#hops research

Blogging more? Processing more collections? What is going on in the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives?!?!?! Two things: too many collections with too little description online and a promotion dossier that is nearly done (due Tues. Jan 22, currently in the “procrastinate by doing work bucket”). 

Today I submitted the Hop Research Council Records guide for a final review, but since that guide is live I figured I would share the epic HRC history I just finished. It’s a Friday, dinner isn’t done, why not cut/paste? 

The collection is three boxes of super interesting stuff. In addition to annual reports summarizing ongoing research projects funded by the HRC, the collection includes article reprints, bylaws, contracts, correspondence, financial records, meeting minutes, newspaper clippings, notes, research proposals, and symposium proceedings. Much of the research reflected in these records pertains to the development of new hop varieties and the management of hop diseases like powdery mildew. Because I live/work here I’ll do a shout out to projects by researchers in Corvallis, including those in the USDA-ARS; this includes the work of Alfred Haunold, Cindy Ocomb, Ward Strong, Max Deinzer, and John Henning.

So here it is -- enjoy!

The Hop Research Council (HRC) is an international organization, based in the United States. It was formed in 1979, with offices in Oregon, to fund hop research by soliciting and providing funds for scientific investigation and research related to the agricultural production of quality hops in the United States. Historically, funded projects have been in the areas of plant pathology, agronomic research, public hop breeding, a clean plant network, entomology, and brewing research. Furthermore, the HRC allows researchers to quickly direct attention to a specific area of research when new needs arise. HRC has distributed approximately $10 million in grant funds to hops research projects. Membership of the council is made up of representatives from the brewery industry, state hop commissions, and hop dealers. HRC serves the entire hop industry by supporting research that meets the needs of members, but they also work to facilitate communication between the council, brewers, growers, hop dealers, and the scientific community.

Public hop research had been supported by the United States Brewers Association from about 1950 through 1978. That year it lost a major member, and as a result of the associated revenue loss, programs discontinued technical activities, including the support of hop research. Although the USDA-ARS and the universities of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho could contribute facilities and modest budgets for personnel, the loss of United States Brewers Association funding was a severe blow to hop research in the United States. It was clear to many that an industry that provided a high-quality commodity to the domestic market and a competitive product with an annual export value of $51 million required research support in order to maintain its quality consciousness and competitive stance.

Believing that the hops and brewing industries could benefit from a united hop research effort, concerned brewers, dealers, grower organizations, and others met early in 1979 to form an organization designed to support hop research in the United States. The purpose was to explore ways to fund research that meets the demands of all segments of the industry. Present at the first meeting were representatives from Adolph Coors Co., Anheuser-Busch, Inc., California Hops Growers Association, George Segal Co., Idaho Hop Commission, John Barth Inc., John I. Haas Inc., L. Oppenheimer and Co., Lupofresh Inc., Olympia Brewing Co., Oregon Hop Commission, Pabst Brewing Co., Pfizer Inc., S.S. Steiner Inc., The Stroh Brewery Co., United States Hop Administrative Committee, Von Horst Co., Washington Hop Commission, and Washington State Hop Producers Association.

By the mid-1980s the scope of research supported included breeding and genetics at Washington State University and the USDA-ARS program at Oregon State University, insect and mite programs at WSU and the University of Idaho, disease control programs at WSU and OSU, and two chemistry programs at OSU, one supporting the breeding programs and the other concerning hop contributions to the aroma and flavor of beer. From the beginning, a special fund was identified to supporting special, short-term projects. During HRC’s first year about $73,000 was raised through pledges and distributed among the research programs. This does not mean that U.S. hop research is funded primarily by the HRC; the USDA-ARS provides a nucleus for research. Instead, the HRC serves as a focus for U.S. hop research and provides an important incentive for and demonstration of the importance of this activity.

The development and commercialization of new high alpha varieties afforded a competitive advantage for American hops grown for use at home and abroad; these included Galena, Eroica, Nugget, Olympic, and Chinook. Equally important was the development of aroma varieties, including the Willamette, Mount Hood, and Liberty. Additionally, in the 1980s, European varieties were evaluated for agronomic and brewing characteristics.

Hops in Oregon have a long and varied history, full of tales from pickers, disease, Big Beer and craft brewing, and a solid research foundation at Oregon State.

New York was the first state to commercially produce hops in the early 19th century, but the specialty crop moved west with the people. The exact date hop seeds arrived and made it into our fertile soil is unknown, but we know the plants grown in Oregon were the first on the Pacific Coast. There are stories of hop growing as early as 1849, as seen referenced in this 1963 article.  

Published references are also found in records comparing hop production between 1850 and 1900, such as the one below from Henry Reed's 1903 article. 

But there is conflicting information about who the “first commercial hop grower was in Oregon.” According to Virginia Eastlick in The Oregon Geers, Frederick Walcott Geer brought hop seeds with him to Oregon in 1846 and planted them near Silverton; when he died in 1866 he was the first successful hop farmer in Oregon. 

However, many others report that when George (not William, see below) Wells planted his first hop yard in Buena Vista in 1867 commercial hop production officially arrived in Oregon. 

Update from September 2021: 

William Wells was 8 years old in 1867 -- it was his father George Wells who planted the yards. And, actually, he may have planted them in 1872. 

One article from 1909 reported that the first roots were planted in Polk County in 1868, by Adam Weissner.

Early hop farming in Oregon was a small family affair, with less than twenty acres dedicated to the crop.

In most instances, families grew hops as their sole cash crop, and local families or regional Indians provided the necessary labor for harvest in late August and September. (Kopp, Oregon Encyclopedia)

Though we most often link hops with beer, historically hops served many functions in pioneer kitchens. Hops were used in cooking (breads, salads) and home decor (stuffed in pillows), but they were also known for their medicinal uses. Reportedly, hops would help with afflictions such as flatulence, tumors, skin irritations, and mental illness. In the early 20th century hops were plentiful in Oregon and open for experimentation -- and from 1905 to 1915 Oregon was the nation's largest hop producer!

Many think it was Prohibition that knocked Oregon out of that number one spot, but it's more complicated than that. Despite a ban on alcohol and Great Depression

Oregon hop production grew after World War I due to the disastrous effects of the war on European agriculture. From 1922 to 1943, Oregon regained the honor as the nation's largest producer, and by the 1930s (following the repeal of Prohibition), the state’s hop growers expanded production to include over 20,000 acres of hops for a number of years. (Kopp, Oregon Encyclopedia)

In the 1930s the area around Independence in Polk County was known as the "Hop Center of the World," but the entire Willamette Valley felt an increased demand for a seasonal labor force to harvest hops.

“Growers advertised in newspapers to recruit urban families and provided cabins or tents, water, and other necessities for the hop-pickers” (Kopp, Oregon Encyclopedia), but because the work was “unskilled” pickers were recruited from all over the region for the short harvest season. Women and children were hired for their perceived picking dexterity (and lower wage demands), and a diversity of workers were found in the fields (racial, economic, geographic). 

Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos made up a part of the hop harvesting labor force, and several Japanese residents in the Valley owned their own hop farms. Mexican labor was not often used until after the 1950s when the farms had mostly become mechanized.

The Wigrich Ranch, south of Independence, was one of several that regularly hired Native Americans from the Grand Ronde, Siletz and Warm Springs reservations. In some ways, hop picking served the same function for those who lived on the reservations as tradition trade centers, such as Willamette Falls or Celilo Falls had before white settlers arrived. Beginning in the 1880s, Native Americans came to the Willamette Valley from all over Oregon to harvest hop. (Sturgeon) 

Urbanites and rural laborers, married and unmarried, young and old, men and women alike enjoyed decent wages, additional income, and a retreat from the city.

The hop harvest was more than just agricultural, but also offered social and cultural opportunities as many farms offered entertainment and camping facilities. More organized hop festivals grew out of the and of harvest celebrations in the migrant camps found at the fields. Pickers still have fond memories of these celebratory evenings, but less fond ones of the hard picking during the day. By the early 1950s the hop crop began to the decline and mechanical picking machines replaced the need for seasonal laborers. This change meant a demise of a large hop festivals, but also a shift in growing practices. Many growers abandoned their crops, while others increased acreage to pay for their investment in mechanical pickers.

Concurrent with this boom/bust in production and freedom from Prohibition, hop farmers in Oregon faced a problem plaguing many other hop-growing states: mildew. Downy mildew is a fungal infection that causes brittle basal spikes, curled leaves, stunted bine growth, and loss in production yield. In response, in 1930 the USDA and Oregon State formalized a hop research program that had existed since the first roots were planted on campus in the 1890s. 78 years later, it was Dr. Alfred Haunold who made an indelible mark on the industry with the Cascade and other popular modern American hop varieties.

Vital research into disease and taste continued to happen at and in conjunction with work done at OSU. The 1940s saw the establishment of the Brewers’ Hop Research Institute in Chicago by the Master Brewers Association of America, United States Brewers Association, American Brewing Industry, and American Society of Brewing Chemists; Oregon remained the second largest producer of hops in the country and G. R. Hoerner, a crop scientist at OAC, served as the Institute’s Secretary in Charge of Research. In the 1950s the market was saturated with bland macro brews; while this may have not been a high point for flavor, it did lead to a steady demand for American hops and work for Willamette Valley hop farmers. Macro brewing companies also continued to fund research and cultivated relationships with farmers, often entering into multi-year contracts. Farmers formed the Oregon Hop Commission in 1964 in response to the disbanding of the United States Hop Growers Association, but also in order to meet their own particular needs and interests. They wanted to sponsor research studies, link research to education and promotional programs, study legislation that may impact the industry, and coordinate with other agencies and organizations to carry out joint projects. The 1960s also saw an increased concern with environmentalism; in particular the impact of pesticides and herbicides as industrial toxins. This concern came with research funding and in Corvallis meant a new position for Alfred Haunold.

Haunold was a research geneticist for the hop breeding program from 1965 to 1995 and led the research team that released over 16 hop cultivars and breeding lines to the public. His work led to well-known high-aroma superstars like Cascade, Willamette, Sterling, Liberty, Mt. Hood, and Santiam.

As time marched on into the 1990s, the role of Oregon hop farmers changed. Once top suppliers to the nation’s leading breweries, growers faced an alarming decline in demand (resulting in fewer acres planted) when corporate brewing demands shifted to hops varieties better grown elsewhere or privately developed them in their own labs. At the same time, the eager and expanding craft brewers who able to rely on corporate breweries’ “leftover hops” in the past were faced with higher prices and fears of future shortages as acreage decreased.

However, in the 2000s things shifted again in the industry. Instead of catering only to macro breweries, companies like hop supplier IndieHops were established with the sole purpose of supplying hops for the craft beer market. Indiehops has partnered with OSU on research coordination with the faculty like Shaun Townsend in Crop and Soil Sciences and Tom Shellhammer in the Fermentation Sciences departments, as well as on the creation of an Aroma Hops breeding program. OSU and the USDA continue to collaborate on research programs to address disease and insect problems, hop chemistry and its relation to beer quality, and the genetic basis for quality traits; USDA-ARS research plant geneticist John Henning continues much of the work started by Haunold and his predecessors. 

The hop festival has had a resurgence as well. The Independence Hop and Heritage Festival returned in 2001 and is now a popular fall destination. Check out the OHBA Flickr set for pictures from 2013. 

Both mildews and mechanical picking machines had a significant impact on the number of farms operating in the state through the 20th century, but in 2013 Oregon is still the second largest hop producing state in the country with a vibrant farming culture in our own Willamette Valley. It’s an exciting time for growers, brewers, and those who enjoy their creations.

Citations and "See Alsos"

Eastlick, V. (1986). The Oregon Geers.

Kopp, P. Hop Industry. Retrieved from http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/entry/view/hop_industry/.

Nelson, H. (1963). The Vanishing Hop-Driers of the Willamette Valley. Oregon Historical Society Quarterly 64 (3), 267-271.

Oregon State University. Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon First Century of Farming (Corvallis: Oregon State College, 1959). 

Reed, H. (1903). The Great West and the Two Easts. Oregon Historical Society Quarterly 4 (2), 110-129.

Strom. D. Hops. Retrieved from http://www.willametteheritage.org/LaRC/bios_histories/Hops.pdf 

Sturgeon, K. (2012). In 1940s, hops brought thousands to Valley. Retrieved from http://www.willametteheritage.org/News_2012/Hops_SJ_article_7_14_2012.pdf 

We were in the midst of some chilly times in Corvallis when I met retired OSU hops chemist and former OSU student Gail Nickerson to talk hops. Nickerson was in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry at OSU from 1959 to 2003 and is quite well-known for her work on testing what makes beer bitter and the compounds that add to aroma.  

I had a hunch it was going to be a good time based many recommendations to set up a time to chat and after listening to a couple of oral history interviews we have in the SCARC collections. 

Nickerson is third from the left -- yes, with the fabulous glasses. 

In those interviews I'd heard her frank and funny talk about life on campus and living in Waldo Hall.

“The employment opportunities (of my day) for women were nursing, stenographing, Home Economics... but that was about it.”

“I don’t remember having  a woman professor.” 

But also about her long career at OSU. 

“I went to work in the chemistry lab – that was when I flunked out of school. So I begged and got hired on.”

"I got to go to Strasberg. One person from each country is nominated for The International Order of the Hop Award. I am a 'Chevalier' of the Hop!"

"If you do something long enough you either get better at it or you leave."

Guess she got better -- and stayed.

We spent two hours talking about beer and drinking lots of coffee. And even if the coffee shop wasn't so cozy and the weather outside so frightful, I would've stayed hours just to listen to her stories. 

I love a good story and Nickerson was full of many! I heard about her family furniture, work volunteering at the Corvallis Public Library, love of mystery novels, involvement on the board of the Audubon Society of Corvallis, and (ironically given the preceding item in this list) the turkey she made the weekend before. We also talked about her education, the trajectory of her career, and her travels to hop growing regions like those in South Africa, but also the changing work on campus, changes she's seen in OSU research, and changes she's seen in the research community in general. 

I found Nickerson to be delightfully honest, telling me in the first 10 minutes about how she ended up in that hop lab after her degree in Education didn’t quite pan out. When she started college she wanted to be a scientist, but she ran up against a gender wall and was encouraged to pursue education instead. So there must have been a logic in telling her that instead of working in a lab she’d teach science to students who would work in one? She did return to finish her degree in the 1980s, but it was clear that the changing educational requirements and culture of science at OSU had an impact on her career. Reflecting on the trajectory of her career, Nickerson said of her work at OSU

"I started as a temporary worker and I ended as a temporary worker … I started as a dishwasher and I ended as a dishwasher, isn't that the way it goes?"

We also talked about what it was like to be a woman working as scientist in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. OSU has always had women faculty and students studying science, but in the early days most were in "Domestic Science" and she shared some of the limitations of the opportunities women actually had in their work. For instance, women could work on grant funded projects, but could not be principal investigators; instead they could be lab technicians or support staff for the male scientists. These types of personal reflections add such an interesting additional dimension to demographic and statistical reports.

However, in addition to her personal reflections on her career, she also gave me descriptions of her working life in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, which gave me a quite a good picture of her work environment. One of my favorite things she shared was that they had a 30 cup coffee pot (or should I say coffee vat) in the hallway. It's like my dream come true. 

In full disclosure this is not the actual vat, but one I found on Google that matches what I imagine they'd use in the 1960s. Visual aids are good. 

Whether it was the coffee or the intellectual stimulation, Nickerson said that hers was a creative department driven challenge themselves to keep up research work that was breaking ground. Their science was built on the building blocks laid by early OSU hop geneticists and crop science researchers, which had created a stable foundation, but it was happening in a time of transition for their field -- one from observational science (e.g. looking at how the vines grow or what the scientists could smell) to a research of measuring and microscopic analysis. However, because OSU's hops research has always been very grounded in a close relationship with the farmers, everyone still did their piece of work in the fields during her time. Nickerson says she really came to college to learn how to drive a tractor because growing up in Portland she hadn’t had many opportunities.

During her tenure things changed considerably from the technological perspective. In their early days they used pretty commonplace or ordinary items in their work, ones you would expect to find at home supply store and not a fancy lab doing revolutionary science. As she said in a 2003 interview

“There weren’t a lot of people involved in hop research … so you could be an expert.”

They were doing it all with buckets and misters -- what she lovingly called "bucket chemistry" -- and there were opportunities for them to be creative. 

Again not actually the bucket, but still pretty funny. And quite different from what is used now, right?

Full disclosure: I have no idea what the apparatus above does, but it looks super space age and I think it gets the point across. 

As the years passed a good portion of her work happened in a lab, with increasingly high tech equipment and an ever-growing collection of people working on related projects. And yes, she was there when Al Haunold et al made big discoveries like the Cascade. 

What was especially valuable for me talking with Nickerson was her personal perspective on those times and insights she offered to what I’d been in the microfilm records only a week before -- and what I was trying into those records. Since Nickerson loves to talk I also got a bit of office politics, department politics, and her honest thoughts on working with in a growing university system. When I shared my observation that seems like there were lots of programs and not a lot of great communication, she confirmed that and gave me stories about different departments and the way that they worked together. To be able to talk to someone who was working during that time was a great post-Thanksgiving gift!

In addition to helping me understand how different departments fit together, Nickerson also helped me untangle the complicated web of funding for research projects. Questions like “who provided the funding,” “who directed the research,” “who gets paid out of what pot of money,” and “how are funds allocated” are all things we still hear about in research today. We also talked a bit about public versus private varieties of hops and the implications for research (see Hop Forward and USDA-ARS Hop Research Program for more about this). This isn’t new as I learned last week in the records I reviewed: the United States Brewers Federation shows up frequently in the research records of the Botany and Plant Pathology Department in the 40s and 50s. There are some new things a'brewin in the public hops arena, which I learned more about at the Oregon Brewers Guild meeting the next day (December 4th). Yes my post on the OBG meeting is forthcoming, but for now here is a bit of background.

What I took away from our meeting, in addition to better context and sense of the personalities of the people in all records I had been viewing, was a sense of how much fun they were having. They were all so full of exploration creativity, challenging each other to find solutions and to replicate results.  

This week I spent some quality time the the microfilm machine, skimming and scanning research correspondence from the Botany and Plant Pathology Department Records (RG 054). I’ve been steadily (but slowly) reviewing the materials in our collections to learn more about OSU’s research history into hops and brewing, but also to learn more about the types of records we have for researchers. I’ve written about this before, but I always have access and digitization and use on the brain when I review collections.

I really don't dislike microfilm that much, but for those who have used this special media format you know that the quality of the scans can be pretty poor and the order on the reels can be pretty wonky. There was a certain time period when archivists microfilmed records and destroyed the original paper to save space and preserve the information on (what seemed like) an unstable medium (paper). We have some pretty important records now living their life on film... I vociferously curse those who microfilmed (and destroyed) the original correspondence from our first presidents, because they sort of deserve my wrath, but I will admit to doing a bit of whining about these sorts of pages as well ->

Are you saying "What? Sorry, that's a bit unclear..." For me it's worse than flowery cursive when you want to skim or trying to read French with my remedial language skills. However, there are always those things that aren't murky... 

I was working with scanned documents that were sometimes questionable in quality, but also with memos and reports referencing projects from the 1940s and 1950s I was unfamiliar with, people who worked here during that time that I couldn’t quite place in the organizational structure, people who worked in Corvallis but not for OSU during that time, subjects that I was unfamiliar with, and terminology that might as well have been a different language (or in bold, smeared, mimeographed typeface).

I also found that sometimes things that I could read, but that weren’t all that helpful, such as this memo I saved on my computer with the file name "most unhelpful memo ever" -> 

So while I can complain about all the things I am lacking (clear scans, an org chart, scientific knowledge), I can also appreciate what I have: the perspective of hindsight. I know how this story ends.

I found a couple of interesting examples to show the benefit of our hindsight. One is a memo from Dr. DD Hill, head of the Department of Farm Crops, to Dr. DC Mote, head of the Department of Entomology. Dr. Hill has run into the "expected research without proper funding" issue. He writes ->

The Brewers agreed to make pilot brews from five to ten samples per year and it is expected that for the next year or so most of the samples will be from the entomological work. They are reluctant however, to allocate any of the research funds for maintaining a graduate student in entomology.

You can tell he is frustrated by the reluctance to fund what is clearly essential for this research, but he also offers an interesting bit of personal feeling: embarrassment. 

From our 2013 perspective we know that funding is still an issue for research at OSU, but that research relating to hops and brewing is seeing a run of good times with strong programs and partnerships with the brewing industries. 

Here is a great letter from 1952 written by FE Connery, who is the Chairman of the United State Brewing Foundation (USBF) Sub-Committee for Hop Research and employee of Ballantine & Sons. The USBF is funding a chunk of this research and funneling research results to breweries for "on the scene" testing. I like this one because it allows us to reflect on the role of the brewing industry in the research going on at OSU. We know that there is a benefit to a united hop research effort, and from my vantage point, "uniting" can be complicated when you try to merge the interests of "big beer" and "craft brew." But that's for another post...  

In this letter we see Connery writing to RS Besse, who is the Associate Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. Besse has been somewhat tardy with his reports and Connery is going to offer some suggestions to go with his reprimands. 

The first is to be concise, be brief, but put it all in the report. 

As far as the bimonthly progress reports are concerned, brevity will be appreciated, but the reports must be to the point and contain concrete information, with supporting data, either in the form of graphs, tabulations, or specific information as to the type of work being conducted and on what samples.

...but keep it brief. And do it quickly. 

I realize all the well that a major part of the time must be spent in conducting research work if productive results are to be forthcoming; however, you must also realize that we of the brewing industry, wish to have close contact with the work being done so that we may be part of it and may be fully informed on any and all developments.

The final point, and in my mind one that might have come before paragraph five in this memo, is "please actually write the reports." 

To the best of my knowledge the last report put out by your investigators was the June 1950 report covering the 1949 crop. Here it is early in 1952 and as yet I have not received a report of the 1950 work.

But even if I know how the story ends, I was (once again) struck by how much things stay the same even when names and dates on memos change. As is sometimes the case for my own work, there were times when I felt like I was drowning in the Murky Waters of Administravia. 

For all our clearly typewritten emails and high definition photographs, we still struggle with communication -- and we still flub up and not everyone feels like they had their due spot at the table. I noticed several instances of crossed communication in these records, which led me to believe that though the subject matter was complicated for me, the organizational structure was tough for those who were working in it. To keep this long story (not very) short, there were lots of different people and departments and agencies working on lots of different pieces. And sometimes they just did a crappy job of sharing with each other. 

I found this memo from one person on campus (Dr. SM Dietz, chair of Botany & Plant Pathology at OSU), to someone in Maryland (Dr. DM Crooks, head Horticulturalist in Charge of Division of Tobacco Medicinal and Special Crops for the USDA in Maryland), about being overlooked for a meeting with some people on the OSU campus (those named below as well as Dr. GR Hoerner, Extension Hops Specialist). 

For reference, these people were actually working in the same small town, mere buildings away from each other! But you can imagine how it must have felt to be Dr. Dietz, new to his job and being excluded from a meeting with a bunch of people it probably would have been helpful to talk with in the same room. 

So I am thankful for those who saved these records, even if they did so by microfilming them. There's so much information even in this small reel -- including a fabulously informative 1949 summary report on all the research activities of the Oregon Hops Research Program.