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.
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Survivors and Survivables
It’s a story that’s been told many times: Interest in an experimental hop labeled 56013 was languishing in the late 1960s until Coors Brewing committed to support the variety, which was released in 1972 as Cascade. The interest didn’t last long. In oral histories kept at Oregon State University, USDA hop geneticist Al Haunold explains why.
The USDA mistakenly advertised Cascade as a direct replacement for Hallertau Mittelfrüh, based mostly on similar alpha-beta ratios; they didn’t have equipment to measure individual compounds found in the essential oil. “The beer tasted OK,” he says, “except when the beer drinker would have another bottle of beer ... something would come up through the nose he wasn’t familiar with,” he says. “We know now that it is geraniol.”
Geraniol was undesirable, until it wasn’t. Today, brewers understand that geraniol can play a role in the biotransformations of compounds, thereby creating fruity aromas and flavors; they also understand that those may interact synergistically with thiols to generate tropical flavors.
Geraniol is one of eight beer-soluble and highly aromatic compounds—mainly contributing fruit-forward aromas and flavors—that Yakima Chief Hops began labeling as “survivables” in 2021.
Using the research involved in choosing these particular compounds, YCH formulated Cryo Pop. The lupulin-rich, blended pellets benefit from the same cryogenic hop-processing technology that YCH introduced in 2017 for individual varieties. They also produced a poster, which has been updated several times, that makes it easy to visualize how to maximize the impact of many varieties—including Centennial, Chinook, and Cascade.
Survivables 101
The survivables tracked include two terpene alcohols (linalool and geraniol), one ketone (2-nonanone), four esters (2-methylbutyl isobutyrate, isoamyl isobutyrate, isobutyl isobutyrate, and methyl geranate), and one thiol (3-Mercaptohexanol). “For the other thiols, we have yet to find a supplier to purchase an analytical-grade standard,” says Pat Jensen, director of R&D.
The survivables chart is far from comprehensive; it mainly features the most popular hop varieties that YCH farmers grow. However, the lessons to be learned also apply to the wider universe of hop cultivars.
YCH includes four specific suggestions about how to use this information:
- Use hops that are higher in survivables earlier in the brewing process. Example: using Centennial in the whirlpool.
- Use hops that are lower in survivables later in the process, such as post-fermentation dry hopping. Cascade is such a candidate.
- Blend hops to maximize beneficial concentrations. For example, because Nugget is high in linalool and Chinook is high in geraniol, the two are good candidates for blending.
- Load the wort stream with survivables early. High concentrations of survivables in the whirlpool and during active-fermentation dry hopping create the conditions for biotransformations.
The Old-School Edge
“I used to say it was cool to say ‘old school,’” says Industrial Arts founder Jeff O’Neil. But now he is careful about how he uses his words.
Industrial Arts brews beers with the hippest varieties, and the team is not afraid of advanced hop products. However, O’Neil says he is certain that what sets their beers apart from one down the street is the whole-cone C-hops they add in the hopback. It’s “one more layer,” he says. “It adds something raw that others can’t.”
He learned his craft in the 1990s in the San Francisco area—“C-hop central,” he says. “That history is so important. From where I came from, that is the backbone. I feel an obligation to defend it.”
When the USDA released Chinook in 1985, people in the industry labeled it “super-alpha” and used it primarily for bittering. “We think of it as an aroma hop,” O’Neil says, before telling a story about how he “fell back in love with Chinook.” It was during hop selection, and a merchant was showcasing experimental varieties. “It was ‘smell this, smell this,’ and then we smelled Chinook. It is so expressive.”
Like Cascade, Chinook is “grippy” and “has some bite,” he says. “I won’t say bitter. Just different.”
He believes whole cones amplify their raw quality. “We use them for that edge. If you are local to the Hudson Valley area, you can distinguish our beer.”
The Forgotten C
Georgetown Brewing head brewer Reid Spencer is a Chinook advocate. “I love Chinook,” he says. “I’m often reminded how great it is at selection. It can have the most explosive aromatics. Sometimes it even out-performs Citra [at the selection table]. It can be a little forgotten.”
Chinook was one of five hops in Bodhizafa IPA when Georgetown set out to add a piney IPA to its portfolio in 2011. They had already made tweaks to “Bodhi” when it won gold at the Great American Beer Festival in 2016; it has grown into the Seattle brewery’s flagship, surpassing sales of the iconic Manny’s Pale Ale. Chinook is still there.
Brewed with a portion of rolled oats, Bodhi is now basically a three-hop beer: Besides a dash of CTZ at the start of the boil, it’s Citra, Mosaic, and Chinook. Chinook joins Citra and a smaller measure of Mosaic on the hot side; all three are included in the dry hops. The full range of resulting citrus flavors also gets a distinct pineapple note, which will seem familiar to brewers who’ve rubbed Chinook grown in the Midwest.
“Straightforward fruit, pineapple,” says Jonathan Moxey, head brewer at Rockwell in St. Louis, describing Chinook from Hop Head Farms in Michigan. When Rockwell opened, Moxey was familiar enough with Michigan hops that he knew he wanted to focus on them. “I don’t want to be different for difference’s sake. It is an opportunity to get to a similar place taking a different path.”
Spencer says he understands the role terroir can play in the character of any variety. Georgetown uses close to a half-million pounds of hops per year in producing about 125,000 barrels of beer, which is good reason for him to spend much of the harvest season in the nearby Yakima Valley. “I’ve gravitated toward Moxee-grown Chinook,” he says, pointing to the region around the city with the same name, located a bit southwest of Yakima.
A Known Quantity
At La Cumbre Brewing in Albuquerque, founder and brewer Jeff Erway also has a longtime relationship with Chinook. “After 20 years, honestly, I like it more every year,” he says. “I am never disappointed.” Chinook is central to Elevated IPA, LaCumbre’s flagship that won GABF gold in the crowded IPA category in 2010, less than a year after the brewery opened.
The recipe has changed because varieties such as Citra and Mosaic became available, but Chinook still makes a significant contribution to the aroma and flavor. “If you want classic American piney character …” he says, letting the sentence finish itself. The La Cumbre team adds Chinook at first wort, then again at 30 and 15 minutes left in the boil. It’s also 20 percent of a dry-hop load that includes Citra and Mosaic.
What hasn’t changed much is the bitterness. About 10 years ago, when La Cumbre acquired equipment to measure bitterness accurately, it measured about 80 IBUs. It measures the same today. “I consistently like the bitterness [of Chinook],” Erway says.
He’s equally impressed with its consistent aroma. Last harvest, he says, “I rubbed 11 different lots of Chinook. I would have gladly picked any of them, something I cannot say about any other hop. [Northwest] farmers clearly have figured out how to grow it.”
And it comes at a price that works for both La Cumbre and farmers. “It’s not lost on me what the agronomics are,” he says.
More than a Memory
“I think it takes a little storytelling,” says Steve Luke, founder of Cloudburst Brewing in Seattle, talking about C-hops in general and Chinook specifically. “There are certainly shinier hops in the cooler.”
In Seattle, he says, drinkers are used to reading hop bills and know what to expect, or else they expect to be surprised. He uses Chinook throughout the brewing process, and he’s also brewed a hazy IPA using only Chinook. “Twice, the response was so good,” he says. “People went, ‘No way this is 100 percent Chinook in a hazy IPA.’”
In February, Cloudburst released a second batch of Memory of a Memory IPA. It was brewed using:
- Centennial at the start of the boil.
- Chinook at 20 minutes left in the boil.
- Chinook and Centennial at two minutes.
- Chinook, Centennial, and Simcoe in the whirlpool.
- Chinook, Cascade, Simcoe, Simcoe Cryo, and Columbus Cryo in the dry hop (on Day 7 of fermentation, at ambient temperature, after yeast cropping).
On Instagram, the brewery told drinkers to expect “a modern interpretation of an early 2000s PNW IPA. Back in the glory days, if our memory serves correct, those versions were assertive, rough around the edges, with a crystal-malt presence that sometimes came off sweet and/or muddled, a high perceived bitterness, an unfiltered sheen of haze, with aromatic notes of grapefruit and pine trees and sharp esters.
“And while we look back fondly on these formative beers, if we were to replicate one to the ‘T,’ in this day and age, it probably wouldn’t be all that great. So, we re-imagined it, and brewed what they could’ve been, with what we know now, 20-plus years later, making one with all the things we looked back fondly on while editing away some of those less desirable components. We hope this beer tastes familiar to you, but also like it was brewed in the year 2024.”
That’s a pretty good story.
The Survivables: Cast of Characters
Centennial and Chinook are among the varieties highest in survivable compounds and, thus, are good candidates to use earlier in the brewing process. Cascade, meanwhile, is relatively low and a better fit for dry hopping. Here are the eight key players.
Geraniol: Most terpenes in hops, such as myrcene, are volatile and do not survive the brewing process. Because they are oxygenated, monoterpene alcohols are more likely to end up in beer. As its name suggests, geraniol may smell geranium-like as well as citrusy. It may also be transformed into citronellol during fermentation, creating a new compound that contributes to tropical aroma.
Linalool: Like geraniol, linalool is a monoterpene alcohol. Much of it will be lost during the boiling process, but it is soluble in beer and will survive the whirlpool and active fermentation. It was established more than 50 years ago as the compound associated with “hoppy” flavor, although it was already understood there was no one marker. On its own, it is fruity in aroma and flavor, reminding some of Froot Loops.
2-nonanone: At its best, this aromatic ketone smells sweet and fruity. It also may be perceived as buttery or waxy.
2-methylbutyl isobutyrate: Like the other isobutyrates, an ester, and one of the most prominent volatiles. Its aroma is fruity, specifically apricot.
Isoamyl isobutyrate: This ester contributes fruity, tropical aromas.
Isobutyl isobutyrate: This ester is known for adding pineapple and other fruity aromas.
Methyl geranate: This is a fruity and floral ester. Centennial is particularly rich in methyl geranate.
3-mercaptohexanol (3MH): A thiol that may smell tropical and of grapefruit, 3-mercaptohexanol (3MH) may also be converted into 3-Mercaptohexyla cetate (3MHA), adding passion-fruit flavor. Also known as 3-sulfanylhexan-1-ol (3SH).
