you imagine lederhosen and a Tyrol hat and family hop-growing secrets handed down from generation to generation.
When you visit, what you see is a pleasant, silver-haired man in a plaid shirt and slacks who didn't know hops from henbane when he took the job in Corvallis in 1966. He is indeed from Austria, but he spent the early part of his career working with wheat in Nebraska. "Hops grew wild in my hometown, but I didn't recognize them or pay attention to them," he says -- though, rest assured, he does drink a beer daily, two when camping.
The hops job in Corvallis seemed like a good opportunity. At that time, brewers around the world relied on European hops to give beer its characteristic bitterness and flowery aroma. (Beer without hops tastes like wet Grape-Nuts.) American hops were a poor substitute that were used only in the cheapest brews or when the European crop failed -- which was frequently. American giants like Anheuser-Busch were eager for domestic varieties that approached European varieties in flavor and that could be produced with consistent yields.
Haunold's first job was to finish work on a new hop breed that his predecessor had created. Simply crossing old varieties and getting hybrid seedlings that appear to have the desired characteristics is only part of the job. Years of field-testing are required before growers will commit commercial-scale acreage to a new variety and brewers will agree to buy it. Haunold finished the testing phase and introduced it to the industry. The new hop breed was called Cascade and it put Northwest growers on the map.
Quickly Haunold followed it up with his own invention, christened Willamette. "I made the cross in 1967," he recalls, with the commercial release nine years later. "It was a quantum leap," he says matter-of-factly, because it approximated the flavor of an old English variety called Fuggle, but could be grown in huge quantities for brewers like Anheuser-Busch. Because of it and Haunold's work with other new and traditional breeds, A-B has reduced its use of imported hops to 30-40 percent, down from 90 percent when Haunold came to Oregon.
Other varieties developed by Haunold, by himself or in collaboration with other researchers, include such well-known varieties as Mt. Hood and Nugget. Along with Willamette, these varieties account for more than a third of the nation's hop acreage, which is concentrated in the Yakima, Columbia and Willamette river valleys. U.S. production has doubled during Haunold's thirty years in Corvallis, with three times as many varieties now grown.
"He has probably done more for the U.S. hop industry in terms of breeding than any other single person," according to Marty Coleman, A-B's Northwest hop buyer.
Haunold's achievements are valued as well by microbrewers.
"We use Willamette and Cascade," David Sohigian, brewmaster at Field's Brewery in Eugene, says. "Cascade is one of our favorite hops. It lends what people consider Northwest style to many of our beers, especially the India pale ale."
Teri Fahrendorf, brewmaster at Eugene's Steelhead Brewery, concurs. She characterizes Cascade, Willamette, and Mt. Hood as "wonderful hops -- we use them here at Steelhead."
Having a thriving domestic hop industry is important to microbrewers, Sohigian adds. Consistency is just as important for his beers as it is for Budweiser, and so is freshness, he says. Plus, he adds, "you know how it's processed. You can go look at it being processed, and that's really important."
Haunold is clearly proud of his achievements, yet remains modest about any special abilities he may possess. "I used crosses and combinations that people said couldn't work, but it turned out it did work," he says. Mainly, he credits himself with luck and intuition: "In plant breeding, you can work a lifetime and collect a lot of material, but never have a smash hit. Someone else can come in and in a relatively short period of time, come up with [a major achievement]."
Just out of Haunold's test fields is a new variety, called Ultra, a descendant of the European variety Hallertauer, as was Mt. Hood and several other of Haunold's breeds. He is also hard at work on adapting two other popular European hops to the Northwest, Saaz and Tettnang. The program is important to U.S. brewers large and small because these hops, and the special flavors they impart, now have to come from central Europe where the crop is unreliable.
He admits that the industrial brewers drive his research. "Microbrewing now accounts for about one percent of the market," he notes. But, he thinks, that share could reach five percent, and the major brewers have begun to make more flavorful brews that require more flavorful hops. Those opportunities bring brewers and growers to his door. "I helped a couple of growers get started with [Kent Goldings, a traditional English hop popular with microbrewers back East]. Now they've got a couple of hundred acres, and some are under contract to go back to England."
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And how has the industry coped with Haunold's retirement, which became official on June 30? Quite easily, in fact. They convinced him to keep going to his office and lab every day until USDA lifts the hiring freeze. Haunold understands that his work must go on.
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