Celeste and All the New Hops

The history of modern American beer can in a very real way be written by telling the story of the country’s hop breeding over the past half century. First conducted by the USDA, the early public varietals were aimed at replacing expensive European hops domestic brewers used in their light lagers. Later, more expressive hops led to bright, bitter hoppy American ales. Then in 2008, a private company entered the territory largely occupied by the USDA and released Citra. Four years later, the Hop Breeding Company released Mosaic, their follow-up to Citra. That in turn sparked a whole new kind of hoppy ales. Meanwhile, breeders were improving on high-alpha varieties that have become the workhorse of the larger domestic brewers, which still make most of the beer sold in the U.S.

I offer this short potted history as a way of bringing us up to the present, as hop breeding enters its most prolific era. It’s a strange time as three trends define the hop industry: consolidation among a few private breeders; the arrival of many smaller estate, public, and private breeders; and a steady decline in the amount of beer we make, and therefore the amount of hops we need. It feels like a transitional moment, but also a fun and exciting one. Where hop-breeders have gone, American beer has followed. What does the release of ten new varieties in the past year suggest about where breeders are taking us?

We’ll start out with the hop that’s just getting her grand debut, West Coast Hop Breeding’s Celeste (formerly WCHB-102). Veteran hop breeder Pat Leavy leads WCHB, and specializes in varietals that grow well in Oregon’s wetter, cooler climate. This is WCHB’s second named variety, following McKenzie. The breeders describe Celeste as “clean, bright, and sweet,” and Eric Sannerud, writing in his Hop Notes newsletter, adds these descriptors: “passionfruit, honey dew, and pine.” She was bred to be grown organically, and weighs in at 8-10% alpha and 4-9% beta acids, and while WCHB doesn’t list pounds per acre, they call Celeste a good yielder. Why should a beer drinker care about yield? Let’s put a pin in that and come back to it in a moment.

Celeste is only the latest new variety to hit the market in the past year. I count nine others, though apologies if any of them arrived earlier than that window. Two folks have made my life easier in this post. Stan Hieronymus and the aforementioned Eric Sannerud both rounded up some of the new hops in their newsletters, Hop Queries (Stan’s), and Hop Notes (Eric’s), and I cribbed from them in compiling this list.

Dolcita (Hop Breeding Company), which I discussed at length here.
Huell Classic (The Hüll Hop Research Centre, Germany). Stan says they have “the same herbal-grass, slightly spicy, and fruity aromas as traditional German hops.” 4.5-8% alpha and 3-5% beta acids.
Karma (a joint project of Yakima’s Puterbaugh Farms/Hops Direct and the UK’s Charles Faram), described by the breeders as a dual purpose hop with a “fruity, and bright” character. They add that it has a “punch of orange Creamsicle with notes of berry and mint.” 9% alpha acids, no other notes.
Luna (formerly HPA-033, Hop Products Australia), which HPA describes as “lush mango, dark berry and spicy citrus characters, alongside a high polyphenol content that elevates the flavour profile and mouthfeel.” 13-15% alpha and 7.5%-8.2% beta acids.
Nobella (Hopsteiner), a noble-type hop with 7-9% alpha and 4.5-6% beta acids. A good yielder (2,000-2,500 pounds per acre).
Ramosa (Segal Ranch, breeders of Tangier, Zumo, and Anchovy), which Segal describes as “juicy pineapple character, complemented by equally expressive notes of mango smoothie and background notes of freshly cut melon.” No statistical info.
Rhapzody (Clayton Farms in New Zealand). The breeder describes it as “ripe passionfruit, sticky mango, sweet peach and juicy citrus all layered to create a vibrant tropical juicy fruit character.” 12-14% alpha and 4.5-6% beta acids.
Thora (Hop Quality Group/USDA-Corvallis, formerly HQG4). Crosby Hops says to “expect vibrant passionfruit, guava, grapefruit, and stone fruit, layered with dank, resinous undertones.” 9% alpha and 3-4% beta acids.
Vera (USDA-Prosser, WA). According to the breeders, “this variety delivers tropical, stone fruit, and citrus aromatics with a candy-like sweetness—think pineapple-flavored Life Savers.” 4-5.5% alpha and 4-5% beta acids. Yield has been all over the map, from 1,500-2,700 pounds per acre.

Going Small

When the Hop Breeding Company released Citra, it took the sleepy little backwater of hop breeding into the big time. Subsequent releases didn’t score the massive success of those two, but 2024’s Krush may become at least a mid-tier hit. It sparked an international rush into commercial hop breeding, which has transformed the hop industry. Not long ago, growers mostly planted public varieties. Today, that calculus has flipped and most of the hops in fields are proprietary. Eric Sannerud has tracked this and reported last December that:

“From 2014 to 2022 the US hop market went through an incredible transition. In 2014 roughly 80% of US hop acreage was in public varieties. As of 2025, 65% of the market is in private varieties. Just two conglomerates control 46% of the US hop acreage.“

Eric is a passionate fan of public hops, and he makes a great case that they play an important role in the diversity and cost-effectiveness of the industry. Leaving the politics aside (and man, the business of hops is political), the concentration does seem to be sparking a DIY movement reminiscent of craft brewing itself.

Three of the nine new hops I mentioned are estate hops, developed on a specific farm. These are unlikely to become major varieties, but they don’t need to be to support the bottom line on a single farm with a high-margin product. That large-breeder concentration has also sparked a revival in public hops (another third of the new releases). Finally, smaller-scale breeders like West Coast Hop Breeding and Indie Hops, to name a couple, are also trying to find ways to breed and sell hops on a smaller scale. While all of these entities would be delighted if they bred the next Citra, their goals don’t depend on that level of adoption.

12-Bale Hops

In the salad days of the hazy era, breweries were buying tremendous amounts of hops and they weren’t paying close attention to price. ($25 four-packs will do that.) Well, a pandemic and economic shock later, price matters. When I talk to growers and breeders, they increasingly don’t talk about flavors and aromas, but yield. Michael Ferguson, a breeder at John I. Haas, told me, “We certainly don’t need another hop variety that doesn’t yield well. I don’t need another eight-bale Cascade. I’ll take another 15-bale Cascade!” (A bale is 200 pounds, and growers consider 10 bales—2000 pounds per acre—a healthy grower.)

Today, budgets are tight and yield matters a lot. Poor-yielding varieties are just more expensive because of the cost to grow them. Some high-alpha varieties are 15-bale hops—nearly twice as fertile as fussy little Citra, an 8-bale hop. In a market when every penny counts, a 12-bale Citra would be the holy grail, combining cost efficiency and popularity.

This is another reason estate and public hops may play an important role in keeping costs down for breweries. As breeders select more for yield, that should help as well. One of the great lessons of brewing is that incentives matter. Citra isn’t going anywhere, but in those four-hop IPA blends, brewers will surely be happy to replace expensive tropical hops with cheaper ones.

Another issue that is beyond the scope of this post (not to mention my knowledge) is climate change. The Pacific Northwest is heating up, and plants respond to higher temps by producing weird, unwanted flavors. Breeders are aware of this and it factors into the varieties they’re advancing in their test plots. Like yield, a customer won’t taste that factor, but it will dictate which hops they find in their beers in 20 or 30 years.

When I first saw the descriptions Stan and Eric posted of the new hops, my first thought was “do we really need another hop that tastes like citrus, mango, and pine?” But that’s not the best way to think of it. A better question is, “Do we need a modern hop with all the flavor and aromatics brewers want that is cheaper and more able to survive heat domes and other climate shocks?”That question answers itself.

I hope breweries experiment with some of these new hops. (Brewers, ping me if you make a beer with these hops, I’d love to try them.) Given the consolidation of proprietary varieties on the one hand and the proliferation of new varieties on the other, it will be harder than ever for them to break through among brewers. But it may also be a very good thing if some of them break through and find an audience.