September, 2022
No, you won’t find old 1950s “hop” music here. And no bunny rabbits hopping here either. This museum is all about a crop … hops … a crop that beer lovers know well.
I’ve always heard the word as “hops”. But whatever the correct word is, today I visited the American Hop Museum. I learned so much stuff that I now know things I didn’t even know I didn’t know! And I had a great time. I was inside the museum for slightly more than three hours. I was the only one inside that whole time except for the woman who manages the place. She came to check on me many times and gave me personal tours and lots of information that I wouldn’t have received otherwise, including local info about fields being harvested, where the kiln buildings are, etc.
She wasn’t really “checking on me”, as much as I think she was maybe a bit bored because she was alone, and she was a talker! It didn’t bother me one iota that she was a talker; I loved it. It pays to go to places like this in the morning (or right when they first open each day) and early in the week.
Ok, let’s go.
Around on one side of the building (below) were these murals and explanations.
In the photo above, notice the fellow on the right who is using a “press” to compress hop flowers into tight bales that are then encased in “hop sacking” so they can be shipped. One of those presses was inside the museum; I’ll show it to you in a bit.
And so, let’s go inside.
Inside the museum, they had old planting and growing and harvesting equipment, string and sacks and clothing and all manner of photos. The building was huge. Also inside were several displays of hops at different times in the growing cycle. The exhibit below showed how the plant might look at exactly the time that the hops should be harvested, when the hop vines should be removed from the posts and overheard strings/wires so the hop “flower” can be removed and processed. In the photo below, there are several hundred hop flowers on the ground. Oh, wait! Look! Little Towhee jumped out of my knapsack and is taking her own tour of this exhibit.
Actually, the hops in the photo above were very dry and small. The photo below is of another exhibit and shows relatively fresh hop flowers.
Years ago, harvesting was done by hand. The two men below stood on a platform attached to the rear of a truck. They scraped down the hop vines into that big bin in the truck. Since the truck driver couldn’t see what was happening behind, another man always walked along side to let the driver know whether to speed up, or slow down, or stop. Because harvesting thousands of acres of hop fields took so long to do manually, and because the window of time when they were ripe was so short, they were harvested at night as well as during the day, hence the tractor coming along behind with the bright lights.
After harvesting, the trucks full of the vines were taken to huge “kiln” buildings.
Ok, here below is that hop bale press (or “press screw”) that was in one of the outside murals up at the top of this blog post.
There was also all manner of scientific equipment in the museum that was used to measure all manner of things … humidity, temperature, various measurements of the earth and the water used to irrigate the hop crops. There were numerous shelves of these devices, no two of them looked alike!
And there were shelves full of hand tools … nothing looked like a standard shovel or rake or hoe or even a hammer. All the tools were specialty tools.
And then, after harvesting, after drying, and after the kiln and other processes, here are the resulting products … all used in making beer.
I liked the name of the one below the best. I’ve tried to memorize the name, can’t do it.
The next two photos show the basic steps of brewing beer. It starts with the cereal bin (rice or corn or millet or sorghum can be used, but always barley is used either alone or with one of those other grains.)
Near the exit from the museum was this huge billboard showcasing beer brewed in Washington State at the time the billboard was created. I didn’t find a date on the billboard. But today, 2022, there are dozens (hundreds?) more brands of beer made in Washington State. Small “craft breweries” have become immensely popular here.
One of the most popular beers ever produced in Washington is Rainier beer. The company started in 1878, before Washington State was a state. The company is still brewing beer today. The Rainier Brewing company was named after Mount Rainier, since water to brew the beer came from a river that started way up underneath glaciers on Mount Rainier. The slogan they used was “It’s the water”. I don’t think they use that slogan anymore, do they? But a whole lot of folks still remember that slogan.
The last exhibit (below), just before the gift shop and the exit door, was this display of one beer tap handle from each of the brands shown on that billboard. That was fun to explore. You are allowed to pick them up. Ahhh, Little Towhee jumped out of my pack again! Not surprisingly, she was attracted to the handle with the shiniest end. “Hey, bartender, a brew for Little Towhee here please!”
The Yakima Valley, right here in the middle of Washington State, produces about 71% of the hops for all breweries in the USA. Oregon and Idaho also produce hops; no other state in the USA does. In fact, since almost all breweries buy and combine hops from different fields for that breweries’ unique beer flavor, they say that there isn’t one beer brewed in the USA that does not have hops in it from the Yakima Valley.
And, with Germany leading the world in hops production, it is the Yakima Valley right here in Washington State that is the second largest grower and producer of hops … in the world. I’ll drink to that! Another little bit of info is that the Czech Republic is the third largest producer of hops in the world.
More info about hops is here … https://americanhopmuseum.org/what-are-hops%3F.
A link to the American Hop Museum in Yakima is here … https://americanhopmuseum.org/.
Since I was here in autumn this year, my visit very coincidentally coincided with hops harvest. I have photos and videos to share! But I had those experiences on another day this week, so stay tuned, more to come!
Yes, this is a LOOOOOONG blog post, but here’s just one more link … a very short video, and fun … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id-oCFb-l68.
Stay tuned to see a real hop harvest!