Before there was Citra, there was a family of “C-hops,” led by Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook.
“Their citrusy, fruity American character has become one of the defining notes that differentiate American craft-brewed ales from all other beers,” Firestone Walker brewmaster Matt Brynildson writes in the foreword to Mitch Steele’s IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale, published in 2012.
OK. But what have they done for IPA recently?
Are they relevant now that Citra, Mosaic, Galaxy, Nectaron, Lotus & Associates help produce beers that drinkers describe as tasting of guava, melon, tropical punch, coconut, mandarin, lychee, and so on?
That’s a rhetorical question, asked for the sake of this story. Farmers in the Pacific Northwest harvested 14.6 million pounds of Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook in 2023, and growers east of the Mississippi River have turned Chinook into a unique brand. They’ve been around for more than 30 years, but brewers are still learning new things about them—and they’re learning new ways to use them, too.