Hop Breeding Program – HPA

Meet Eclipse®

Pixel3 — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 11:45:28 +0000

We’re proud to introduce the newest proprietary variety from our hop breeding program. Eclipse^® is a big-hitting, fruit-forward flavour hop bursting with sweet mandarin, zesty citrus peel and fresh pine needles.

It’s another exciting addition to our portfolio of uniquely Australian flavour hops that already includes world renowned varieties such as Galaxy^®, Vic Secret, Ella and Enigma^®. Sales & Marketing Manager Owen Johnston says “the addition of Eclipse^® is an important step toward even greater choice and diversity for brewers that will lead to sensational flavour outcomes for beer drinkers.” Eclipse^® is currently only available in commercial quantities in Australia, but will start to reach the rest of the world in commercial quantities from crop 2021. Stock will be limited for the first few years while we sustainably scale up production. Forward contracts are encouraged to secure your supply.

To celebrate the commercialisation of Eclipse^®, we teamed up with Beer Cartel, Australia’s #1 online craft beer store, and a bunch of local breweries to make a special mixed pack. It will include 12 tasty beers starring our latest creation from the likes of Blasta, Deeds, Hop Nation, Moo Brew, Mountain Culture, Mr Banks, Newstead and Two Birds. The Eclipse^® mixed pack will be available to beer drinkers across Australia through Beer Cartel’s online store. Since Eclipse^® sits firmly in the fruit quadrant of HPA’s Hop Navigator it is well suited to fruit-forward beer styles, so you can expect a bit of everything from high impact hazy NEIPAs to lighter well-balanced IPAs. Ash Hazell, Head of Brewing at Colonial Brewing Co, used Eclipse^® back when it was still an experimental hop called HPA-016. He says “the best beer I ever brewed was Pioneer. It was a 7.5% IPA using a foolish amount of whole HPA-016 hops in the hop-back and dry-hopping. The full spectrum of hop character we extracted was unreal.”

Eclipse^® was first developed by HPA’s hop breeding program in 2004, but its ancestry can be traced as far back as 1915. The subsequent generations of cross pollination featured varieties such as Fuggle, Brewer’s Gold, Comet and Pride of Ringwood in the Australian environment.

Learn more about Eclipse^® here.

New technology separating the boys from the girls

Pixel3 — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 23:00:33 +0000

Hops are dioecious, which means there are male and female plants. Only the mature, unfertilised cones of the female plants are harvested for use in beer, as they produce the yield of acids and essential oils that brewers value for their bittering and aromatic properties. Male plants are used when hop breeders wish to cross varieties and develop new cultivars. The resulting hop seedlings can include male, hermaphrodite and female plants.

HPA have been collaborating with a host of institutions to advance Diversity Arrays Technology (DArT) molecular marker technology that will allow hop breeders to identify desireable sex phenotypes earlier in the growth cycle than ever before. This technology will not reduce the time it takes to create, identify and develop a new cultivar. But it will allow us to remove non-target sex phenotypes from the nursery, rather than deploying plants in-field for a minimum of 6 months before being able to determine their sex phenotype. As a result, in-field trials will be more efficient in evaluating individual plants and crossing success.

The research was undertaken by scientists at the Slovenian Institute of Hop Research and Brewing, who selected male specific DNA sequences from an international hop industry DArT collaboration to evaluate their suitability for determining the sex phenotype among seedlings. Nine male specific DArT markers showed complete linkage with the male sex phenotype in three crossing families. Following optimisation, four were successfully converted from DArT to Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) markers. From 197 seedlings, there was variable correlation with sex phenotypic data for the individual PCR marker amplifications. By integrating the different markers into a single ‘multiplex’ reaction, they achieved a 100% positive correlation with sex phenotypic data.

To apply this technique to hop breeding program operations it needs to be accurate, fast and cost efficient since it would involve screening hundreds or even thousands of seedlings. To develop a fast and low-cost method, a crude sample DNA extraction technique followed by multiplex PCR was evaluated in 253 seedlings from 14 segregating populations, with no loss of accuracy. The study describes, for the first time, the routine application of molecular markers linked to male sex phenotypes in an intensive Slovenian hop breeding program. The methods described could be employed for screening of sex phenotypes at the seedling stage in other hop programs worldwide, thereby saving resources for desirable female plants.

Click here to read to complete article.

More flavour hops for Australia

Pixel3 — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 23:00:23 +0000

Shifting consumer preferences are encouraging brewers to experiment more than ever before, which has stimulated hop breeding activity around the world, and profoundly changed the use of hops in brewing.

Historically, HPA grew and traded mostly bittering hops. In the late 1960s a dedicated Hop Breeding Program was initiated to improve alpha acid yield. Then the beginning of the craft movement saw beer drinkers move toward more flavour, aroma and diversity. This led to a second stage of the Program aimed at breeding flavour hops for the Australian climate. Since the 1990s, the Program has commercialised five proprietary varieties – Ella, Enigma, Galaxy, Topaz and Vic Secret – with a sixth scheduled to be released exclusively to the Australian market in 2020.

Shift from alpha to aroma.

Demand for our proprietary varieties continues to climb in conjunction with the hopping rate, as heavily hopped craft beers begin to increase in popularity.

Impact of craft beer movement on hopping rate in the US.

HPA is dedicated to bringing our supply in line with brewers’ demand, so that we can grow alongside our customers and support their success. We have recently broken ground on a new harvest facility that forms part of a $35 million expansion at Buffalo River Valley in Victoria. This investment in capacity increases will help to improve supply surety as well as increase varietal diversity. At completion in 2024, the project is expected to increase total production by 50%.

Forecast production volume.

We will be consistently increasing the proportion of our production volume contracted to Australian breweries as we grow, from 28% of total hops contracted in 2019 to 37% in 2021. This will not only ensure that we are looking after our own backyard, but will also help to reduce our carbon footprint.

Percentage of production volume contracted to Australian breweries.

We are the flavour makers

Pixel3 — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 09:55:40 +0000

Our Hop Breeding Program began way back in the 1950s when we were all about growing bittering hops. Our primary focus was improving our alpha acid yield until the beginning of the craft beer movement rolled around. As beer drinkers began to move away from malt, bitterness and alcohol content toward flavour, aroma and diversity, we began to breed flavour hops for the emerging market.

Our Plant Breeders have since used their expert understanding of hops, and how to pair plants to breed desirable traits, to bring a number of hugely successful proprietary hops to brewers – Ella, Enigma, Galaxy, Topaz and Vic Secret.

According to Inside Beer, Galaxy is now considered to be one of the Big Eight varieties found in virtually every beer recipe as an indispensable guarantor of flavour intensity. But our thirst for uniquely Australian flavour hops doesn’t stop there. We’re always searching for the latest flavour so we can continue to offer brewers choice and diversity.

We’re particularly excited to release our latest proprietary hop to the Australian market this year. For now, it’s simply known as HPA-016. It’s a little gentler on the palette than Galaxy, but its flavour profile of sweet mandarin combined with sharp citrus peel and soft pine has already shown unquestionable impact in beer.

HPA-016 was first grown at our Victorian farm Rostrevor Hop Gardens in 2005, but we didn’t know it was something really special until 2007. Since then it has made appearances in a number of trial brews, seasonal releases and green hop beers to ensure it can deliver consistent quality and flavour outcomes. And boy has it delivered!

We constantly have a number of experimental hop varieties on the go, but there are a number of hurdles they are required to overcome before being released to the market. Each hop needs to have a consistent yield year-on-year as well as meeting demand in regards to trending beer styles and flavours. They also need to stand out when compared to other known hop varieties in order to really excite brewers and their customers. This is important for establishing a reliable, sustainable scale of production relatively quickly.

A number of brewers will get to experience our current set of experimental hops fresh off the bine when they visit our farms during harvest. They can expect to encounter aromas ranging from grapefruit and strawberry to rockmelon, but the one we’ve really got our eye on has the aroma of a juicy mango.

Eclipse is a contender for rookie hop of the year in 2021

Pixel3 — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 07:22:33 +0000

Appellation Beer has named 3 contenders for rookie hop of the year in 2021. They are pitting Talus from the US against Nectaron^® from New Zealand and our own Eclipse^®from Australia. This means we can supply our customers with two of the three next big things in brewing.

Talus, formerly known as HBC 438, was created by the Hop Breeding Company (HBC) that created Sabro^®, Mosaic^® and Citra^®. The daughter of Sabro^®and open pollination, Talus delivers a delicious array of aromas including pink grapefruit, citrus rind, dried rose, pine resin, tropical fruit and sage. It’s very likely beer drinkers will see plenty of single hop IPAs featuring Talus next year, but it also plays well with others in styles such as lagers, pale ales and IPAs. The name is a nod to the talus slopes in the Yakima Valley. HBC is a partnership between Yakima Chief Ranches and HAAS. As the regional representative of HAAS we have crop 2019 Talus available now, with crop 2020 landing on our shores very soon.

Eclipse^®, formerly known as HPA-016, was created by our own hop breeding program in Australia. It’s bursting with sweet mandarin, zesty citrus peel and fresh pine needles, and has already shown it stands up in a range of beer styles including XPAs, Pilsners, Wits, Dark Ales, Saisons, IPAs and NEIPAs. The name is a double entendre, with a celestial reference to its sister Galaxy^® as well as a flavour reference to its big, bold impact in beer. Ash Hazell, Head of Brewing at Colonial Brewing Co, used Eclipse^® back when it was still an experimental hop. He says “the best beer I ever brewed was Pioneer. It was a 7.5% IPA using a foolish amount of [Eclipse^®] in the hop-back and dry-hopping. The full spectrum of hop character we extracted was unreal.” Crop 2020 Eclipse^® is currently only available to Australian brewers in commercial quantities, but it will start to reach the rest of the world from crop 2021.

Contact your local sales rep to secure your supply of Talus or Eclipse^® today.