Visualizing Hops

Below is an incredibly cool visualizer that shows you the way hop acreage has changed over time. Made by Max Coleman of Oregon’s Coleman Ag, it shows you those acres through a number of different prisms: by the country and state, by aroma and bittering hops, and by public and proprietary strains. I’ll let you play around with it for a minute and then add some explanatory notes below.

First, one thing to note is that Max chose acres as his unit of measure rather than pounds. Both reveal different things. As you page through these, you’ll notice that as Citra grows in popularity, its acres far outstrip other varieties. But not all varieties produce the same amount of hops per acre, and in fact, CTZ produces around twice as many pounds per acre as Citra. Had Max created this with pounds, it would look different. All of this gets pretty convoluted, because prices on hops differ as well, and the grower’s profit is affected by whether the strain is proprietary or not. But I can see why Max thinks acres is a better measure—as a grower, acres represent fields he has under cultivation.

Max’s time scale covers a dozen years, and while for an old like me that seems pretty recent (Citra was released five years before his earliest date), you can really see some changes. Summit was the third most-grown hop by acres in 2013, and it is basically extinct now (it may be grown, but not in enough acreage to appear on the reports). Max has Oregon data going back a quarter century, but to keep the time scale consistent, Nugget and Willamette were number 1 and 2, and Mt. Hood was 5th (as they were in 2000). Today they’re 10th, 7th, and 11th. Things change!

For those who really want the interpretive material, Max told me this. “An important note, the “Other varieties” category I put in as both public and private, and both aroma/alpha, since there isn't a way to split them out. Additionally, the varieties that show (D) on these USDA reports I added as 1 acre, even though they are most likely much more than that, so that the chart doesn't show 0 for a variety that is/was being grown.” On the USDA reports, if only one farm is growing a variety in a given state, the USDA may assign it a (D) to avoid revealing details about that farm’s business. This year, there were a lot (D)’s, especially in Idaho.