In all corners of the Yakima Valley, warehouses rumble, workers rise early and headlights bounce through fields. The smell of hops is pungent as the 2024 crop makes its way from fields to storehouses, where it waits in bales to be turned into beer the world over. One might not know it when looking at the unceasing, 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week machine that is a hops harvest, but the industry is still in recovery mode after the rough years of the pandemic.
Hops remain a keystone of the Yakima Valley’s agricultural economy, but growers in the region have continued to reduce acreage as they contend with an oversupply of stored hops and shifts in beer consumption. Idaho 7 hops grow in a field at Double R Hop Ranches Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in Harrah, Wash.
“Most hops farms in the valley have reduced acreage, including us,” said Jessica Riel, a fourth generation hops farmer-owner at Double R Hop Ranches in Harrah. Riel didn’t intend to get involved in the hops industry. She left the Yakima Valley and moved to Seattle.
When the craft brewery industry began to grow, she decided to come back to her family’s farm in Harrah. She was in the thick of the harvest during a Sept. 17 interview.
Double R Hop Ranches will take 40 days to harvest nine different hop varieties across almost 1,000 acres. Work started Aug. 26 and will go through early October, Riel said.
Still, that’s less than normal, Riel said. “We’re in the midst of a two-year market correction right now. Fr.